If it were only a question of racial demographics, the GOP would actually have won a whole bunch of the 2008 races. Instead, the party lost on nearly every front -- senate races, house races, local governors and state reps -- for the simple reason that its candidates used a rhetoric and backed policies that is/are INSANE. Even my father -- an aging white man who has voted GOP in every election I can remember -- voted an entirely Dem ballot in November. In his language, he did so because the GOP is now the party of the rich, entitled kids who are using religious zealots to make themselves richer and steal from everybody else. Took him 25 years plus to see it (since really this has been going on since Reagan), but the GOP has lost ALL but the most extreme of it's own backers. It is basically now the party of fascism. Has very little to do with the growing portion of non-white voters in the US.

Thanks so much for the roundup on good grad speeches, although I'm slightly disappointed that DeGeneres' speech was your favorite, and not Ehrenreich's. What a call to arms! I'm not even a journalist, but I'm excited by her speech. Not an ounce of self-pity, just pure "get out there and DO it." Love it.

So this was an interesting essay about the role of empathy in decision-making from the perspective of neural anatomy. But from a legal standpoint (and for better or worse, our entire legal system operates from that standpoint), it's in no way permissible as a form of argumentation. What part of the brain our decision-making happens in has nothing to do with how judges make decisions or write precedent-making opinions. And what is Obama's team supposed to do with this information? Run a brain scan on every nominee?

While I'm with Obama in that I think empathy is important in a judge, there's a long, long tradition of skepticism around the role of emotion in legal decision-making that goes all the way back to Aristotle. In his treatise Rhetoric, which is a piece on how lawyers should go about making arguments in front of judges, he's very careful to warn against appealing to emotion to make a case, claiming that such tactics are about manipulation, and undermine proper rational thought. So while I'm with Obama in spirit (since his language is a code for sympathizing with the less powerful), and loathe the conservative critics of his recommendation here (since they're mostly invested in making it totally legal to screw the less powerful), I can appreciate where they're coming from.

Isn't empathy pretty as a legal descriptor? Empathy with whom? And how is it meant to operate as a legal standard? Are we to make legal decisions based on who we feel worse for? What happens if your empathy is for the guy trying to maximize profits because he's got two kids in private school and not for the worker getting screwed out of his health benefits, even if he's only 25 and in good health? Or for the guy who shoots a bunch of people because he was having a really bad time after he lost his job and his wife left him and took the kids and the dog? Do we let him off the hook because we empathize with the real and tangible problems he faces in his life? Just not clear how empathy helps us make fair, let alone progressive, legal decisions.

Mr Koppleman, you're a good reporter, please don't be sloppy in your writing, especially with such politically fraught material.

I assume you know that HIV is spread through blood contact (sex, transfusions) and is NOT AIRBORNE. So why on earth are you making the comparison btw HIV and Swine Flu? The two are not spread in the same way even remotely. And setting up air travel as the vehicle of transmission is irresponsible at best. Swine Flu has NOTHING to do with HIV. And using the Hot Zone, which is basically written as a fear-promoting, sensationalistic thriller rather than a thoughtful epidemiology of Ebola, as a source of information connecting the two just raises the fear level on the disease, something we don't need any help with at the moment.

Linking Swine Flu to HIV contributes to and reinforces racism and homophobia. I know you're just trying to point out how air travel means that viruses spread more quickly over the planet, but the problem is in the implied connection here that resides below your explicit argument. The linkage you've set up implies that the real problem is the vector of contagion -- gays and Mexican immigrants. No gays, no Mexicans, no bad diseases. Please -- is this really what passes as logic for you? And is that really the implication you want to set up?

Please be more thoughtful in your comparisons.

Hmmm, isn't that what they said about Jackie Robinson?

About the right era for ol' Dick, too. Least we know he was well-named.

just another comment that the writer needs to get over her hostility towards pregnant women and mothers. Look, I'm single and kidless in my mid30s, everyone I know has sprogged, and even though I get annoyed too, I really think it's going WAY too far to advocate kicking a pregnant woman in the belly.

I expect Broadsheet to avoid misogyny. This piece advocated it in physically violent terms. This column gets my WTF for the day.

Ms Berman, get over yourself. You come across as sorely lacking in anything remotely resembling the ability to understand someone else's experience of the world -- the very kind of person, in other words, who will one day have children, drag them to an intimate, romantic restaurant, and wreck the dinner of everyone around you. Develop some personal skills please. Or are you trying to audition for Rush Limbaugh's spot?