re Sonia Sotomayor ruling that teen's blog post created a created "foreseeable risk of substantial disruption"

May 28th, 2009

4:30 p.m.

You may've already heard about this particular case involving Sonia Sotomayor already, but just in case... Matt Drudge had a link to this great story this afternoon. 
I should admit up front, too, that I'm a big proponent of having battle of the bands, so my sympathy is with this high school student, Avery Doninger.

Sotomayor Ruled in "D-Bag Case"- Ruled teen's blog post created a created "foreseeable risk of substantial disruption" by Yvonne Nava and Leanne Gendreau, May 28, 2009 http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Critics-unhappy-with-Sotomayors-role-in-CT-free-speech-case.html

To better illustrate how this article above gives us more insight into Sonia Sotomayor, per a previous blog post here and email to many people in the community about two months ago, about how much local School Boards might spend in San Diego for their national convention while decrying all the cuts they're being forced to make, i.e. actually spend within their economic means for a change, just consider what would've happened if this HS student, Avery Doninger, this contemporary Nancy Drew, this possible future Medill grad, had lived in Miami-Dade or Broward County, and decided she had the perfect idea for a blog post.

To highlight the phony crocodile tears aspect of these folks who run the school system she's a lab rat in, she decided to highlight the curious spending patterns and policies of the School Board and their administrators and minions when using taxpayer funds during the current economic situation, to the dire Sky-is-falling threats they were issuing, no more new erasers and chalk and textbooks and... she files public records requests to document how much Superintendent Jim Notter's or Roberto Carvalho's School Board Crowd was spending in San Diego on on of their annual education conference junkets, and also sees how that compares with how much had been spent in the past on previous such jaunts, and seeks to determine if there was any difference in the number of personnel attending.

Weeks later, after subjecting these grown men and women, these government employees, to a degree of accountability, oversight and resulting ridicule in her blog by drowning them in indisputable facts, what do you think would happen?

Do you honestly have any doubt that as actually happened, local Educrats would get their revenge by having her labeled a troublemaker, and prevent her from participating in student govt. as some sort of crude punishment?

If you don't think that would happen here, you live in some other part of South Florida that I'm not familiar with, so could you tell me where that magical place is?

These are the very same people whose brilliance is responsible for a wink-wink policy of putting up barriers to news reporters from finding out the facts after a kid has been arrested at a school for bringing a weapon, as happened to Channel 10's Glenna Milberg while she was doing a story at Hallandale Adult/Community last Fall.

Her cameraman showed some spunk and shot video of some school official with a walkie talkie running excitedly towards them while they were on public property -parking lot?- and when they said they wanted to talk to the school's principal, he got all angry and yelled "No!"

Like he was at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin or something.

It was both preposterous and yet typical of many local South Florida government types, especially people connected to the School systems.

In her piece, Glenna had a great voice-over on this footage that was shot, commenting -I'm paraphrasing- that the school seemed more concerned with stopping her and her cameraman from getting some actual facts and inteviewing a responsible party at the school than they were in actually stopping weapons from coming onto campus!

Touché!

Milberg shoots and she scores!

http://www.justnews.com/news/18053278/detail.html

http://www.justnews.com/news/18053278/detail.html#video

It seems clear from the record that in the hypothetical example I've described here, just as the article says, Sotomayor would imply that the facts didn't really matter, even if Doninger 

was actually doing the public some good by getting that info out.

Which is no surprise, since Sotomayor proved in the New Haven case that she supports the role and power of government, not the rights of individuals, and she'd rule against the student the same way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402305.html

Washington Post
The Wreck of a Spoils System

By George F. Will 
April 26, 2009

So tell me again how her nomination is great for those with opposing or minority point-of-views to the powerful or status quo?

And when do we actually hear who her corporate clients were after she did her time with DA Robert Morgenthau in NY? 
Why is that still such a secret all these days later?

Also, for more on Sotomayor please see these great PolitickerNY articles that I was tipped-off to by my daily New York Observer email:

1.) The Many Rabbis of Sonia Sotomayor by Jason Horowitz

http://www.politickerny.com/3719/many-rabbis-sonia-sotomayor

and,

2) The Sotomayor Attacks: 2012 Republicans Throw Red Meat to a Shrinking Base by Steve Kornacki

http://www.politickerny.com/3750/sotomayor-attacks-2012-republicans-throw-red-meat-shrinking-base

Could Sonia Sotomayor be elected judge in Broward County in 2009? You mean Mitch Caesar's Broward? No!

Could Sonia Sotomayor be elected judge in Broward County

in 2009?

You mean Mitch Caesar's Broward?

No!

I'm not joking.

Broward's ethnic identity politics groups at Century Village

aren't down with Hispanics, remember?

