Empathy

The hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor begin next week. I predict they will be memorable -- in the same sense that the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts were memorable What, you don't remember those much? Me neither. Sotomayor is a meticulous centrist who brings a fresh perspective and a world of experience to the High Court; although if anyone should be disappointed it should probably be liberals who might have hoped for a more outspoken progressive.

There was some interesting news today, however -- the Republicans plan to call as a witness Frank Ricci and Ben Vargas, two of the New Haven firefighters who were plantiffs in the recent high-profile reverse discrimination case. Ricci and Vargas apparently won a promotion based on a written test, but city officials threw out the test because no blacks scored high enough. Sotomayor, as a federal appeals judge, voted to uphold that decision, citing the legal precedents. But the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, essentially reversed those earlier precedents, handing Ricci and his co-plaintiffs a legal victory.

Frank Ricci (pictured at top) certainly has the right to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee if the GOP senators want people to hear from him. He's not a lawyer, and it's hard to imagine that what Ricci has to say will shed much light on the complicated morass of laws and precedents that Sotomayor and the Supremes had to deal with in this case, or in future cases -- nor will he be able to speak to Sotomayor's character, as he does not know her. But he is an extremely admirable and sympathic figure. As someone who reportedly studied at great length for the firefighter test that he then aced, despite grappling with his own dyslexia, it is hard for anyone -- regardless of their politics -- to not root for Frank Ricci to do well in life.

So the Republicans want us to hear from him for one reason, and that reason is...oh gosh, there's a word for it but I'm struggling to come up with it right now.

(AP Photo/Jessica Hill)