Scalia

I have lost all respect for Antonin Scalia. I used to think he was a smart, principled judge with the wrong principles. Now I think he’s just a jerk. On 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl got him talking about torture and whether it violated the Constitution. He said, as he always says about issues he doesn’t want to deal with, “There’s nothing in the Constitution about torture,” thereby absolving him from declaring the practice unconstitutional and getting crosswise with his friends in the Bush Administration. Stahl pointed out that there’s a prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

“Ah!” he says, “That applies to punishment. Torture to extract information is not punishment.”

Bullshit! You say to the person being tortured, “Tell us the information or we’ll torture you.” If that’s not punishment, nothing is. It just shows the lengths to which he’ll go to advance his conservative philosophy.

It’s reminiscent of “Depends on the what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

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