To prove it, in August they voted against THE most-qualified

of all the judicial candidates, in part, because he was Hispanic.

Yes, that's the Broward you live in, not the phony one that

Broward/Greater FTL CVB tourism flack Nikki Grossman tries

to sell to foreigners with a lot of -you pardon the expression-

dinero!

This first article is from a conservative website but has the

specific legal info that's most germane that other pieces plainly

lack.

Like anything in the Herald or their blogs or by Beth Reinhard.

whose post earlier this afternoon on Sotomayor was silly X two.

You know, like the real facts about what really happened,

instead of silly indulgent puff pieces that would have you

believe the nominee is actually Chita Rivera with a robe,

My own belief is that when those New Haven firefighters start

showing up in Washington in a few weeks to make the media

rounds, THAT'S when it's going to start getting VERY interesting!

Now we'll find out if Obama really is the first post-racial president

his pals in the media kept telling us he was before the election.

Me, I think not, which is why this pick will be delicious by late

August.

By then, I suspect we'll have started hearing from Italian union

members in Northeast Democratic congressional districts and

well-know Jewish writers opining in NY Times Op-Eds and

Chinese-American twenty-somethings in the Bay Area ALL

wondering aloud "What's the purpose in studying for a civil

service exam if your actual merit on the test doesn't really

matter?

If it can just be dis-regarded?"

That's when the rubber-meets-the road!

We'll see who's gloating in Washington then, since that's not

an argument that Obama & Comnpany can win.

If nothing else, we know from the early reactions around

Washington that we shouldn't hold our breath thinking the

MSM is going to do any original reporting on Sotomayor

over the summer, with Politico's Mike Allen already

having admitted as much this afternoon on MSNBC.

Like I was really surprised by that!

From the early balloting, it looks like a lot of MSM

journos will be mailing it in this summer -even more

so than usual.

----------------------------------------

Possible Obama Supreme Court Pick Slapped Down Reverse Discrimination

Case in One-Paragraph Opinion

Friday, May 08, 2009
By Matt Cover

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, voted to deny a racial discrimination claim in a 2008 decision. She dismissed the case in a one-paragraph statement that, in the opinion of one dissenting judge, ignored the evidence and did not even address the constitutional issues raised by the case.

Rest of story at: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47838

---------------------------------

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402305.html

Washington Post

The Wreck of a Spoils System

By George F. Will

April 26, 2009

Wednesday morning, a lawyer defending in the Supreme Court what the city of New Haven, Conn., did to Frank Ricci and 17 other white firefighters (including one Hispanic) was not 20 seconds into his argument when Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted to ask: Would it have been lawful if the city had decided to disregard the results of the exam to select firefighters for promotion because it selected too many black and too few white candidates?

In 2003, the city gave promotion exams -- prepared by a firm specializing in employment tests, and approved, as federal law requires, by independent experts -- to 118 candidates, 27 of them black. None of the blacks did well enough to qualify for the 15 immediately available promotions. After a rabble-rousing minister with close ties to the mayor disrupted meetings and warned of dire political consequences if the city promoted persons from the list generated by the exams, the city said: No one will be promoted.

The city called this a "race-neutral" outcome because no group was disadvantaged more than any other. So, New Haven's idea of equal treatment is to equally deny promotions to those who did not earn them and those, including Ricci, who did.

Ricci may be the rock upon which America's racial spoils system finally founders. He prepared for the 2003 exams by quitting his second job, buying the more than $1,000 worth of books the city recommended, paying to have them read onto audiotapes (he is dyslexic), taking practice tests and submitting to practice interviews. His studying -- sometimes 13 hours a day -- earned him the sixth-highest score on the exam. He and others denied promotions sued, charging violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the law.

The city claims that the 1964 act compelled it to disregard the exam results. The act makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against an individual regarding the "terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's race." And two Senate supporters of the 1964 act, both of them leading liberals (Pennsylvania Democrat Joseph Clark and New Jersey Republican Clifford Case), insisted that it would not require "that employers abandon bona fide qualification tests where, because of differences in background and educations, members of some groups are able to perform better on these tests than members of other groups."

In a 1971 case, however, the Supreme Court sowed confusion by holding that the 1964 act proscribes not only overt discrimination but also "practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation." What New Haven ignored is that the court, while proscribing tests that were "discriminatory" in having a "disparate impact" on certain preferred minorities, has held that a disparate impact is unlawful only if there is, and the employer refuses to adopt, an equally valid measurement of competence that would have less disparate impact, or if the measurement is not relevant to "business necessity." One of the city's flimsy excuses for disregarding its exam results was that someone from a rival exam-writing firm said that although he had not read the exam the city used, his company could write a better one.

