Ricci follow-up + swallowing & Tran$former$

Note: Magnanimous Monday will be moved to Tuesday this week as I ran out of time and I am a lame excuse for a citizen of Earth.

The latest thing lighting up the Twitter feeds in Blacksburg, Virginia is the Iran Society’s next protest scheduled for tonight at 8:00 P.M.

In Iran, the election oversight body conducted a partial recount, declaring the results putting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power valid. Of course, this will never satisfy the Iranian people who are convinced that they were robbed of their votes. FTA:

State television reported that the Guardian Council presented the conclusion in a letter to the Interior Minister following a recount of a what was described as a randomly selected 10 percent of the almost 40 million ballots cast June 12.

The “meticulous and comprehensive examination” revealed only “slight irregularities that are common to any election and needless of attention,” Guardian Council head Ahmed Jannati said in a letter, according to the state TV channel IRIB.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi claims he, not incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was the rightful winner and has called for a new election, something the government has repeatedly said it will not do. “From today on, the file on the presidential election has been closed,” Guardian Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei said on state-run Press TV.

I believe scheduled activities are a symbolic release of balloons and a candelight vigil.

Speaking of balloons, Up is at the Lyric and I’ve heard nothing but good things, so I’ll probably be heading there after the protest.
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Story Tracking: Ricci vs. DeStefano

One of my most discussed posts was my analysis of the Ricci v. DeStefano court case that many conservatives were using as ammunition against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. My position was that the denial of promotions was legal under the Civil Rights Act as multiple choice tests inherently disfavor minorities. Today, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, decided that the plaintiffs were unfairly denied the promotions, going against what Sotomayor ruled as an appeals court judge. FTA:

On Monday’s ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions.” He was joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them.”

Justices Souter, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg’s dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday. Speaking dismissively of the majority opinion, she predicted the court’s ruling “will not have staying power.”

"You kids will see! America will never move past its need to be really sensitive about race. Never!"

All right…I’m convinced.

Maybe I simply like the Supreme Court too much. But I suspect that I’ve just been hearing arguments about it for weeks now and this is the final factor that makes me abandon my defense for the original decision. Race was a blatant and solitary decision for the denial of promotions based on the test. More importantly, people who worked hard and played by the rules got completely shafted and to hurt them in the name of diversity undermines what diversity stands for. For the most part, it makes me sad that many of the people who were arguing the point seemed to attack with many vitriolic attitudes against diversity, but that doesn’t mean that they were wrong in this case. I was wrong. I agree with Kennedy.

But I understand Sotomayor’s and Ginsburg’s opinions. And I don’t think it makes Sotomayor any less qualified to sit on the bench as a Supreme Court justice. Here’s hoping.

Further reading:

New Haven Independent article on Latinos siding with the white firefighters

Accurate prediction of Kennedy’s role in the decision

Full court opinions

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In other news…

Mothers-to-be or women who want to be mothers should swallow according to some Dutch researchers and the Journal of Reproductive Immunology.

“While any exposure to a partner’s semen during sexual activity appears to decrease a woman’s chances for the various immunological disorders that can occur during pregnancy, immunological tolerance could be most quickly established through oral introduction and gastrointestinal absorption of semen.”

I could not make this up. Gastrointestinal absorption of semen. I know. For the man in your life, this news should not be hard to swallow. Sorry.

According to a group of Dutch researchers, “exposure to semen provides protection against developing preeclampsia.” That’s from a paper with the catchy title, “Immune Maladaptation in the Etiology of Preeclampsia: a Review of Corroborative Epidemiologic Studies.” Or you could use the subtitle: “Semen is Your Friend.”

http://instantrimshot.com

Well, I for one, am completely convinced. Also, I believe we have found the Nobel prize winners for the next fifty years. Just sayin’.

I mean, there’s some sort of dissenting opinion that says she can’t find any real evidence supporting this, but she’s probably just some chick who doesn’t shave her legs, amirite, guys, amirite?

…Aw, man, I’ve just guaranteed myself singledom forever.
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Transformers 2 has made over $200 million over five days at the box office, putting it behind only behind Dark Knight for five-day gross. Of course, Dark Knight was one of the best franchise films ever. Transformers 2 was the equivalent of watching Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyworld come to life, stomp on its passengers and defecate loudly on their corpses — kind of entertaining, but also horrifying.

