Frank Ricci Must Be Destroyed to Save Sotomayor?

The politics of personal destruction gets nastier.

You'd think having to take the City of New Haven, Conn., all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, after being denied a promotion that you otherwise qualified for -- except that you were the wrong skin color -- and then winning would be enough of a price to pay for one man.

But the Left isn't satisfied because the woman most responsible for this man's troubles, 2nd Dist. Circuit Judge Sonio Sotomayor, is a nominee for the Supreme Court. Despite the fact that she's got a pitiful record of more losses than wins with the high court, and has made questionable comments that create doubt that she is qualified, the Progressive Left wants her nomination to succeed. Of course.

So the word is going out to find any dirt possible on one Connecticut firefighter named Frank Ricci. It's the political version of "search and destroy."

WASHINGTON — Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci.

This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill.

"The whole business of getting Supreme Court nominees through the process has become bloodsport," said Gary Rose, a government and politics professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn.

On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

[SNIP]

No People for the American Way officials could be reached Friday to speak on the record about the press campaign.

"To go after so sympathetic a plaintiff as Frank Ricci . . . is a new low in the politics of personal destruction," said Roger Pilon, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. "If they were smart, they'd keep a low profile."

Apparently the American Way is now to destroy the reputations of people who stand in the way of the Left's effort to shred the Constitution and common sense.