But twisting the law to put your candidate into office, making decisions based on religion instead of the law, and having a view that no rights exist unless explicitly guaranteed in 1786, well, that's all great.

Of course the view shared by Gonzales and his GOP allies on the Supreme Court is that only someone with really good attorneys and lots of money can really be sure of having their "rights" respected.

I guess that they didn't teach Alberto back in Texas that empathy means understanding what feels good for other people, not for feels good for one's self....

has no idea what the word means. Our president, rightly I think, wants justices that can understand where people are coming from, that's all. He doesn't want bleeding hearts. But empathy? It seems like a desirous quality for the Supremes to me.

I'm surprised A. Gonzales was able to recall his position on something. We know Obama is on the right track with this criteria if Alberto Gonzales is troubled by it.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/

"I don't recall"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIgbJSrIvWc

Alberto Gonzalez dangerously declares to the Senate Judiciary Committe that not all individuals in the United States are Constitutionally guaranteed the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Arlen Specter is dumbfounded.

See or hear Senator Leahy testify before the Armed Services Committee on the restoration of Habeas Corpus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY5BwMjpUOI

DARPA:MIT CSAIL [pdf]

1.5.1 Learning and memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.5.4 Decision making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5.2.2 Decision-making agent system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Intelligence without reason- ►iiit.ac.in [PDF]

RA Brooks - Artificial intelligence: critical concepts, 1991 - books.google.com

... by today's standards) and a new comprehensive architecture (the ... INTELLIGENCE WITHOUT

REASON playing program, did worry about keeping things on a human timescale

Empathy is a mommy emotion, not a daddy emotion. Conservatives like daddies.

Empathy sides with the little guy, not with big corporations. Conservatives like big corporations.

Empathy is an emotion that brings us together, not one that draws strong boundaries between us. Conservatives like strong boundaries between "us" and "them."

Empathy is about looking out for the other guy, not just yourself. Conservatives believe in looking out only for yourself.

Empathy favors those in an inferior position, not a superior position. Conservatives like those in superior positions.

Empathy promotes understanding rather than obedience. Conservatives like obedience.

Empathy is submissive rather than dominant. Conservatives like to be dominant.

For conservatives, empathy is code for everything they believe is wrong with humanity: soft, weak, fuzzy, undisciplined, misdirected. For conservatives, very few traits could be worse than empathy, especially in a "dispassionate" judge. And especially when it comes to protecting their inhuman corporate buds.

I will never understand why we count as experts those who have been complete failures at their jobs. It's the same thing with sports. One of ESPN's baseball "experts" was a general manager who was responsible for building a last-place team with one of the highest payrolls available. I cringe every time I hear him comment on a personnel move. If the guy knew what he was doing, he would still have his job. How long was Gonzales the AG? Was it more than a couple of years before he had to step down in disgrace? Why would anyone in any venue seek his opinion on anything related to the justice or judicial department? At least my guy on ESPN sounds like he knows what he's talking about. As another poster pointed out, Gonzales' "feels good" response is idiotic and demonstrates that he doesn't even know what empathy means.

Because they're completely incapable of experiencing it. In fact, they tried, beginning with Mr. Reagan ("homeless people are homeless because they want to be"), to build a world in which the ability to be empathetic - to comprehend and care about the suffering and struggles of others; to see others as human beings essentially the same as yourself, was seen as a defect. How else could Berto and Bush have signed so many execution warrants in Texas without ever seriously considering clemency for any of them?

Of course these people lost the empathetic part of their personalities due to angry/overly-punishing/incompetent/temperamental parents and/or siblings who knocked it out of them verbally or physically.

A BIG side effect to the inability to be empathetic is the inability to read other people, which leaves you vulnerable to misreading others, being completely unable to judge who your friends really are, and largely unable to tell whom you should trust. The result is paranoia coupled with a huge need to control the people around you.

Sound like anything or anyone we've seen lately?

The most ridiculous thing about this anti-empathy attack is that anyone who is familiar with the history of the Supreme Court knows that justices make decisions based on plenty of considerations that go beyond some sterile view of what "the law" is. Justices are not computers in which you input a set of facts and they spit out some conclusion.

As much as conservatives hate it (especially when decisions go against their ideology) the Supreme Court does, and must, look at the consequences of their decisions and make pragmatic policy decisions based on what they believe is best for the country. Sure, it doesn't sound right to say that the justices are making policy decisions, but that's the way it is and always has been with the Supreme Court.

The real reason conservatives hate the idea of the empathy criterion is that it means that Obama wants to appoint a judge who is looking out for the broad interests of the people and not of the business class. For the first 150 years of the court's existence it was pretty much full of pro-business at any cost justices (think Lochner). For the past 70 years there has been a battle between justices who think that the US is a profit maximizing machine and those who think it should be a republic conducive to personal liberty. Conservatives want an empathetic justice too, as long as that justice empathizes with profits (see all the cases in which either Scalia, Roberts or Thomas decide to dilute personal liberties because upholding these liberties would open up businesses and governments to too much financial liability).