Scalia: The Torture Judge
By John Amato Tuesday Feb 12, 2008 5:01pm
Antonin Scalia jumps into the torture debate with the BBC:
Justice Antonin Scalia told the BBC that "smacking someone in the face" could be justified if there was an imminent threat. "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 in a rare interview. He also accused Europe of being self-righteous over the death penalty.
Justice Scalia argued that courts could take stronger measures when a witness refused to answer questions.
"I suppose it's the same thing about so-called torture. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution?" he asked.
"It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game.
Professor Conor Gearty of the London School of Economics, one of Britain's leading experts on human rights law smacked Scalia's insane analogies down.
"His devices are quite obvious, the idea of a smack on the face - rather than sensory deprivation, or waterboarding or any of the Abu Ghraib images - and the comment about 'so-called torture'..."
Professor Gearty accused Justice Scalia of creating a "nightmare scenario of mass destruction that all defenders of torture so need, to hide the fact that the reality of torture will be quite different".
Just get out the ball peen hammer, Judge. His arguments are so dishonest in this article that I scratch my head and wonder how he sits on the highest court in Ameria. Is it me---or does Antonin make most of his most vile statements in Europe?
By the way, Scalia - and his ideological soulmates on the Court - won't be going away after January 2009. This mindset - that human rights are OK for some but not for all, that as long as a crime is ALLEGED and not part of a conviction then you can torture whoever you want, that we should all be so afraid for our lives at every waking moment that it demands setting aside any sort of ethics or values, and that everything a suspected terrorist tells you under duress is absolutely and 100% true - isn't going anywhere.
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And I'm sure Scalia will be kind enough to recuse himself from any pending cases regarding the legality of torture =)
Welcome to the Age of the Wing Nuts
"By the way, Scalia - and his ideological soulmates on the Court - won’t be going away after January 2009."
Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy can all be IMPEACHED in 2009.
Bush v. Gore was their complicit action, and failure to recuse themselves is plenty for impeachment.
Both Scalia and Thomas are on record as considering anything that does not leave scars or cause organ failure "not torture" in a domestic law enforcement context.
Boy would I love to be able to SMACK HIM IN THE FACE. And see if he can tell us what happened at his and cheney's so called hunting trip in the south. And if cheney told him all about that energy conference and who was present.
Police State.
The Armageddon Express has arrived. All Aboard!!!!!
They lost today because Congress showed some spine and McCain flipped flopped on torture.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/senate_passes_bill_wit...
Is he evil? Check
Is he cruel? Check
Is he an asshole? Check
Is he oblivious to other people's feeling? Check
Yep, he passes the test. He's a true republican.
And the Senate FISA bill failed in the House.
Senate Votes to Ban Harsh Interrogations
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 51 to 45 on Wednesday afternoon to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods used by the Central Intelligence Agency against high-level terrorism suspects.
Senate Republicans generally opposed the bill, but several of them also did not want to cast a vote that could be construed as supporting torture, and so were relying on President Bush to make good on a threat to veto legislation limiting C.I.A. interrogation techniques.
The prohibition of harsh interrogation techniques is part of a wider intelligence authorization bill and would restrict all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the Army Field Manual, which bars the use of physical force.
The House approved the bill in December by a vote of 222 to 199, mostly along party lines. Wednesday’s vote in the Senate was also along party lines.
But the White House has long said Mr. Bush will veto the bill, saying it “would prevent the president from taking the lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack in wartime.”
Senate Democrats, sensing an opportunity to highlight a policy dispute between the White House and Senator John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, had been hoping that Republicans would make a procedural challenge to the provision on interrogation methods.
Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, has consistently voiced opposition to waterboarding and other methods that critics say is a form torture. But the Republicans, confident of a White House veto, did not mount the challenge. Mr. McCain voted “no” on Wednesday afternoon.
Got that? Mr. Former P.O.W. voted FOR torture.
getalife @ 8:
time to impeach. it has given all the evidence required. that which will tie it to the VP will also be forthcoming and that will help send it to prison for the remainder of it's life. Our country has no need for such profoundly political jurists. Never have.
Meanwhile . . . . . .
House drafts bill to fund war efforts AP - 1 hour, 17 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The leaders of a House panel that oversees military spending said Wednesday they are drafting legislation that would pay for combat operations.
If the interrogates are contractors from, say like a place like blackwater, do they have to follow the laws or are they free to torture all they want?
