In the midst of Sotomayormania, we’ve been hearing a little about Frank Ricci. His name is on Ricci v. DeStefano — a race-preferences case. In a recent column, Charles Krauthammer summarized his “story” (a word that is very much in vogue):

Ricci is a New Haven firefighter stationed seven blocks from where Sotomayor went to law school (Yale). Raised in blue-collar Wallingford, Conn., Ricci struggled as a C and D student in public schools ill-prepared to address his serious learning disabilities. Nonetheless he persevered, becoming a junior firefighter and Connecticut’s youngest certified EMT.
After studying fire science at a community college, he became a New Haven “truckie,” the guy who puts up ladders and breaks holes in burning buildings. When his department announced exams for promotions, he spent $1,000 on books, quit his second job so he could study eight to 13 hours a day and, because of his dyslexia, hired someone to read him the material.
He placed sixth on the lieutenant’s exam, which qualified him for promotion. Except that the exams were thrown out by the city, and all promotions denied, because no blacks had scored high enough to be promoted.

Okay, here’s my question: Why are not black Americans insulted and outraged? Perhaps many are, and I have merely been unaware of it. But I would expect an outcry that goes something like, “Don’t you dare inflict injustice on others for my sake. Don’t you dare discriminate so grossly in my name.” Indeed, I believe that race preferences at large will come to an end when that happens. When the preponderance of black opinion says, “Enough. Not for our sake; not in our name. Commit injustices if you must — but not for our benefit, thank you very much. Look to the individual, of whatever color. The time for ‘compensatory discrimination’ has passed.” ‐A lot of people have been saying, “You can’t be an impartial judge. We are all full of biases. There is no such thing as impartiality in judging. This is just an impossible ideal.” People say the same thing about journalism, too: “Bias is baked in the cake. You can do nothing about it. You gotta be who you are. It’s just human nature.” Baloney. I think that the problem is not ability — the ability to be fair, neutral, objective. I think the problem is volition: Too many people just don’t want to be fair, neutral, and objective. They make no effort. Let me tell you a story — which takes place at an Upper East Side dinner party. This was a few years ago, and I was with some nice New York liberals. The Texas sodomy ruling had just come down from the Supreme Court. And everyone was pleased as punch that the Texas anti-sodomy law was struck down. I said I admired Justice Thomas’s dissent. He said, in brief, that, if he were a Texas legislator, he would oppose that law, and vote to rescind it. But he was a justice of the Supreme Court. And his job was to determine whether the Constitution permitted a state to make such a law. He found that it did — so . . . His personal opinion of the Texas law had nothing to do with it. And the people in the room looked at me like I was from outer space. It’s not that they disagreed with me; it’s not that they were hostile to me. They were just stunned by what I had to say. Why, if you’ve got power, you’ve got to use it for good! You’ve got to strike down bad laws! You’ve got to get the desired result! What’s the point of getting the appointment and donning the black robe if you’re not going to strike blows for justice? They could not conceive that an impartial, disinterested reading of the Constitution is justice. Process, in general, is trashed in contemporary America. By the way, I am an opinion journalist (as you know), and have always worked for opinion journals. I have never been employed as a just-the-facts-ma’am reporter. But I have done such reporting — and, you know, it’s not very hard. You just have to want to do it. ‐One great question for conservatives and Republicans is, What should be our standard? What should be our standard in confirming or rejecting Supreme Court nominations? The Republican practice has been clear: We just wave ’em through. A Stephen Breyer comes up, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg — she was general counsel to the ACLU! And we just wave ’em through. Barack Obama and many other Democrats think differently: If a conservative comes up, they vote against him — because he is a conservative. Obama did this with John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He admitted that they were perfectly qualified to serve on the Court. At the same time, they were not qualified — they were unfit — because they were, in a word, conservatives. Should conservative senators vote against liberal Supreme Court nominees on the Obama principle — on an ideological basis? Should the standard be tit-for-tat, in this realm? That is the question. And I’m not yet sure of the answer. All I know is: Liberal nominees are lucky that conservative and Republican senators don’t operate on the Obama principle. ‐In an editorial, the New York Times said, “It’s impossible not to be moved by Judge Sotomayor’s story.” Oh? Is it possible not to be moved by Clarence Thomas’s? By Miguel Estrada’s? By Janice Rogers Brown’s? All three are amazing, inspiring “stories.” I have discussed Thomas and Estrada in recent writings. Brown is the daughter of a sharecropper, and she attended segregated schools. But she’s a conservative — so to hell with her. ‐Was reading an Associated Press report about Sotomayor, and the report said, “She would replace liberal Justice David Souter.” I don’t remember that Souter was described, straightforwardly, as a liberal in the “MSM” before. Was he? ‐The question has come up whether Sotomayor is a racist. I think she is, more properly, a racialist — indeed, she fits the definition to a T. According to our trusty Dictionary.com, racialism is “An emphasis on race or racial considerations, as in determining policy or interpreting events.” See if her Berkeley speech does not burst with that emphasis. I’ll have more to say about this in the forthcoming National Review (which I know you are all eager to get your mitts on. Subscriptions paid up? Thanks!). ‐Don’t know if you’ve had a chance to visit the now-famous — if that’s the word — Berkeley La Raza Law Journal: here. It has a logo, on every page of the website. The logo features a “people’s march,” with a banner at the front of them: “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” That means, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated.” This is an old Allende-ist slogan and song. Venceremos! No pasarán! Etc., etc. All this comes from a mindset — and I’m afraid that our justice-to-be shares it. (Oops, sorry: Shouldn’t leave out Sí, se puede!) ‐About the long New York Times piece called “The Mellowing of William Jefferson Clinton,” there are many things to say. Let me confine myself to just one:

