Asshole

Paul Krugman is looking for a word that describes a person who, "considers his mild discomfort the equivalent of torture, crippling injury, or death for other people."

He was referring to Alberto Gonzalez's suggestion that he's a "one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

The first word that popped into my mind is the title.

I'm sure that the Germans have a word for it though, since they invented the word Schadenfreude.

One commenter on Krugman's post references Hannah Arendt's, "Banality of Evil," though.