Reuters is reporting that the Supreme Court has overturned appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor’s ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, a case in which white firefighters from New Haven, Connecticut claimed they were unfairly denied promotions because of their race.  The high court ruled in favor of the firefighters by a 5-4 vote.

Though she was one member of a three-judge panel that affirmed a lower court ruling, this reversal of Sotomayor will likely raise new questions in her confirmation process as President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers, wife of Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), has pled guilty to a federal felony charge of conspiracy to commit bribery in the FBI’s investigation of Synagro Technologies.  Conyers faces up to five years in prison.

An earlier Detroit Free Press article reported that businessmen Rayford and Lennie Jackson admitted to U.S. Attorneys that they had paid Conyers thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for her support of a $1.2-billion city contract with Synagro.

A complete overview of the investigation can be found HERE.

Despite being a major player in the mortgage meltdown, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), is at it again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Frank and fellow Democrat Anthony Weiner are pushing the already-troubled Federal National Mortgage Association (”Fannie Mae”) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (”Freddie Mac”) to relax the standards for mortgages on condo loans. According to the WSJ article:

Facing allegations of voter fraud in 14 states and accusations of financial mismanagement, left wing activist group ACORN has changed its name to “Community Organizations International.” According to a recent Washington Examiner article:

You know you’re screwing things up when your biggest cheerleaders — or at least the enemies of your enemies — start criticizing you. In the clip below, the Bush-hating host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” challenges President Obama to be more than just an attention-grabbing empty suit. In fact, he even suggests Obama be a bit more like former president George W. Bush!

This isn’t to say that AudacityWatch agrees with Maher’s ideas and philosophy — far from it — but at least we’re getting one more celebri-pundit admission that the “emperor” has no clothes — that the “messiah” might just be a simple “mess.”

h/t: The Hollywood Reporter

The old saying goes, “sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut.”

In this case, MSNBC’s usually-genuflecting reporters seem to tiptoe close to criticizing President Obama, though they throw in the obligatory “vast right-wing conspiracy” to balance things out. While Obama’s overreliance on TOTUS (TelePrompTer of the United States) is nothing new, this brief clip makes for a bit of entertaining viewing — if only to give hope that the media might someday admit that “the emperor has no clothes.”

Back in March, AudacityWatch pointed out a DC Examiner article that exposed “a little-noticed move [by] the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, [that] approved a measure that would… go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation… would impose government controls on the pay of all employees… of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. [I]t would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.”

Now, President Obama is taking the next step in this plan to give government control over people’s paychecks.  According to a June 5 article in the Wall Street Journal:

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation will be bringing Glenn Beck to Seattle for “Take the Field with Glenn Beck” on September 26th at Safeco Field. Tickets go on sale June 12th and you can find more information at www.GlennBeckEFF.com.

Senator McCain’s and Senator Clinton’s election campaign arguments that Barack Obama lacks the knowledge and experience to be Commander-in-Chief are proving to be more and more true every day. Not only is President Obama showing great naiveté in his international relations, but he doesn’t even know what resources he has at his disposal. Can we really trust the decisions of a president who first learns about a U.S. government intelligence agency at a burger joint?

Here is the transcript from Politico.com:

The oath that every Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States must take reads as follows:

“I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.” – President Barack Obama; May 1, 2009 White House press conference

“We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” – (then-candidate) Barack Obama; July 17, 2007 Planned Parenthood conference

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” - Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama nominee to the US Supreme Court; 2001 lecture at UC Berkeley, addressing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s quote that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.”

UPDATE
The Associated Press is reporting that, among Judge Sotomayor’s comments in the aforementioned 2001 lecture, she also said the following: “Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.”

Not only is Judge Sotomayor saying that her gender, race and upbringing would influence her decision-making, but that they would also affect the FACTS that she CHOOSES to see.

In 2005, explaining his vote against the now-Chief Justice Roberts, then-senator Obama said that 95% of court cases are straightforward law issues, but in “those 5 percent of hard cases, [the] legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision” and “the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.”

Perhaps someone should send both President Obama and Judge Sotomayor a sculpture of blindfolded Lady Justice and her scales for their offices.