Every time I hear this git or see his picture, it reminds me how much he seems like a Mafia don.
Scalia is a reaction to Supreme Court Justices Douglas and Warren.
Purely from a constitutional law standpoint, Douglas and Warren re-wrote the law in some ways according to their own viewpoint.
Scalia says, the constitution says such and such for these reasons.
A Supreme Court Justice is like a Vatican cardinal, who can say what the law is according to his (or her) own preferences.
getalife @ 10:
Great news; gotta link?
Yep
--> McCain's Bind
waterboarding and Republican presidential ambitions ..collided in the Senate.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/178422.php
Isn't Scalia responsible for torturing the world with gwb to be called potus back in 2000?
Can we forever, from now on in refer to him as Injustice Scalia?
-GSD
Let's hope he eats more cake, develops a 3-pack a day habit and takes up sky-diving. And as a Christian, I mean that in the nicest way.
pissed off patricia @ 15:
It's unlikely that Blackwater supplied those contractors. Blackwater is almost all US military that has been privatized by Bush.
The most likely 'contractors' were MOSSAD, or else rightwing mercenaries hired in from South Africa or Central America, say by a company like CACI.
Should our Supreme Court Justices be going around and telegraphing their opinions on matters about which they may be ruling in the future?
fiver @ 18:
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/134654/941/584/456059
He is a POS
QuakerDave @ 11:
So I guess he'll soon be forgiving his N. Vietnamese captors?
Sorry, folks, but he looks like Porky Pig, and that's an insult to pigs.
Because he's American, and we're Americans, we can't see him as a personification of evil? I don't think we'd have any problem if he'd been a German judge back in the 1940s.
Sorry,
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/13/15712/2539/512/456115
is the correct link.
Antonin Scalia is a sick, mentally ill loon who believes in the devine right of kings - this worthless bastard, is a shit eating liar who, as part of a Junta, over threw our country's voters in 2000 and installed that asshole bushwack cheney but fuck.
You won't get rid of Scalia in '09 without impeachment, but:
There's nothing in the constitution that limits the number of Supreme Court Justices to nine. Congress can change the number by a simple vote.
So how about, say, 12 supremes in '09. Add three young, non-crazy judges, and let the extremists on the court go down to defeat after defeat until they retire in disgust.
I have a personal message for Mr. Scalia, "Van fan culo."
We've gone over the cliff. If that not obvious by now.
So what do those who realize the world has gone completely insane do?
Tough one
Paul in LA @ 29:
Thank you.
Someone needs to smack that fat enabler Scalia in the face. How's about we waterboard him and his buddies George and Dick and see if they liken it to torture or not. If you are going to condone such barbaric acts then surely you should undergo those technics yourself to show that you are not a coward.
I suspect that A.S. would have advised the Roman soldiers who scourged and crucified Jesus how they could make the torture more intense. I am embarassed that this guy claims that he is a Catholic. Obviously, another one with no sense of the meaning of the Gospels.
another fine example of perverted the reichwingneocon nuts are.
one set of rules for the criminal gop, all without consequences,
and one set of rules for the dem extreme punishment even for the
least of alleged offenses .
U.S.S. Exxon versus Chavez
AP via Yahoo! Finance - Feb 13 12:21 PM
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Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. waited 24 hours to inform Venezuela's state oil company of a court order freezing a New York bank account, a tactic that netted $242 million.
So how about, say, 12 supremes in ‘09. Add three young, non-crazy judges, and let the extremists on the court go down to defeat after defeat until they retire in disgust.
FDR tried that, and got smacked down, and rightfully so.
President Obama's task to to replace Ginsburg, Stevens with YOUNG Liberal Judges to counter-act the Young Alito and Robert's appointments.
Then, we wait...rumors have always been out there about Scalia's health...
All the pasta and sausage, the poor guy is heading for a coronary soon!
Scalia admits that his two favorite movies are:
Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S.
Love Camp 7
WashStateBlue @ 40:
They'll figure out someway medically to keep him on the bench until he's 130 yrs old.
WashStateBlue @ 40:
If I'm remembering history class correctly: FDR threatened to stack the Court; a deal was struck; and the Court started giving FDR more favorable rulings.
Scalia admits that his two favorite movies are:
Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S.
He thinks it's a feel good romantic comedy.....
