The new issue of First Things is on newsstands, and the free article this month—available even to non-subscribers, if you can believe that such people exist—is Hadley Arkes’ powerful study of empathy and the rule of law:

What President Obama offers in the search for empathy is not a wider sensibility, alert to the sufferings of humans wherever they can be found. Nor is it the maudlin sentiment of the soft-hearted. It is merely the will to power, hiding behind banter as facile as it is false.

Worth a read anytime, but particularly now as the Sotomayor confirmation hearings get underway.