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I don't know what to make of the Supreme Court ruling overturning the decision by the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to throw out tests given to firefighters because not enough blacks scored high enough. Several blacks did rather well among the 56 firemen who passed, but only nineteen promotions were available, and most of the firemen who scored well enough for promotions were white. So the test was thrown out. But the test was impartial, and it was designed by an outside firm that probably had no idea of the new Haven fire department's demographics, so the conservative majority's reinstatement of the tests was the correct decision, right?

Well, not if you listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who sympathized with the white firemen but said they had "no vested rights" to be promoted, or Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, who called the ruling in this case "cramped and wrong."

So why was it wrong? That's what I want to know. The test might have been flawed, the pool of applicants might have titled too much in favor of one racial group. . . . I can't get a handle on it because much of the attention on this case focuses on the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who has been selected by President Obama to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. She was one of the judges who let the original decision by the city of New Haven stand in a lower court - based on procedure and, again, without explanation of the merits of the case. Sotomayor was doing exactly what a judge should do - she based her decision on restraint and precedence. Instead, right-wing critics have carped on her decision because she discriminated against white firefighters and therefore has racist attitudes towards Anglos. Never mind that one of the plaintiffs was Hispanic, like Sotomayor, and one of her colleagues, Judge Jose Cabranes - a Hispanic who almost got the Supreme Court seat that went to Stephen Breyer - criticized her decision on the merits of the case.

Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee that will decide Sotomayor's appointment have expressed concern over work she did for a Puerto Rican rights group. Because it's a liberal activist organization? No, probably because it's Puerto Rican. Sotomayor has been under fire for saying that she has an advantage of being a "wise Latina" with better experience in some cases. But white male Republicans are ticked off with her not because she's wise. It's because she's a Latina. (Rush Limbaugh dismissed her for belonging to an all-female legal group, accusing her of sexism as well as racism. Then he said something about her cleaning up the trash after the meanings.)

Expect Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Jeff Sessions to play up the Puerto Rican card and derail the Sotomayor nomination. Their respective states of Kentucky and Alabama are not known for having large Puerto Rican populations, so they have nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, we go from a thriller to a shiller - right after Michael Jackson's death, television pitchman Billy Mays, also fifty years old, died of a heart attack. Well, he was an overexcited type . . ..