New Haven has not defended its implicit quota system as a remedy for previous discrimination and has not justified it as a way of achieving "diversity," which can be a permissible objective for schools' admissions policies but not in employment decisions. Rather, the city says that it was justified in ignoring the exam results because otherwise it might have faced a "disparate impact" lawsuit.

So, to avoid defending the defensible in court, it did the indefensible. It used anxiety about a potential challenge under a statute to justify its violation of the Constitution. And it got sued.

Racial spoils systems must involve incessant mischief because they require a rhetorical fog of euphemisms and blurry categories (e.g., "race-conscious" measures that somehow do not constitute racial discrimination) to obscure stark facts, such as: If Ricci and half a dozen others who earned high scores were not white, the city would have proceeded with the promotions.

Some supporters of New Haven, perhaps recognizing intellectual bankruptcy when defending it, propose a squishy fudge: Return the case to the trial court to clarify the city's motivation. But the motivation is obvious: to profit politically from what Roberts has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race."

Reader comments: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042402305_Comments.html

--------------------------------

the "Invisible" candidate who defeated Catalina Avalos

http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2008/09/09/a-conversation-with-ian-richards.aspx

A CONVERSATION WITH IAN RICHARDS

Sept. 9, 2008

---------------------------------

Talk Back South Florida blog

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

WHO IS IAN RICHARDS, AND WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

by Doug Lyons

August 29, 2008

By Gary Stein

Quickie quiz: Who is Ian Richards?

You don't know? Don't feel bad. I have no idea who he is, either, and I'm the one who dreamed up that question. Richards, it turns out, was a political winner Tuesday, taking the County Court Group 27 seat. He did it by defeating an incumbent, Catalina M. Avalos.

It is unusual for incumbent judges to be challenges, and even more unusual for them to be defeated unless they have done something hellaciously awful. Yet three incumbent Broward judges who hadn't made negative headlines - Avalos, Julio Gonzalez in County Group 18, and Pedro E. Dijols in Circuit Group 3 - all lost Tuesday night.

None was more of a head-scratcher than Richard beating Avalos. Richards, you see, didn't even bother showing up for a candidate interview with the Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board. That is certainly his right, but it does make you wonder how much somebody really wants the job if they don't even attempt to get a newspaper endorsement.

Read rest of post at: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/theslant/blog/2008/08/who_is_ian_richards_and_why_sh.html

-------------------------------

Daily Business Review

Eddie Dominguez is executive editor of the Daily Business Review

Commentary Crawling over each other doesn’t help diversify Ian Richards is no crusader for change at the Broward County Courthouse. By Eddie Dominguez September 22, 2008 By: Eddie Domingue His victory over County Court Judge Catalina Avalos might anger a lot of powerful lawyers — the New Times and the bloggers behind the Broward courthouse blog seem to relish that. But framing his win over Avalos as anything more than a sad comment on the state of judicial elections in Broward County is grossly inaccurate. Richards mounted virtually no campaign. Broward voters barely had a clue about his background. How could they? He practices in Miami Gardens. Before that he worked at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. He made few campaign appearances, had few signs around town — and they didn’t have his picture on them either. Read rest of essay at:

http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/Web_Blog_Stories/Sept/Commentary_diversity.html

Latest Poll Info from Rasmussen Reports on Govt. Spending Echoes South Florida Voters' Sentiment

Excerpts from an email that I sent out Friday to some of the

concerned citizens and elected officials of this city and region,

and the South Florida press.

-------------------------------------------

April 28, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Just received some very interesting info this morning

from Rasmussen Reports via their free daily updates,

something you might want to consider getting as well.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/

The article, below, on voter sentiment regarding govt.

spending was just released at 10:30 a.m. this morning,

and is exactly in line with everything I hear from public

policy types and politically-involved citizens at events

I attend throughout South Florida, yet other than with

the recent case with BSO, the Broward Sheriff's Office,

which has gotten a lot of media attention, where exactly

are the meaningful yet intelligent cuts in govt. spending

that you can point to that ought to have been forthcoming?

77% See Politicians Unwillingness to Cut Government

Spending as Bigger Problem Than Voter Resistance to

Tax Hikes

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/77_see_politicians_unwillingness_to_cut_government_spending_as_bigger_problem_than_voter_resistance_to_tax_hikes

Where are the media reports showing examples of local govt.

getting smarter and slimmer thru technology, that were all

the rage just a few years ago?

The manana bureaucracy I encounter in South Florida on a

daily basis seems as dysfunctional and non-responsive as ever,

with our own city of Hallandale Beach being Ground Zero

for dysfunctional govt. for reasons that we all can recite.

April 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

April 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Perfect example of govt. dysfunction: Last August

at the city's public budget meeting at HB City Hall, I specifically

challenged HB City Manager Mike Good and his staff to explain

the logic of the city persisting for years in using garbage cans

without lids at THE windiest place in the whole city

-the public beach.

