The Weekly Standard has a transcript of a WSJ link to oral arguments in 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals hearing of the Ricci case:

KAREN LEE TORRE (lawyer for Ricci et al): I think a fundamental failure is the application of these concepts to this job as if these men were garbage collectors. This is a command position of a First Responder agency. The books you see piled on my desk are fire science books. These men face life threatening circumstances every time they go out. … Please look at the examinations. … You need to know: this is not an aptitude test. This is a high-level command position in a post-9/11 era no less. They are tested for their knowledge of fire, behavior, combustion principles, building collapse, truss roofs, building construction, confined space rescue, dirty bomb response, anthrax, metallurgy, and I opened my district court brief with a plea to the court to not treat these men in this profession as if it were unskilled labor. We don’t do this to lawyers or doctors or nurses or captains or even real estate brokers. But somehow they treat firefighters as if it doesn’t require any knowledge to do the job. …

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Counsel … we’re not suggesting that unqualified people be hired. The city’s not suggesting that. All right? But there is a difference between where you score on the test and how many openings you have. And to the extent that there’s an adverse impact on one group over the other, so that the first seven who are going to be hired only because of the vagrancies [sic] of the vacancies at that moment, not because you’re unqualified–the pass rate is the pass rate–all right? But if your test is always going to put a certain group at the bottom of the pass rate so they’re never ever going to be promoted, and there is a fair test that could be devised that measures knowledge in a more substantive way, then why shouldn’t the city have an opportunity to try and look and see if it can develop that?

KAREN LEE TORRE: Because they already developed it, your honor.

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: It assumes the answer. It assumes the answer which is that, um, the test is valid because we say it’s valid.

KAREN LEE TORRE: The testing consultant said it was valid. He told them it was valid…. They had evidence that the test was job-related and valid for use under Title VII.

Once again, I predict a narrowly drawn verdict for Ricci on the grounds that the city of New Haven refused to have done the validation study that they had already paid for.

But Sotomayor’s question reveals the kind of disingenous intentional cluelessness that is the media conventional wisdom.

The unmentionable truth is that a fair test of a complicated subject will always tend — on average — to put NAMs at the bottom. Life is one long series of aptitude tests. Fire captains need to know a lot of stuff — much of it that will never come up in their jobs … until the day it does — and studying for their promotions exams are times when they are motivated to really learn.

So, what should be done legally about the fact that fair and relevant tests will be tests that whites do better on average than blacks?

I don’t really like the idea of burning to death because the less competent guy got the promotion due to his race, so I’d say: nothing. (more…)

NPR has been accumulating a series of mostly sob stories, Immigrants’ Children: A Foot In Two Worlds.

In an earlier America, the actual immigrants were understood to perhaps have remaining ties to the old country, but the kids were expected to become assimilated Americans through their school experience and just living here.

One example, noted elsewhere by NPR was jazz musician Benny Goodman, whose 100 birthday is now being celebrated. Besides his clarinet mastery, Goodman’s band was the first to bring in black musicians, including Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton and Charlie Christian, plus he used many arrangements by Fletcher Henderson. In short, Goodman immersed himself in American culture.

These days, maintaining tribalism is highly valued, and assimilation to American values is not… at least according to the liberal Gospel of NPR. The latest episode concerns finding a marriage partner of the correct diversity flavor [Weighing Ethnicity When Picking A Spouse, NPR, May 31, 2009].

Overall, interracial marriages are becoming more common in America, according to recent U.S. Census data. But those numbers mainly reflect the increase in black-white marriages. The same data show that since the 1990s, fewer American-born children in Asian and Latino families are marrying outside their ethnic group.

Take Jessica Nghiem, a UC-Berkeley student from Sacramento, Calif. While her parents are from Vietnam, Nghiem describes herself as thoroughly “Americanized.” In high school, she says, she dated “white and Latino guys.” But her current boyfriend is Asian, and Nghiem says both she and her family are very comfortable with that.

“I think my boyfriend gets brownie points because he does speak Vietnamese,” Nghiem says. “And my parents can speak to him in a different language. So I think they’re much more accepting. I definitely got a better response with a Vietnamese guy than, for example, a white guy or a Hispanic guy, you know?”

Nghiem’s friend and fellow student, Elaine Ly, has had a somewhat different experience. Her parents are ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. Her boyfriend is Asian, but he’s Mien, descended from refugees in the Laotian highlands. And Elaine’s parents have issues with that.

“They come to me and say, ‘How come you didn’t find a Chinese boy or something?’ ” Ly says. [...]

None of this surprises Daniel Lichter, a Cornell University sociologist who studies interracial marriage patterns. Lichter says America’s growing immigrant population gives today’s children of immigrants more choices when picking a partner.

So! Another advantage of excessively multicultural immigration is more opportunity for young people to choose a marriage partner of their precise tribe! Note how the ethnic Chinese family rejected the Mien boyfriend — Asian, but not the correct variety.

Anything to avoid assimilation, except for the money part. Immigrants like the money well enough.

As an antidote to multicultural silliness, here’s son-of-immigrants Benny Goodman and his orchestra, playing Sing Sing Sing from Hollywood Hotel. The official website has some tunes as well.

Things were hopping in Aloha, Oregon, a southwest suburb of Portland, on Memorial Day:

For most folks it’s not a dilemma. Given a choice between “a day without sunshine” and a day without jail time, most people will skip the orange juice and stay out of jail.

But Raibin Raof Osman isn’t most people. The 20-year-old Aloha man had a sleep-over at the Washington County Jail on Memorial Day after calling 9-1-1 to complain that McDonald’s left out a box of orange juice from his drive-thru order.

Osman was booked Monday night on accusations of improper use of 9-1-1. He bailed out Tuesday. The offense is a Class B misdemeanor punishable in Oregon by up to six months in jail and a fine of $2,500.

