It has only been one day since President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, but I'm already bored to tears by the endless parade of conservatives on my teevee telling me empathy is the worst character trait imaginable for a judge. Judges, we are told, should strictly Enforce The Law.

So what will conservatives say when Dick Cheney begs his judge to Ignore The Law which makes torture a crime, and instead show empathy for the absolute and all-consuming Fear of Terrorists that drove Cheney to Torture?

Since PapaDick and BabyDick are all over teevee these days, maybe someone could ask them.

Update 1: Glenn Greenwald writes,

Both Adam Serwer and Daniel Larison note the glaring, obvious hypocrisy in simultaneously insisting that "empathy" has no place in the law while protesting Sotomayor's decision in Ricci on the completely law-free ground that what happened to the white firefighters is so "unfair." 

As we all known, white men (like Cheney and Firefighters) have an exclusive entitlement to empathy.  Greenwald also catches Sam Alito playing the "empathy card" at his confirmation hearings:

when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, "You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country."

When I have cases involving children, I can't help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that's before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who's been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I've known and admire very greatly who've had disabilities, and I've watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn't think of what it's doing -- the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

COBURN: Thank you.

Impeach Sam Alito!

Update 2: Adam Serwer writes,

conservative justices on the court -- Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas are not emotionless robots able to interpret the law without bias or personal experience coloring their rulings. They don't lack empathy; they simply don't empathize with the people Obama or liberals might like them to. Conservatives want their justices to empathize with the religious, the unborn, and powerful corporate interests. Liberals want their justices to empathize with women and minorities, workers and the downtrodden.

For all the pearl-clutching horror coming from the right, the conservative legal movement has picked its plaintiffs carefully, with an eye toward catching the winds of public opinion through sympathetic plaintiffs such as Frank Ricci, the white firefighter who was denied a promotion, or Terri Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who sought to keep Schiavo on life support despite her husband's claim that she expressed a desire not to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Empathy is an important element of the conservative legal movement on both sides of the bench. Most recently, it's been conservatives who have been arguing for empathy for the architects and perpetrators of torture on the grounds that they broke the law ostensibly in the interest of the country, while liberals have called for rigidity in upholding laws against torture.

Update 3: OPEN LEFT EXCLUSIVE: PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT GENDERS AND ETHNICITIES VOTE DIFFERENTLY!!!!!

Update 4: Andy Borowitz nails it:

The Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor faces new hurdles today, in the form of pressure to block her confirmation from the powerful anti-empathy lobby.

H. Walker Ranston, executive director of the American Anti-Empathy League, said that his organization was going to "do a full-court press" to convince Republican senators to vote down Ms. Sotomayor.

"Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly made statements indicating that she has a human heart," Mr. Ranston said. "That is the last thing this Court needs."

The lobbyist said that his group's 50,000 members were "deeply disappointed" by the choice of the empathic Sotomayor, explaining, "We were really hoping for a sociopath."

Great idea - how about Dick Cheney?