"And then, the black guy without the teeth is STUPID. And BOOM! And then one of the Transformers says 'pussy.' And BOOM! Ahahahahaha!"

Critics and people who actually recognize the idea that movies can be both fun and not-retarded are puzzled. But then again, I contributed to that box office total even after word of mouth. I think it was a combination of two elements that are making Michael Bay rich: optimism and timing.

The last movie with ties to a memorable franchise was Terminator: Salvation which came on the heels of Star Trek, which people probably went to see multiple times, thus wiping them of their money. That was a solid four weeks saving up for the new special effects feature. So the timing of Transformers 2 worked in its favor (Terminator was cannibalized by Wolverine).

Secondly, if there were others like me out there, optimism ultimately brought us out of the woodwork to make this blithering mess second to Dark Knight. We’d heard the naysayers. We figured critics were being critics and frowning upon any movie that is based upon a toy line. My moment of realization came during the slow motion explosions in the desert watching Megan Fox mouth words at Shia LaBeouf’s burned scrawny form….this movie was genuinely bad.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Fun. But, on principle, it kind of hurts me that I contributed to Michael Bay’s latest jet equipped with missiles and breast implants.

Still, when you look at the all-time best five-day openers, you don’t find very many positively rated movies:

1. The Dark Knight
awesome
2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
target demographic: six-year-olds and crystal meth addicts
3. Revenge of the Sith
critically crushed under the weight of first two movies and Hayden Christensen
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
incoherent mess
5. Spiderman 3
UGH!
6. Spiderman 2
meh
7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
George Lucas’ revenge on cinema
8. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Pretty good
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Best Harry Potter movie to date
10. The Matrix Reloaded
can’t really defend the obnoxiously long fighting scenes and the cave orgy

So the moral of the story is:

Our taste is pretty bad.

Up tonight.

Ricci v. DeStefano – Sotomayor and “Reverse Racism”

This is actually not going to be my regular daily post, but a (hopefully) brief report on the controversial Ricci v DeStefano case argued before the current Supreme Court and on which Sotomayor ruled when it was before the Second Circuit, because cadmaris asked for it (hey, I think that’s your first mention). Regular post to come after this.

The Ricci v. DeStefano saga began in 2003 in New Haven, Connecticut when 118 firefighters applied for 15 captain and lieutenant spots. At the time, consideration for promotion to these firefighting positions was based on a multiple-choice exam. Of the 27 black firefighters who applied, none scored high enough to be elligible for the promotion. Only 2 Latinos scored high enough to be considered. The city of New Haven took a look at their method of promoting and decided that it left them vulnerable to a lawsuit under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal for employers to use tests that have an unjustified racially “discriminatory effect.” They decided a multiple choice test was not the best way to determine who would make a good leader in the firefighting squad. So no firefighters were promoted at that time. In response, 18  white and (key point) Hispanic firefighters sued the city of New Haven for racial discrimination.

Who the hell is Donny Osmond?

The federal district court ruled in favor of the city. Frank Ricci and his fellow firefighters appealed and the case reached a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Sonia Sotomayor was one of these judges.

Now let’s clarify how an appeals court is supposed to work. The appeals court isn’t primarily deciding whether or not the plaintiff or the defendant is correct. It’s also trying to determine whether the lower court applied proper judicial reasoning to reach its verdict. After initially affirming the lower court’s decision without opinion, the court later submitted a per curiam (by the court as a whole) opinion in which it called the trial court’s decision “thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned.”

See, the reasoning behind employing Title VII is that, left to their own devices, institutions may intentionally or unintentionally discriminate against minorities in its regular practices. In the case of the multiple choice exam, the city (which is about 60 percent black) determined the test was unintentionally discriminatory, given that Asians and Caucasians tend to do better on those tests. That in itself wasn’t enough to pull the test, but the city also decided (and whether they did this purely out of fear for this very type of lawsuit is up for debate) that a test wasn’t necessarily a reflection of whether an individual would do well in a promotion. So, in short, fearing it was unintentionally excluding a lot of potentially valuable minority firefighters, New Haven revised its method of promotion.