Clinton insisted he never would have let the housing bubble grow into the problem it became (never mind the high-technology bubble that burst on his watch) and would have stepped in if he were president to prevent the free fall. “When anybody asks me that,” he told me, “I ask them, I look at them and ask them: ‘Do you think this would have happened if we had been there? Look me in the face and say yes.’ I haven’t found any takers yet.”

Given the people he hangs with and his bullying demeanor — I imagine that is true. He’ll die in his own arms, this outsize self-lover. ‐Was on the subway two days ago (New York), and there was this woman across from me reading this little blue book. It had a silhouette on the cover — Obama. And it was — well, one of those “little” books. A little secular holy book — Obamite devotions. You can overplay the creepiness of the response to Obama. But you can underplay it, too. ‐A reader tells me he saw a bumper sticker in Denver: “I disliked Obama before it was cool.” Will that ever come to pass? Personally, I wouldn’t bet the ranch . . . ‐Back to the subject of books: Hugo Chávez has promised to give Obama another one, next time he sees him — What Is To Be Done? by Lenin. I think another head of state — Klaus? — should slip him The Road to Serfdom. (Obama, I mean.) ‐Okay, you’ve probably heard about Obama’s pricey jaunt to this fair city — New York. The AP headline read, “First couple’s NY date: a campaign promise kept.” And the story opened, “President Barack Obama made good on a campaign promise to his most important supporter Saturday night — his wife, Michelle.” Okay, very good. But what if a conservative First Couple had done this? Would the headlines and stories be so — warm? Or would they be more like, “In midst of financial crisis, president and missus live it up — on the public dime”? Does it make me a paranoid Republican for raising this question? Or does it make me someone who has not been blind or deaf for the last many years? By the way, for a superb column on the Obama press, go here — to Robert J. Samuelson. ‐I filed this story under “For good measure”: “Saudi beheads and crucifies murder convict.” (Go here.) ‐Bob Hope is to have his mug on a postage stamp. Did I ever share my Hope moment with you? I wrote about it in Impromptus in May 2003, when Bob turned 100 — here. ‐Have I ever told you that I like advertising — I mean, cleverness or imagination or catchiness in advertising? I do, a lot. Spotted a good one on the street yesterday, for an airline: “Eating the competition’s lunch — if they served it.” Very nice. ‐Let’s have a dollop of language: Years ago, some of our British contributors referred to National Review as “the paper.” And I thought, “Gee, don’t they realize it’s a magazine?” I have since learned that, for Brits, a paper is, in fact, a mag. I thought of this again when Peter David, The Economist’s foreign editor, announced that he would leave that post to become “the paper’s Washington bureau chief.” There you go. ‐Have I mentioned my upcoming visit to the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix? Not today I haven’t. It’s June 18, and the info is here. To regular readers, I apologize for my repetition. For my repetition. For my . . .

‐Couple of weeks ago, there were articles about a soldier in Afghanistan, who, surprised by the Taliban, fought the enemy in his skivvies — pink boxers that said “I [Heart] NY.” For one such article, complete with photo, go here. I thought of this when receiving an e-mail the other day from a reader — who, in passing, told me, “My grandpa was on the Nevada at Pearl Harbor. He fought the whole first wave with just a towel wrapped around him, since he was in the shower when the bombs started falling.” Have a great day, y’all.

#JAYBOOK#