In this article, McClatchy reports that confirmation politics has become bloodsport in Washington.
Here, liberal activists at People for the American way, along with other unnamed liberal supporters of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court, urge reporters to dig into Frank Ricci’s background. According to the liberal sources, Ricci was let go from a prior job, and has sued his employer previously for not accommodating his dyslexia. Ricci, as readers may recall, is the named plaintiff in the recent decision where the Supreme Court smacked down Judge Sotomayor’s Second Circuit panel. Judge Sotomayor upheld without opinion a lower court ruling allowing New Haven to toss out the results of firefighter promotion exams because not enough of the correctly hued people had passed. The Supreme Court unanimously criticized Judge Sotomayor’s panel for ruling in a cursory fashion, though the court was split 5-4 in its substantive decision.
Here’s ‘Puter’s question. Who in the heck cares whether Frank Ricci was a model firefighter or a drug and booze addled ne’er do well? Ricci has nothing to do with Judge Sotomayor’s fitness whatsoever. Ricci’s past does not change the operative facts. New Haven used race, and race alone, to decide promotion criteria. Judge Sotomayor ducked analysis of Ricci’s discrimination claim entirely, likely because she knew she was on a short list for the Supreme Court. (Supreme Court short listers like to remain as uncontroversial as possible in their decisions). The Supreme Court overruled both the District Court and the Second Circuit. The Supreme Court took the unusual step of noting the lack of any analysis whatsoever from Judge Sotomayor’s panel. Frank Ricci has exactly nothing to do with any of this, nor does he personally have a bearing on Judge Sotomayor’s fitness for the bench.
PAW’s plea to go Carville on Ricci smacks of desperation. It seems liberals are worried senators and Americans will actually look beyond Judge Sotomayor’s race and gender to determine her fitness for the bench. As well the liberals should worry, based on these poll numbers. Judge Sotomayor’s numbers are Harriet Miers-esque, and that’s not good. So, taking a page out of the Clinton book, if you can’t win on the facts, find someone to trash, and trash them good. Great to see the Hope and Change in practice.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.
In this article, McClatchy reports that confirmation politics has become bloodsport in Washington.