The trial court agreed with the city that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was applicable in this case and that the city had the right to revise its promotion practices in the interest of finding truly qualified minority applicants. Sotomayor and the other two judges in the appeals court said this was proper reasoning. That’s what conservatives are calling reverse-racism. She didn’t “enact a racist policy” from the bench. She was upholding a law that already existed…essentialy the very opposite of a judicial activist.

Okay, not about firefighting, but hey, I'm a college student.

<Devil’s Advocate>Lead plaintiff Frank Ricci has been a firefighter for 11 years. He gave up his second job so that he could have time to study for this test. He also paid his neighbor a large sum of money to help him study through flashcards, tapes, and other study aids because he has dyslexia. He scored 6 out of 77 for the lieutenant test. It really sucks that a man who tried so hard for something that apparently meant a lot to him didn’t get his promotion.

Moreover, employers shouldn’t have to live in constant fear of being sued for discrimination. Sometimes the best qualified candidates are, shockingly, white. The legal system should not reward those who try to get by on race alone. Rather than fittiing standards to benefit a certaing group of people, shouldn’t people who want the job work as hard as Ricci did to get ahead?</Devil’s Advocate>

Ricci’s story certainly is sad. And I agree that we’re dangerously close to a society where allegations of racism can lead to a loss in court. However, this isn’t a case where New Haven took the qualified white candidates and replaced all or most of them with black or other minority candidates. These firefighters unfortunately composed the data the year that New Haven decided it wanted to weigh different considerations for lieutenant and captain. And an employer, whether it be a public institution like the firefighter department or a private company, has the right to promote diversity if they feel it would benefit their mission — in this case, serving the citizens who were composed of certain demographics. Lest we cry foul against whites, promoting diversity doesn’t necessarily mean expressly disadvantaging whites or even promoting racial diversity. (After all, it’s more about being poor and blue collar versus being rich and well educated).

And so, while Frank Ricci may deserve some sort of reward for his efforts, this lawsuit would set a dangerous precedent for employer freedoms in promoting diversity should it succeed. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 22. Assuming Stevens, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer predictably vote to uphold the lower courts’ rulings, then the city’s policy will hold. Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia will probably vote to reverse it.

But the relevant point is this — anyone using this case as an example of how Sonia Sotomayor is a “racist” either does not know the facts or is deliberately distorting them to push a political agenda….that agenda being “block Obama at every turn.” Conservatives don’t even have a real reason to oppose this appointment. Her philosophy will probably be similar to Souter’s, so the game doesn’t change. They’re just posturing to besmirch Obama, Sotomayor, the Supreme Court, and push their opposition to so-called “judicial activism” (which is only activism if liberals are doing it).

Bottom line: Many conservatives through practice or belief hate the Civil Rights Act, one of our laws. That’s what it boils down to. Had Sotomayor been an activist and ruled that the Civil Rights Act should not have played a part, they would have found something else that indicated that she would bring down some sort of invasion of spics and minorities by crazily enacting policy from the bench (apparently, being part of a group that celebrates Hispanic heritage is a red flag).

All right…what else is going on in the world?

Further reading:

Ricci and Sotomayor – Matt Zeitlin

“Basically, what George Will and Roger Cohen and a lot of Sotomayor’s critics are doing is making a policy argument and then piling on Sotomayor for coming to a legal decision that results in their preferred policy not being implemented.

What’s the phrase for thinking that policy considerations should overhwhelm legal ones? Starts with a J, two words, might end with ism?”

Ricci vs. DeStefano – A Test on Race

In a case decided almost 40 years ago, Griggs vs. Duke Power Co., the Supreme Court explained that Title VII “has not commanded that the less qualified be preferred over the better qualified simply because of minority origins.” Instead, the court said, “What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.”

And an article from the opposite side, just so I can say that I’m “fair” (right).

The high court’s decision in the case will come in June, before Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. The problem for her will not be why she sided with New Haven over Frank Ricci. The four liberal-moderate justices currently on the court are likely to agree with her, in the name of preserving Title VII as a tool for fair hiring. There’s even an outside chance that Justice Anthony Kennedy will follow along. The problem for Sotomayor, instead, is why she didn’t grapple with the difficult constitutional issues, the ones Cabranes pointed to. Did she really have nothing to add to the district court opinion? In a case of this magnitude and intricacy, why would that be?