The Right's War on Judicial 'Empathy'

When Barack Obama talked about a new Supreme Court justice the other day, he mentioned "empathy" as a judicial quality he'd like to have in this nominee.

Conservatives were outraged—of course. 

This word, they claimed, was clearly code for all sorts of liberal, activist, socialist, inhumane and horrible ideas that this new (and as yet unidentified) new justice would inflict on all us innocent citizens out here in Middle America. 

Slate's Dahlia Litwick noticed on the noise on the Right and has responded. Her column, subtitled "The GOP's misguided and confused campaign against judicial empathy," is here. 

One of the highlight's of Litwick's piece: Sen. Jeff Sessions caught in his own Freudian slip: 

"I don't know what empathy means," the Alabama senator said.