"Today's narrow decision is likely to result in cutbacks on important protections for American families. It is less likely now that employers will conscientiously try to fulfill their obligations under this time-honored civil rights law. This is a cramped decision that threatens to erode these protections and to harm the efforts of state and local governments that want to build the most qualified workforces."

The liberal group People for the American Way agreed: "The court's ruling severely limits the ability of governments and private corporations to create a diverse workforce."

The court's more liberal members joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent which she read from the bench. "The white firefighters who scored high on New Haven's promotional exams understandably attract the court's sympathy," she said. "But they had no vested right to promotion."

Who has been the most polarizing new president of recent times? Richard Nixon? Ronald Reagan? George W. Bush?
No, that honor belongs to Barack Obama.

Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

Back in February, the government said that its $787 billion stimulus bill would create 3.5 million new jobs. This was at the very highest end of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) estimate of 1.2 to 3.6 million new jobs.

But even this high-end estimate of U.S. job creation is penny ante, when compared to a leaked memo from Gordon Brown, the British prime minister. He proposed a $2 trillion European stimulus plan that was supposedly going to create 19 million jobs. In other words, Europe can create a new job with just $105,000 of government spending per job, while the U.S. needs $219,000.

But all of this is just a pipe dream. Government spending does not cause a net increase in jobs over the long run; it costs jobs. Every dollar the government spends is either taxed or borrowed from the private sector, which means it "crowds out" private sector job creation. And because government spending is less efficient than private sector spending, the economy actually grows more slowly in the long run as the government gets bigger.