On This Week with Christiane Amanpour, the impressive and intelligent Gov. Martin O'Malley goes up against the weaselly Sen. Jeff Sessions in a discussion of what can actually be done to help the economy. And of course, the biggest problem is that there is no real debt crisis. It's a high-stakes game in which the Republicans were pushing their spending-cut agenda from one end, and a Democratic president and leadership on the other who thought they could work the situation to their own political advantage.

And then there's we the people, caught in the middle of this mess:

AMANPOUR: And so a clear lack of faith in Washington's political ability to make real economic progress. With me to discuss whether the parties can come together on anything, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, and in Alabama, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Budget Committee.

Gentlemen, thank you very much, indeed, for joining me. Let me first ask you, you heard from John Chambers now, still categoric that this downgrade should happen. Do you think it's justified? And how do you think the parties -- you and, for instance, Senator Sessions, in terms of parties -- are going to get together to solve this?

O'MALLEY: I don't think it's justified, in terms of when you look at the math here. They made a $2 trillion mistake. The other rating agencies did not downgrade the U.S. debt because they did not make that $2 trillion mistake.

But one has to find understandable their pessimism about our inability to come together on the most important issue facing our country, which is, how do we create jobs? We need a balanced approach.

And the extremism, the Tea Party obstructionism here in Washington, is keeping us from restoring that balanced approach that America has always used -- of investing in the future, investing in job creation, and also being fiscally responsible at the same time.

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It doesn't matter if your actions are extreme, like the continuing policies of the Republican caucus. It's more important to chastise any public official who accurately uses the term. And that's the strange situation we find ourselves in with the handmaidens of the national media. On This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Sen. Chuck Schumer is put under the microscope for calling a spade a spade. Tsk!

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said he doesn't regret reporters overhearing him telling Democratic colleagues that Republican budget cuts should be painted as "extreme."

Schumer and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., sparred on just where the Tea Party political movement stood in relationship to the American people, in an exclusive political debate on "This Week."

Schumer stood by the remarks he made when he was apparently unaware his microphone was open to reporters.

"I have no problem with reporters hearing that," Schumer told anchor Christiane Amanpour. "I said a few hours before [the call] on the floor of the Senate. I've said it on this show. The Tea Party is the group standing in the way. They are extreme," he insisted.

"Any group that says you don't cut oil subsidies to companies making billions and billions of dollars – subsidies that were passed when the price of oil was $17 to encourage production, and now the price is over one-hundred [dollars], and at the same time says: cut student aid to help qualified students go to college. Yeah, I believe they're extreme."

Sessions, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, insisted the Tea Party was part of the mainstream of American political culture. "Millions of Americans participate in the tea parties, tens of millions of Americans support and believe what they're saying, and they are right, fundamentally," he said.

Well, we already know Alabama ranks near the bottom in education, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Jeff Sessions can't count!

"Maybe they don't understand all the realities of Washington politics," Sessions ceded, "but, fundamentally, they know this country is on a path to fiscal disaster," he said, chopping the air with his hand for emphasis.

"This Democratic leadership proposes nothing but to attack the people who are trying to get this country on the right course," Sessions said.

Amanpour asked if he thought there would be a government shutdown.

"I hope not," Sessions said. "I doubt there will be shutdown."

On that conference call earlier in the week, Schumer said, "I always use the word extreme, that is what the caucus instructed me to do the other week -- extreme cuts and all these riders. And, uh, Boehner's in a box. But if he supports the Tea Party there's going to inevitably [be] a shutdown."

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"Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another." -- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama

I was struck by this key sentence in Sessions' opening remarks Monday in the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, especially because he presented it as the essential logic behind their opposition to Sotomayor -- their abiding fear that when she sits on the court, she'll be ruling against every white man who crosses her path.

We know this, according to their logic, because she is Latino -- and because she emphasizes her "empathy" for other Latinos, she will be prejudiced against any non-Latinos in her courtroom.

It is, as logic goes, about as obviously faulty as syllogisms get. Normal human empathy is not exclusive -- that is, our ability to feel empathy for one party does not necessarily exclude empathy for another party (or moreover, in Sessions' formulation, necessitate an animus to any other party). Being empathetic typically means the ability to place oneself in another person's shoes regardless of background. Identifying closely with one group at the exclusion of another typically is the antithesis of empathy.

What Sessions is describing is not empathy but rather the crude tribalism that underscores and animates most racist belief systems, and has done so since time immemorial. It is, essentially, an almost astonishing confession to being racist on Sessions' part.

And it animates not just Sessions but nearly the whole of movement conservatism and the Republican Party. If you were to poll Republican senators this week and ask them if they agreed with Sessions' "logic," I'd wager the numbers would be in the vicinity of 90 percent.

Nor is it just the senators. Look at Pat Buchanan yesterday, and Rush Limbaugh every day. The same core belief -- that empathy for Latinos, or black people, or any nonwhite, equals prejudice against whites -- indeed animates nearly the entirety of the conservative movement. I'd like to find a single conservative who would repudiate Sessions' formula. I bet I won't.

Rachel Maddow provided an ample survey of how bad it is out there last night. She was especially appalled by his column calling for Republicans to indulge in nakedly racial appeals to gain the sympathy of white voters -- though of course, for Buchanan, this is nothing particularly new. Back in 1989, he was arguing to the GOP to gradually adopt David Duke's positions at the time. And you know what? They did.

Maddow says Buchanan will be on her show to explain himself tonight. That should be entertaining. She won't need to ask Buchanan if he agrees with Sessions -- I think we already know the answer.

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Sen. Jeff Sessions' opening salvo against Sonia Sotomayor today was a classic right-wing exercise in obliviousness:

I feel we've reached a fork in the road, I think, and there are stark differences. I want to be clear. I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who is not fully committed to fairness and impartiality toward every person who appears before them.

And I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of or against parties before the court.

In my view such a philosophy is disqualified. Such an approach to judging means that the umpire calling the game is not neutral, but instead feels empowered to favor one team over another. Call it empathy, call it prejudice, or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law. In truth it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom.

... That is, of course, the logical flaw in the empathy standard. Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.

Aside from the dubious logic behind that last assertion -- it is, in fact, a highly revealing formulation -- the proof is always in the pudding, isn't it? One can speak high-flown phrases about color-blindness, but the test is how one actually conducts themselves both in the courtroom and in private.

And on that count, Jeff Sessions is probably one of the last people to be flinging about accusations of prejudice. The irony is, well, rich.

Steve Benen has the details:

As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama, Sessions' most notable effort was prosecuting three civil rights workers, including a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., on trumped up charges of voter fraud.

Also during his illustrious career in Alabama, Sessions called the NAACP "un-American" because it, among other groups, "forced civil rights down the throats of people." A former career Justice Department official who worked with Sessions recalled an instance when he referred to a white attorney as a "disgrace to his race" for litigating voting rights cases on behalf of African Americans. Sessions later acknowledged having made many of the controversial remarks attributed to him, but claimed to have been joking.