Judicial Activists Crush State Sovereignty in Ricci Case
By a 5-4 decision, the conservative judicial activists on the Supreme Court violated in the Ricci decision any reasonable notion of state sovereignty by second-guessing use of public money by a local government, imposing by fiat the elitist views of those judges on how to judge potential qualifications for a local firefighters job.
It is a remarkable thing that conservatives that supposedly object to (a) inflexible federal rules on civil rights; (b) telling states how to spend their own money, and (c) second-guessing elected officials with judicial opinion would violate all three principles in the Ricci firefighter case. But then, conservatives have never really objected to judicial activism or federal imposition on local governments, just to most situations where such federal activism benefits poor people or non-white folks.
Somehow don't expect to hear Sotomayor praised for judicial restraint and deference to states rights in her 2nd Circuit ruling in the Ricci decision.
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Here is a scary chart. A second wave of foreclosures in California seems to be growing monthly. More disturbing is that twice the number of homes sold each month are coming back on the market through foreclosure. With this kind of supply- demand imbalance anyone who thinks that prices will stabilize soon is smoking something from Humboldt County.
My wife and I went out for a Sunday stroll today in Santa Monica. On Montana Avenue, the chic shopping street, every third store is empty with a for lease sign in the window. A year ago our U.S. personal savings rate was almost zero and by next month it will be over 6%. Besides saving more we are beginning to pay down our credit cards. Earlier this year household debt as a percentage of disposable income was 134% up from 68% in the early 1980's. My Princeton classmate
Mike Murphy, the Republican campaign strategist
Everytime I hear the comment that we went into Iraq to introduce democracy to the Arab World or that Israel is the only democracy in the Mid East, I think of Lebanon. 





