Antonin Scalia - A Cowardly Piece of Garbage

A United States Supreme Court judge says it is not clear that the American constitution protects people from torture.

Justice Antonin Scalia says the constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.

But he says it would be absurd not to inflict pain on someone when they had key knowledge of an imminent attack.

"Once you acknowledge that we're into a different game, how close does the threat have to be and how severe can the infliction of pain be?" he asked.

"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'," he said.

"You would not apply that in some real life situations."

How about instead of ejecting Scalia from his seat for not fulfilling his duties to uphold the Constitution we torture him? Because in my opinion a judiciary that puts politics and fear above the Constitution is the greatest threat we face.

Disgusting.

*edit - 2/14/2008*

Maybe it's the fact that it is Valentine's Day, but I thought that I would revisit this today. After reading over the article again, I realized that the comments that I disagreed with most about Scalia's remarks were not direct quotes. Now, that does not necessarily mean that he was not conveying the general idea as depicted in the above article, but from the direct quotes I can agree with some things he says.

It most certainly is not an easy question as far as where to draw the line. However, if his argument is either that of *some* torture being ok or of waterboarding not being torture, I believe that he is simply not being objective in the least. Personally I believe that the preservation of individual's rights in this country stands far above any other concern the country has to face. I believe this simply because if we do not have those rights, what else is worth anything at all?

I too am susceptible to following pathos at times. But hopefully I can always come back and right my wrongs.