Interesting and rather rich. You site 3 branches of the military and one law enforcement agency not typically what people think of when they consider government bureaucracies; however a few points to consider:

1) All these organizations are hardly examples of bureaucracies making good decisions. If anything they are a testament to the fact that good individuals can compensate for bureaucratic inertia.

2) The function of these organizations is to conduct activities that quite frankly any sane individual hopes we will never have to engage in. As such they represent a putting aside of resources to meet a social or societal contingency not an individual one. As they will always have to be provided by the Government they are necessary to its core functions protecting liberty (the military) and Individual rights(law enforcement). This makes these organizations necessary evils. Thank god we have good people in them.

3) What you are essentially saying is you trust a government bureaucracy rather than a private one to act as a gatekeeper to you access to healthcare. Leaving aside the fact that we could dispense with both and probably have a much better and more efficient Health Care system. A private health care insurance firms operate in a market place and is in competition with other firms, since it is in competition it must differentiate itself from those firms to be successful in Health Care this typically means providing superior customer service to the individual. This is why most Americans are happy with there Health Care insurance. The government does not have to compete for it to collect money, and doesn’t have to be efficient in dispersing or tracking money. It is in effect a monopoly and all monopolies are bad for the consumer.

4) Multiple private firms means that if one is making poor decisions you can change to another which offers better customer service, more services etc. There will be little or no recourse with a government run bureaucracy.

5) Finally there are remediation available to someone who is treated unfairly by a private firm either through direct regulation by the government or via tort law. It is virtually impossible to hold governments accountable with tort law and they typically do a lousy job of regulating themselves.

Actually, Rush was correct. While there was a 5-4 decision in favor of Ricci. Even the dissent acknowledged that there were important constitutional considerations and so the Appellate Court erred when it issued a summary judgment for the respondent. The disagreement was on the role of Title VII. The dissent contends that disparate impact is more important that the prohibition against making raced based decisions in hiring. The Majority contends that there must be some bona fide belief that a disparate impact has occurred rather than just the fear of a lawsuit. Realistically, while I agree with the Majority and I am happy with the result. In answer to Snacky hardly think it created a new law. In fact as Scalia points out in his concurrence all that really happened is the court punted the constitutional question i.e. does Title VII violate the XIV amendment down the road.

“Actually, Moogoo, it was 57 states . . . sometimes that irony thing IS perfect.”

No, in DohBama’s derelict mind it was ‘58′ if you ‘count’ the ‘one to go’. lol

Actually, Moogoo, it was 57 states . . . sometimes that irony thing IS perfect.

That’s correct. The winner of the first vote at the Secret Liberal Enclave was Carmen Miranda. We were all set to go home and barbeque up some fetuses when somebody accessed Wikipedia on their MacBook and informed us that Ms. Miranda has been dead for over fifty years. So we went with Sotomayor.

1. The Court reached its decision by creating new law: It created a new standard — a “strong basis in evidence” of the success of a disparate effect lawsuit is now required.

2. There’s no way that Sotomayor could have done the same as an appellate judge: they interpret, not create law.

3. The Court’s reasoning was based nearly entirely on a reading of the facts that was different from the trial court; this is why the decision was ~90 pages. The case was reviewed “de novo”.

4. There’s no way that Sotomayor could have done the same as an appellate judge: they’re required to give deference to a trial court’s findings of fact.

There’s not a lower court judge in the land who hasn’t been reversed at some point or other. Why do you think that disqualifies a nominee?