(It's not like that last fact is 'Breaking News'.)

His response: lots of talk. no action, just like his

promise moments later to place blue recycling

bins on the beach itself.

The logical results are self-evident to anyone, above,

a photo from a Saturday last month around 3 p.m. or so.

Nine long months later, the city still uses the same exact

garbage receptacles, sans lids, which is part of why the

beach is SO dumpy and unattractive, and there are

still no blue recycling bins on the public beach,

where beach-goers actually are, to make encourage it,

not make it impossible.

See http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/03/1048_condoms_on_the_beach_and.php

and http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/welcome-to-hallandale-beach-where-old.html

Here in Hallandale Beach, fellow citizens and residents

appealing improperly-cited code violations from the

city still get a very rude, lethargic and combative response

from City Hall when availing themselves of their rights

under the state's Sunshine Laws to get public records

they need to successfully appeal.

Hallandale Beach police officers get approval to drive their

police cars even farther into the far western Broward suburbs

to get home -at Hallandale Beach taxpayer's expense.

Yet the public beach here that is so terribly maintained is

NEVER patrolled by these same HB police officers in ways

that are even remotely comparable to our neighbors,

especially on three-day holiday weekends like this one.

Everyone who ever goes to the beach knows this is true,

it's "common knowledge," but HB City Manager Mike

Good and Mayor Joy Cooper and their Rubber Stamp

Crew just shrug their shoulders, like they have no real power

to change that policy, or create a new positive dynamic.

That's just another reason why they are each so personally

contemptible -their sheer laziness and apathy.

April 28, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Above, hen coming home to roost in Hallandale Beach

about wasteful govt. spending and utter lack of competency?

The contractor lifeguards are literally overwhelmed on

these sorts of weekends, yet the HB Police will NEVER

be seen on or near the beach except in the case of an

actual emergency, despite how large the crowds will get,

the amount of illegal/underage drinking taking place

in public, etc.

I'll be there late Sunday morning before returning home

for the Indy 500 telecast and will record the scene with

some photos before I leave, which you'll see soon.

Prediction: it will be just like last year's Memorial Day

Weekend... and the year before that and the year before....

To me, it'll be very interesting to see whether or not

-or to what extent- South Florida pols and those

in Tallahassee are able to resist this popular citizen

sentiment that this Rasmussen Report pinpoints,

the one that for some citizens, found catharsis thru

the recent Tea Party movement that the Miami

Herald and Beth Reinhard ignored for months

while other media round the country covered it

like a real story.

And what effect, if any, that sentiment will have on

South Florida pols in the next 16 months before the

Nov. 2010 election.

Will they accept the new economic/spending paradigm,

or will some, like the tone-deaf Broward School Board

and its administrators, with their fatal obsession with

large pots of construction money and lobbyists' money

and largesse, for a dysfunctional system that is actually

losing students and their tax-paying parents in droves,

persist in their old parochial views, and keep calling this

a temporary hiccup, eager to go back to their prior

ruinous spending behavior?

Channel 4's Jim DeFede has some thoughts on

South Florida's bureaucracy and fixes his gaze south on

Miami-Dade County and the very unhelpful 311 "Help Line"

that M-D taxpayers are paying for, but being poorly-served

by:

DeFede: Why I Hate Miami-Dade 311

http://cbs4.com/defedecolumn/defede.column.commentary.2.1017487.html

Have a safe Memorial Day holiday and remember what

and whom we honor this weekend!

Just as an FYI, my earliest ancestor who fought for this

country once marched from Alexandria, VA with

Capt. George Washington and other colonists as part

of General Braddock's long march to the French-controlled

Fort Duquesne in Pittsburgh.

Years later, under very different circumstances,

he served as a Revolutionary War spy for General

George Washington against the British Army

he'd once fought alongside.

After the war, for his brave efforts, he received

a large parcel of land north of Steubenville, Ohio

-where the first Federal Land Grant office

was later located- which is why my ancestors

were among the very first citizens of Ohio,

having crossed the Ohio River and relocated from Washington Township, PA, south of Pittsburgh, even before Ohio became a state in 1803.

-----------------------

For more info on recent developments with BSO

and their budget battles with the County Commission,

please see WFOR's Ted Scouten's report from Monday

Details Emerge About BSO Layoffs

http://cbs4.com/local/BSO.Layoffs.firings.2.1013261.html

and some other recent BSO stories at

http://cbs4.com/Search/Default.aspx?SearchString=Lamberti&TabId=0

Also take a look at these two Scott Wyman blog posts from

Friday's Sun-Sentinel Broward Politics blog:

County savings targeted in fight over budget deficit

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/05/county_savings_targeted_in_fig.html

Sheriff could lose control of the jail in budget battle

http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/05/sheriff_could_lose_control_of.html