1115.org

Antonin Gregory Scalia, Justice of the Supreme Court, let fly on The BBC’s “Law in Action” program on Tuesday:

In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Scalia said torture might be permissible to gain information about an imminent threat such as a bomb. He did not address waterboarding but spoke generally of torture.

“It would be absurd to say that you … couldn’t do that,” Scalia said. “Once you acknowledge that, we’re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? How severe can the infliction of pain be? I don’t think these are easy questions at all, in either direction. “But I certainly know you can’t come in smugly and with great self-satisfaction and say, ‘Oh, it’s torture, and therefore it’s no good.’ You would not apply that in some real-life situations.”

Scalia, 71, said the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment “is referring to punishment for crime,” not actions in the course of interrogations.

The absurd statement on torture is pretty much what we all have come to expect from Justice Scalia, but I’m plain baffled by that reference to “cruel and unusual punishment” in this context. Has anyone at all expressed the slightest doubt that cruel and unusual punishment refers to interrogations rather than punishment? This is the guy some people regard as a “brilliant jurist”?

Scalia’s thesis, by the way, seems to be that since cruel and unusual treatment is specifically banned when it comes to punishment but not when it comes to eliciting information from a witness or potential witness, therefore the constitution implicitly greenlights sticking something under a fingernail or smacking a recalcitrant interviewee in the face. This is brilliant jurispridence?

Personally, I think Antonin Scalia is an agent of a foreign power. I think it is extremely dangerous for the security and well-being of the nation to let a person continue on the Supreme Court when there is any question at all about his allegiance. In fact, a Supreme Court Justice in the pay of a foreign power could be described as a less dramatic version of the ticking bomb scenario, inasmuch as he threatens to tear away at the very fabric of our society slowly over time. It’s the whimper-not-a-bang version of the Jack Bauer scenarios Scalia so loves to rail about.

I really think this Scalia question ought to be cleared up right away. A little straightforward questioning should do it. And if he doesn’t come clean at once, hey, he’s not being punished, he’s only being questioned. Let’s use what Scalia himself regards as valid instruments for the catalysis of truth-telling. The real beauty is that there won’t even be any hurry. His interrogators can take their own sweet time doing to fingernails what interrogators in Scalia’s universe love to do to fingernails.