Scalia damns His own ludicrous position with His own words. In His '24 hour' doomsday scenario,torture would be justified to determine the whereabouts of a bomb a terrist has planted,etc. ......Think that statement through. How do the interrogators know this individual planted anything? How do they know about this supposed bomb? To interrogate means to ask questions to gain information. IF these supposed interrorgators don't know information,then how is torturing a suspect legal,much less justified,to gain information this suspect may not even know?
If I’m remembering history class correctly: FDR threatened to stack the Court; a deal was struck; and the Court started giving FDR more favorable rulings.
It was kind of a mixed result....he DID get them to flip on the unconsitutionality of the minimum wage, and other New Deal programs....But Blue Dog Democrats (plenty of them back then as well) were emboldened in congress by the action...
Interestingly enough, Roosevelt was proposing it, because the fricking court was packed with over 70 conservatives who REFUSED to step down while he was in office...The deal was, he was going to appt ONE new seat for every justice over 71.5 years old, I think....
He was PISSED cause the old farts from the Hoover era and before just wouldn't kick the bucket!
Kind of the inverse of Ginsburg and Stevens, who, as us in the liberal side of the court, say a pray for every morning that they live forever.....
after a person is found guilty of a crime, we can have a discussion on slapping them around, and even then, just a discussion
when someone is picked up and is only a suspect, they are innocent until proven guilty, end of fucking story
if you think that glad-handling the arrested will be limited to the scary-scary terrorists, you haven't been in the john burge section of county under the auspices of then atty gen dick daley
So torturing someone before he goes to trial is OK but not after. This is the sort of tortured logic I would expect out of a right wingnut blogger, not a Supreme Court justice especially one who apparently is proud of his abilities as a constitutional scholar— it would appear that Scalia has always been a legend in his own mind, or becoming senile, or both!
Goddamn it. If they're willing to BLOW THEMSELVES UP, then why the HELL would they give out information that would thwart an attack? It's just a huge load of HORSE SHIT. All "we're" doing is pissing them off and making them (and indeed the world) hate us even more.
These people who keep using the 'ticking bomb' hypothetical are smoothing over a huge gaping flaw in their little masturbatory torture fantasy that no one ever calls them on, which is that they alway use a variation of the phrase "a suspect who has information..." What I want to know is how the fuck do they know that the poor slob they've got strapped to a board has relevant information to a ticking bomb? Thats a pretty gaping flaw in their reasoning don't you think? The answer is you can't know, that is why you're torturing them. The reality is that they are NOT positing torturing the one person who knows, but torturing all sorts of people for reasons you don't need to know about.
Man I wish an interviewer would ask one of these weak minded fools that question.
Interviewer with Balls: "Excuse me, Judge Scalia, how would our boys know that the subject has and is withholding information about an imminent catastrophic attack?"
Scalia: "You know, when I'm masturbating thinking about torturing people, I've never think about that."
Ass!
D to the Izzle @ 49:
Bingo! Just as IF Saddam had WMD's then why didn't He use them when We invaded? Ummmmmm.
M A N I A C
Madnessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Scalia is nuts... His name sounds like some sort of rash or something doesn't it?
"I went to the Dermatologist and they gave me this cream for my Scalia, the Doctor said it will make it go away..."
Scalia's problem is that he's a failed human being on almost every level. I think he knows that in his heart. (Ooooooooops ... scratch the heart part of that)
*
Impeach them all. Or try them for crimes against humanity.
Using torture as a tool for gathering intelligence is like trying to save a financially troubled firm from bankruptcy by buying lottery tickets.
Scalia as well as the other wingnuts use a distorted version of self-defense as the basis of making these points. The fact that his logic would be seen in a municipal judge would be sad, but coming from a Supreme Court judge is just plain pathetic. Yes, the law allows you to take certain actions in the face of an imminent threat. It is called self-defense. If someone is reasonably seen as a threat, you may defend yourself. Why he brings up the US Constitution is curious, as they didn't include it. There are however, no laws that allow any American to blindly threaten others to find out if they know anything about an imminent threat and no court would allow it. While they argue this in the abstract, they fail to mention to what imminent threat they are referring. Even the administration does not claim to have prevented an imminent threat by using torture, therefore his logic fails.
There are nursing homes for people with problems like this.
KISS - keep it simple for a simpleton.....f you nazi dik wipe...
Filthy Harry @ 50:
Absolutely – well said!
