What an idiotic blabbermouth.

The stooge doesn't address that any "evidence" gathered through - let us not get confused- torture - is useless from a legal standpoint.

But torture, just for the sake of inflicting gratuitous, unnecessary pain, is SOP for the GOP, and can be interpreted by scum-like Scalia as constitutional.

Torturers DO TORTURE.

Though hypothetically, if the Constitution prohibits cruel AND unusual punishment,

and IF torture [called and so-called] is no longer unusual,

and IF it's not actually punishment, which implies a trial, sentence, judicial review, etc.,

then it's just cruel, and yeah, totally constitutional!

John Yoo couldn't have argued it better himself.

I say we subject him to activities that he defines as Constitutional. He might have a ticking bomb in that massive, fat head of his.

Campingstick is correct. According to the Constitution, by signing the Geneva Constitution, that too is a part of our laws.

But to add a little levity here, if for some strange reason this issue should ever reach the Supreme Court, does anyone doubt that Scalia is ethical enough to recuse himself?

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

In Scalia's world the Constitution would have to be as think as five phone books because everything that we wish the Supreme Court to pass judgement on apparently has to be spelled out explicitely in the text.

Congress should skip passing laws and just pass Constitional amendments. Start with an amendment that requires a simple majority vote of Congress to pass future amendments, then just have at it.

Maybe that will provide the kind of clarity this conservative politician, oh sorry, I mean Supreme Court Justice needs to do his job.

Not everything Scalia says is lawful either. What he is saying was prosecuted as a war crime at the Justice Trial.

Judges who refuse to enforce the laws of war, or strike down illegal policies, were subjsequently prosecuted for war crimes. Scalia is making unprotected, admissable statements supporting a war crimes indictment against him.

Some time ago, the conservative wing of the Catholic church pushed for the church to deny the sacraments to any church member/politician who supported abortion in any way.

I wonder how Scalia would feel if he went to church on Sunday and they said, sorry Charlie, but until you change your view on torture, you're out of luck?

While Scalia lacks perceptable intellect - he is right on this one.

It is not uconstitutional - it violates the "Bill of Rights" that George Mason had added to the consititution as "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"

Of course Scalia's minibrain would need "originalist" sources to determine intent. He can do that with the Constitution because it was proposed and passed in a short time in Philadelphia. But what the "founding fathers" though about when approving the "Bill of Rights" he can't find.

We know the founding father allowed waterboard (and dunking) of withches when it was extermely important to get information on how the devil had entered their towns. I mean a real devil is worse than a terrorist correct? Ask Huckabee if you don't get the answer.

By the way Amendment No. 8.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The sophist's argument is that it is the purpose the act is taken that matters. Interregation is differnet from punishment. This was rejected in Miranda.

The Constitution is just so hard to understand! All those words and meanings and things! Scalia wants more Cowbell!

To the attention of Mssrs Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, Mukasey, SCALIA et al:

Gentlemen, a country at war is, of course, filled with much busy work for men such as yourselves. Therefore, I offer this missive to clarify the position of thinking, progressive (as apposed to unthinking and regressive) persons on a certain pertinent subject; that is the subject of torture. In the fullness of time, and having examined all manner of issues related to the subject, I have come to the following conclusions.

If you are willing to commit or to sanction any act of torture under any circumstances, you ARE a torturer. Period. If you seek to redefine torture so that what YOU do or what you sanction does not fall within the understanding of torture as it has been defined by international treaties and conventions which duly elected representatives of your great nation have signed in the past, you are STILL a torturer. You are a COWARDLY torturer who is afraid to admit what you are doing (perhaps even to yourself), but you are STILL a torturer. If you refuse to define an act as torture when YOU do it or when you sanction it, but wish to keep it in the category of torture when it is done to you or yours, you ARE a torturer. You are a HYPOCRITICAL torturer, but you are STILL a torturer. If you commit or sanction acts in secret that have heretofore been called torture, and try to hide those acts from the world, you KNOW you are a torturer. The very fact that you hide what you are doing, and destroy the evidence of what you have done, is PROOF that you KNOW that what you have done is WRONG.

When it has two legs and beltloops, it IS a pair of pants. Whether they're made of denim, gabardine, cotton or wool; whether they're red, blue, brown or cammo; whether they fit like a second skin or bunch in the crotch and pinch your balls; they ARE a pair of pants, and no amount of redefinition on your part is going to change that fact. Just so, those who engage in acts of torture, or who sanction acts of torture even if they would be too cowardly to do it themselves, ARE torturers.

Now, gentlemen, having established WHAT you are, what exactly distinguishes you from your enemies? By engaging in, or having sanctioned, torture yourself, you have negated the high minded ideals for which you claim to be fighting, so what is left to distinguish you from your enemies? The only thing uglier than the fact that those of you who claim to be leaders of the free world have become torturers, is the linguistic gymnastics you engage in to excuse yourselves. Not only are you torturers, you are cowards and hypocrites to boot.

The lights are dimming in the city on a hill. As the world erects walls around fortress America, we beg the last true Americans to please bring the flag out with them, those who remain hiding in the dark won't want it. Nor will they need what it stands for.

Thank you for your attention,

I think it's possible that Scalia is even trying to set up a confrontation with an international court. As long as there's a reasonable appearance that the US legal system is capable of prosecuting torture conspiracies and other war crimes, the ICC and other tribunals are supposed to wait for the process to work itself through. But once it's announced that the US legal system is incapable of handling such crimes, international jurisdiction becomes necessary.

And then everybody has to vote for republicans lest democrats surrender our nation's sovereignty to those blue-helmeted UN stormtroopers...