Revised July 2

The Washington Post's Robert Barnes captures something Suits & Sentences missed, in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent in the case  Ricci v. DeStefano. Mr. Barnes observes there was a difference in words chosen for a script and the words chosen for a written dissent and, frankly, this is kind of bizarre.

As Suits & Sentences noted in original posting, Justice Ginsburg read from the bench Monday the following statement:

"Mr. Ricci and his fellow petitioners understandably attract the court's empathy."

This is the sentence, and the loaded word empathy, that Suits & Sentences originally noted. It was spelled out, right on the written script handed out to reporters. Which prompted the following, original posting:

Empathy is, of course, the very word President Barack Obama used in describing the quality he was looking for in a future Supreme Court justice. More to the point, though, empathy has become a code word among Obama's conservative critics including Newt Gingrich, the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter and others who insist that empathy = liberal.

So was Justice Ginsburg using a bit of rhetorical Aikido here and turning back upon the conservatives the power of their own loaded term? Suits & Sentences believes yes, yes she was.

An unhappy reader, Scoff, insisted that Ginsburg used the word sympathy. I looked again at the script: nope, empathy.  Now the strange part: I also looked again at the  dissent itself, and 'saw' the word empathy there as well. Not sympathy; empathy, just like on Ginsburg's script that she read from.

Re-prompted by Scoff, I now re-re-read the dissent and see, sure enough, Justice Ginsburg chose a different word for her official dissent than for the script she read from. The Post's interesting story picks up on this and other matters, while Suits & Sentences is left wondering not only what Justice Ginsburg was up to with her script but also how it is that an assumption can shape perception. In this case: the word emPATHY in one sentence is, how to put this, read over the word symPATHY in another, otherwise identical sentence.

We now return you to your original post.

It appears, meanwhile, that the Heritage Foundation won the quick-reaction race Monday morning, as the conservative think tank's e-mail commentary on the court's decision arrived at 10:26 a.m. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, weighed in with a slap at court nominee Sonia Sotomayor at 10:40, and at 10:50 Morrison & Foerster attorney Daniel Westman offered his analysis. By 11:25 a.m., the Cato Institute joined the fray.

Modified July 2

And then there was the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which organized live commentary along with the National Women's Law Center through a call-in news conference. Problem was, the 800 telephone number originally offered on the press release directed callers to yet another number for "live talk with exciting people." 

In the interest of fully reporting the story, Suits & Sentences called the referred-to number, and heard the following message:

"Hey there, sexy guy. Welcome to an exciting new way to go live with hot, horny girls..."

At which, having gotten the point, Suits & Sentences hung up and called the corrected number that had been subsequently sent out. Substantively, Center Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger called the court's Ricci decision "deeply disappointing" and contended it would make it "more difficult for women and minorities compete fairly" for jobs.

And, on Thursday, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund advised Suits & Sentences that it was "solely responsible for the typographical error and sincerely regrets the confusion."