As someone noted before, it’s not the act of torturing the guilty perp who’s withholding critical information that is the ultimate abomination (although a viable one), it’s the ASSUMPTION that they ARE a guilty perp…
Who gets to decide? How do they decide? If the criteria isn’t there (because torture is illegal in the first place), can’t EVERYONE be tortured without fear of retribution? Not just the dark-skinned Arab speaking suicide bomber (whoever the hell that is), but you, me, your son AND daughter – just the same.
And to say a slap in the face is sometimes justified does not grant to anyone the right to slap anyone and everyone in the face just for the hell of it…
F* Scalia! Who cares what that fat bastard has to say anyway? I'd put my boot up his fat ripply ass if he started spouting off like that around me.
RW @ 61:
umm.. he is a Supreme Court Justice, I'm afraid a great many people do sadly care what he has to say *weeps into my scotch*
Just to be sure: this gibbering idiot is telling someone from England about terrorist threats?
Uh, hello? Hello? McFly?
This guy just ignore the past 60 years of their history, or is he too much of a dick to bother with it?
Filthy Harry @ 50:
I was listening to the radio earlier this week and a guest on some talk show said that the point of torture is not to gain information, but rather to force a suspect to say something you want him/her to say. Put in other words, how would you know when to stop torturing someone? If he told you that he was in Al Qaeda and there was a bomb in some building in New York and Osama bin Laden was in a cave in North Wazirastan, wouldn't you just keep torturing him until he stopped being able to give information?
Orwell got it right. "The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
The basic rule of human decency should be that if you aren't willing to suffer the punishments society metes out for wrongdoing, you shouldn't be so quick to offer them up.
But Scalia probably has never considered the possibility that he might have to take, one day, what he's so eager to dish out. But his blase attitude has made it a possibility. For us all.
Does this mean Scalia thinks we should torture Harriet Myers and Josh Bolten for refusing to testify in front of Congress?
"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill
Did this crackhead ever study law or the constitution? So now Scalia argues that one doesn't have the right to remain silent? And doesn't the 8th ammendment specifically prohibit "cruel and unusual punishment"?
We need a damn truth and reconciliation commission.
I would like to say for the record that I fully endorse his immediate impeachment.
Disgraceful.
...
Fuck, I didn't realize Tony Soprano was one of The Nine.
Motherbear @ 66:
That's the worst part. This idiot is supposed to be an impartial judge, but everything is conditional on who is asking. No freedom of speech for high school students (bong hits for Jesus case) and the 14th amendment means that we shouldn't try to accurately count votes.
I can't think of a bigger asshole in these united states.
Scalia and his ilk use the same twisted logic the good Catholics used during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, i.e. they tortured the converted Jews in order to save a good Christian's soul.
Sure, there was a lot more to it than just saving "innocent" Christians, but the message is the same...we want you out of our way and we'll do anything to achieve our goal including death by torture.
And you can bet the "goal" has something to do with money and power and whose gene-pool is best suited to carry on as our species best representatives. Long live Homo vulgaris.
If anybody needs any more of a reason to vote for whichever dem ends up running in the general, I feel sorry for ya. Progressives and dems had better make their vote count this time around, or McBain and the rethugs will have sowen up the court for along time to come.
How can one samll country produce so many evil people :)
And if a slap in the face isn't sufficient surely a little waterboarding would be okay and then, well, hung for a lamb or hung for a sheep, might as well go straight for the electrodes on the testicles.
fiver @ 43:
This is a theory. FDR tried to pass a bill in Congress to allow adding Justices, and didn't have enough votes. Everyone knew from the start of the New Deal that much of the legislation was not Constitutional as such (even though a considerable amount of it was actually from Hoover's administration). Indeed, passage of much of that legislation may have been because Congressional Republicans were sure they could block the law in the Court.
Subsequently, some of the New Deal laws were allowed -- not because of a 'deal,' but because of Court factors, such as the recovery of Justice Stone (who favored minimum wage) and the retirement of another Justice (because Congress passed a law granting elderly Justices full pay if they retires).
The suggestion of a 'deal' ignores the background of the Justices -- those in opposition remained in opposition, but the 1936 landslide may have swayed some votes in itself (without any 'deal,' about which NO evidence has ever been produced. It is strictly speculation).
This guy is on the top ten most dangerous people in high offices in the U.S.
Completely nutters.
i'm buying the drinks when this guy dies.
and i'm ready to party!
