The famous firefighter: Conflict is coming

There's a battle brewing that will probably last all week. It's over one person set to speak against Sonia Sotomayor.

Frank Ricci is a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter, who is one of the GOP's showcase witnesses on Thursday. His reverse-discrimination suit against the city of New Haven was rejected by a three-judge appeals court panel that included Sotomayor.

Liberal groups and bloggers are noting that Ricci, who has dyslexia, got his firefighting job in New Haven "by claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects Americans from discrimination over disabilities."

Marge Baker, People for the American Way's vice president, says: "I don't think Mr. Ricci thought that his being hired was a case of reverse discrimination against those who weren't disabled ... You can't have it both ways; these laws can't be good when you use them to protect yourself and bad when they're used to protect someone else."

Republicans and conservatives are calling this a smear campaign. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said: "it is beneath both contempt and the dignity that this process demands." Conservative bloggers and at least one conservative group, the Judicial Confirmation Network, are trying to rally conservatives behind Ricci.

"Sotomayor's liberal interest group supporters have launched an attack campaign to intimidate and smear him," the group said in an e-mail to its supporters. "They have chosen the wrong target. People who run into burning buildings to save others do not frighten easily."

Of course, Republicans referred to Ricci several times during their opening statements, using his case as an example of what they called Sotomayor's tendency to favor one race over another. Said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee: "It seems to me that in Ricci, Judge Sotomayor's empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against another."

-Jesse J. Holland, AP reporter, Supreme Court