...screaming his head off demanding Alito's immediate resignation for letting ethnic bias get in the way of a sober, white anglo-saxon totally objective interpretation of the law?

Huh? Why not? What's holding the cracker douchebag back?

You are convinced that "empathy" and "sympathy" all the sudden makes a judge a guy who lets the guilty go free because he feels sorry for them.

You're missing the entire point of what Obama is getting at, but this is not surprising.

The reason I brought up the Wannsee Conference is because there was a group of people with no apparent empathy cooly and with calucuation arranging for the "resettlement" of millions. Approaching it all in a very logical, professional manner bereft of human decency.

Obama isn't asking for judges who can't critically think and be empathetic at the same time, which is what your posts consistently fail to grasp. Justice must be tempered, or it morphs into tyranny very fast. All you have to do is look at the arrogant certainty of Scalia who insists that he's right when he embraces ideas that Mussolini would pat him on the back for.

The lack of empathy is a sure sign of evil.

I did not call you a Nazi.

I just was pointing out that your intense desire for the legal system to be berift of empathy indicates that you'd fit in fine with a dispassionate discussion of how to deal with "problems" as they did at the Wannsee Conference.

Do you get the picture now?

On empathy:

You know, I think you would have blended into the crowd at the Wannsee Conference splendidly.

You know, people were telling these guys during the rule of the malassministration of the deserting coward that all the stomping on the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta was a bad idea, but idiots like Goldberg and Malkin would not listen.

Now, a black man is coming for them, and they're all afeared!

Idiots.

Do these people not understand ANYTHING about how and why this nation was founded?

No.

...another simple answer to a simple question.

Walter's great post touching on what pre WWII "appeasement" was really about inspired me to put this together.

Fascism has had a serious brand problem since WWII. The German version of fascism has tainted it with the Holocaust.

Fascism didn't start out this way originally; the Italian version featured thugs beating up on political opponents, sure, and all sorts of alliances between corporate big shots and Mussolini's inner circle. Yeah, there was the entire militarism thing, but that was cool with the capitalist types; profits are profits, after all, and profits from arms sales are always healthy.

When Germany's fascist movement picked up steam, it wasn't any cause for alarm; it was felt that a firm alliance could be forged with the Nazis as easily as it was forged with Mussolini's Fascists. The thing is though, the European capitalist establishment didn't know that the Nazis really meant all that anti-semitism stuff. The ruling elites DID like the hatred of the communists and socialists, though, which is why they so enthusiastically supported Hitler. Giving away chunks of Czechosolvakia was a small price to pay to keep the feared Bolsheviks at bay.

The problem was that the elites in Britain and France got the word from their German counterparts too late: "it's a trap!" Kristallnacht happened; the German capitalists discovered they were in nearly as much trouble as the Trade Unions they hated. The Nazis were calling the shots, not them.

So, Britain and France (both ruled by conservative regimes) discovered that the attack dog they thought they were training to go after Stalin was inclined to go after them, instead.

Consequently "appeasement" is not quite the creature that our right wingers here would hope for us to take it as; the notion was created after WWII as a cautionary tale for dealing with the remaining totalitarian menace that Hitler failed to eliminate and indeed made stronger than ever.

Needless to say, applying it to the current situation in Gaza as a rationale to slaughter Palestinians to stop "terrorist" Hamas is just another rhetorical diversion from the real issues.

You know, if anyone has no idea what a mensch is, they could do infinitely worse than to see you as ane example of one.

I'm consistently informed, entertained, and given hope by your posts, that there are people who REALLY GET what is going on right now and are unafraid to speak out.

Now, to other business:

I think that a certain senator from California is getting the message (in spite of the apology by Obama, which I'm sure was offered up to give her a chance to save face) that there are consequences for rolling over and looking the other way at utterly illegal and immoral actions by the current maladminstration.

This applies to a certain senator from West Virgina as well.

I think it's absolutely no mistake that a certain senator from Oregon was informed, but not the two pathetic excuses for oversight alluded to above.

How about the hilarity of right wingers claiming that Nazis were "leftists" because the full name was National Socialist German Workers' Party?

These guys do not know a marketing term when they see one. The Nazis were about as "socialist" as the German Democratic Republic was "democratic."

A: Because Neville Chamberlain is the ultimate personification of liberalism at its most flagrant, and he DID try to sate the appetite of a voracious, murderous monster.

OK, anyone with a few 20th century history classes can probably figure out what the problem with this ridiculous statement is.

Hint: Neville Chamberlain was succeeded by a member of his own political party.

That so many of those so enthusasitic about war have never been in one, or trained to be in one.

See Cheney, Richard. Or just about ANY neocon.