Just to reiterate:
If a chief-justice says under some extra-ordinary circumstances torture is justified and therefore NOT illegal, then the door swings wide open. If it’s not ALWAYS illegal, then it IS legal (against all international laws/treaties and ethics). If it is legal, then those who DO torture make the arbitrary determination of who/when/why. Without oversight, without any authority and with complete autonomy, that person can make the decision of who to torture, when to torture, and why to torture. Given the ability to torture anyone at anytime for any reason, some will. As we have seen – some have.
The argument of self-defense is not only weak and fallacious – but historically silly. Why, in past global conflicts, did we deem torture of POWs illegal? Could not some POW know troop deployments, ground movements, and supply chain logistics that would (if they gave such information) “save lives”? Perhaps, but torture of POWs for such information was justifiably considered against the law. And a POW by any other name (enemy combatant) can still die of torture.
Remember just after 9/11 when some people, my self included, thought we should seek justice in the Middle East, to try to understand why they hate us so much that they would do such a thing. But that was nipped in the bud, and now we have this endless war and each day we loose more of our soul.
There is no way to end this because they won't give up and why should they?
What a dick. Maybe we can also start racking them first, then we can hang them and draw and quarter them.
If you guys want to have a good round-up of the ramifications of the torture debate, i suggest you read all essays by Arthur Silber:
http://thesacredmoment.blogspot.com/2006/01/on-torture.html
I wrote this on another blog regarding the upcoming election but I think it's also applicable here. There may not be much that can be done about scalia, but his influence is most likely going to decline. Here's why I think so:
In my opinion, things are looking pretty dire for the republican party overall. Not only are they most likely going to lose the white house, but 29 republican Congressmen and Senators have chosen not to run for re-election. This will most likely lead to an even larger majority for the Democratic party in both the House and in the Senate.
Also, the Supreme Court currently has 4 justices that are in their 70s and 1 in his 80s. I would say there is a very good chance that the next president will nominate a couple of new judges to the Court. I'll go out on a limb and predict that no matter how many new judges are brought into the Court, politically, they will all be far to the left of scalia.
i am curious about one thing that scalia said.
he basically stated that gitmo is not us proper
i thought that gitmo is us territory as it is a us naval base
also, what scalia presents is what happens when the law is purely philosophical masturbation
if the constitution is not a living, breathing document...it dies
which is why it has been so easy for the bushies to subvert it
oh, and in keeping with his being a strict traditionalist....how does he now explain his vote in 2000?
What would you expect from a man who's said to belong to a group that tortures themselves every day - and they love it. The churchier the man, the more violent and malevolent.
As an attorney who cares about America and constitutional rights, I will be glad when he dies.
Christ. Scalia is just another Catholic boy who loves torture. By the looks of his fat face, he's torturing himself with food. He probably has a nude calendar of altar boys, too.
Tim in Japan @ 82:
True, but just who isn't to the left of Scalia?
Someone needs to put a bullet in Scalia's head (hey, it's NOT torture.)
Matt in Texas @ 87:
Thomas. Believe it or not, he's worse.
uncle joe mccarthy @ 83:
The U.S. "rents" the land from Cuba, who has not cashed the rent check since Castro came to power, because he wants us to leave his country. In a recent press conference, Dana Perrino said that there are no permanent U.S. bases on foreign soil (in answer to a question about the HUGE bases we're building in Iraq) - that if a country wants us to leave, we would simply leave.
Bullshit. If that were the case we'd have left Gitmo 40 years ago.
Favorite Antonin Scalia quote:
"Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."
I know all I need to know about this sorry piece of shit.
I use that quote, by the way, in my yet to be published book called
The Top 100 Assholes That Fucked Up Our Democracy (or what little we had)
It will not get published - too much truth for a deluded country to handle.
Rusty Shackleford @ 88:
Good point. I stand corrected. (What a scary thought - someone worse than Scalia.)
Rusty Shackleford @ 88:
Good point - I stand corrected. (What a scary thought - someone WORSE than Scalia.)
Frank @ 90:
Oops - sorry about the unintentional embed.
Yeah because a light tap in the face would definitely make a hardened terrorist confess instantly everything he knows about the bomb plot so Keifer can go find it. It would never ever escalate from that.
And the authorities are NEVER EVER WRONG. EVER. They have never arrested an innocent man. EVER.
And if you say otherwise you're a fucking terrorist.