(Aloha man calls 9-1-1 over botched fast-food order by John Snell, The Oregonian, Wednesday May 27, 2009)

Despite his farcical use of 9-1-1, I’ll guess that Osman could have avoided the slammer if he hadn’t tried to argue civics with the sheriff’s deputy who showed up. (See the article for point-counterpoint details.) Law enforcement’s exasperation is evident in a quote from sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. David Thompson:

“The deputy basically said, ‘You can’t use 9-1-1 for that reason,’” Thompson explained. “It’s not an emergency. (Osman) said he didn’t know how to get the non-emergency number. The guy had a Blackberry. He could have dialed 4-1-1 or got it off the Internet. There are payphones all over the parking lot, with phonebooks hanging from them.”

This has something to do with immigration? Well, yes. The article makes clear that at least some in Osman’s family aren’t native speakers of English, and a glance at Osman’s winning mug shot accompanying the article reinforces this.

But to get the picture of immigrant versus immigrant, you need to listen to the audio clip of the 9-1-1 call, available with the linked article. By this I really mean both 9-1-1 calls, there in the one clip: Osman’s call is followed by a call from McDonald’s employee Helen Velasquez, whose English is fluent but with the sing-songy rhythm and intonation characteristic of native Spanish-speakers.

The 9-1-1 dispatcher had to have Osman spell his last name several times. Not so with Velasquez, who didn’t have to spell hers at all. Oregon dispatchers apparently get lots of practice with Hispanic names, which won’t surprise our friends at Oregonians for Immigration Reform.

Velasquez saw fit to dial 9-1-1 after about a half hour’s harassment from Osman and crew, which would seem to take the edge off her call’s emergency status. She stoutly denied to the 9-1-1 dispatcher that there had been any food larceny on McDonald’s part.

Evidently, then, the missing orange juice isn’t a slam-dunk fact, so l’affaire Osman-Velasquez boils down to another case of he-said/she-said. But a reader named “withoutpity” admirably summarized the larger significance of the dispute with an online comment on 05/27/09 at 4:28 p.m.:

The Democratic party should be welcoming Osman with open arms. He passed the first vital test which is that all issues in life require governmental intervention.

In some ways the most deplorable result in the ’08 election cycle was the achievement by the despicable Lindsey Graham (Scalawag-SC) of a second Senate term.

This was the Lindsey Graham who burbled

I can’t tell you how impressed I am with Senator Kennedy…

while conniving with that wicked old man to try and force through the 2006 Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration Bill.

The tragedy is, Graham had fine patriotic opponents both at the Primary and General Election levels. Chuck Baldwin was quite right in his scathing denunciation of South Carolina’s purportedly “Conservative” leadership.

Just how much damage Graham is willing to do was demonstrated in the case of the promising Sotomayor controvery by his appearance yesterday in Fox News Sunday. There he sneered at those who question Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s ethnocentrism, let her off the hook of being a racist, and proposed a way for to her to defuse the charge:

Asked if he agreed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh that Sotomayor is a racist, the South Carolina Republican said he disagreed.
No, they interject themselves in the debate. They have got an audience to entertain and Newt is a political commentator. I’m a United States senator,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace. “I don’t think she’s a racist…
“What she said was that based on her life experiences she thought that a Latina woman, somebody with her background, would be a better judge than a guy like me, a white guy from South Carolina. It is troubling,” Graham said. “It’s inappropriate and I hope she will apologize.”

Graham: Sotomayor not racist, but apology expected
By Kevin Bogardus The Hill Posted: 05/31/09 10:39 AM [ET]

(This is the same Lindsey Graham to so brutally tortured then Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alioto over his (apparently completely passive) membership of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (which was merely opposed to the admission of women and to affirmative action) at his hearing that Mrs. Alioto left the hearing in tears

GRAHAM: …And some quotes were shown, from people who did write for this organization, that you disavowed. Do you remember that exchange?
ALITO: I disavow them. I deplore them. They represent things that I have always stood against and I can’t express too strongly…
GRAHAM: If you don’t mind the suspicious nature that I have is that you may be saying that because you want to get on the Supreme Court; that you’re disavowing this now because it doesn’t look good.
And really what I would look at to believe you’re not — and I’m going to be very honest with you — is: How have you lived your life? Are you really a closet bigot?
ALITO: I’m not any kind of a bigot, I’m not.

(Second Round of Graham Questioning Judge Alioto - Graham website.

Will we see a similar Graham/Sotomayor performance? Of course not. Brown people are for fawning over.

In the Obama era, South Carolina’s Republicans cannot afford Graham.

Generally, the weekend performance of the GOP talking heads on the Sotomayor nomination underlined the wisdom of Sam Francis’ description: the Stupid Party. Apart from stumbling around on the “racism” question (which they would rechristen “ethnocentrism” if they had any brains) none seemed to raise the equally explosive and more deadly issue of Sotomayor’s dislike of gun ownership. Needless to say, this has been vigorously ignored by the MSM – Google News has only 32 news articles on “Sotomayor and Guns” while there are over 13,400 simply on her nomination. But there are enough on the Conservative food chain for the Senator’s staffs to have briefed them – for instance here and here.

Not surprisingly in the light of Chick Baldwin’s remarks above on their General Election bumbling, the National Rifle Association is still fence-sitting.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the NRA, said the group has “serious concerns” about Judge Sotomayor but isn’t necessarily opposing her nomination… “If there are satisfactory answers to the questions, then we’ll move on,” Mr. Arulanandam said.

Gun Advocates See Reason to Be Wary of Nominee By Gary Fields The Wall Street Journal May 30 2009

There seems to be some degenerative ailment which strikes the lead 501(c)3s in controversial areas (hint! ).