Legalities

I'll have you know we cancelled our subscription to the Chicago Tribune when you and Jim Coates left.

SCOTUS is subject to the clear written word and intent of the Constitution as is the rest of this Government, there are no exceptions.

Torture is never the answer and under no circumstances. Our founding fathers knew this along with habeus corporus and so should our legal experts and all politicians. Unfortunately, too many professional people get confused with ticking time bombs and utilitarian "greater good" scenarios. For God sake, remember why we declared our independence in 1776.

I was tortured for 7 months and ILLEGALLY incarcerated in four states and two countries. No one gives a damn.

Their can be NO NATION if their IS no committment to individual human rights FOR ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME.Thus, how can their be national security.

One reason torture IS being used IS because it ups the ante. It IS too much for the laodicean, milquetoast, who are unworthy of freedom and liberty to accept that the clinton's and bush's are MONSTERS. Therefore they would rather disparage rights than come face to face with the truth.

Here IS a good example. It would take any honest individual about one week to go through what evidence remains of 911. Including the ORIGINAL 'live' video shot 'that day'.

bush and co and their 'war games gone wild' fall 2001 edition IS only possible in a society where the people would rather live as slaves than speak up and out against government evil and abuse of power.

Bottem line: everyone would rather scramble for cornbread than acknowledge someone else's rights. I believe this week the INNOCENT accused of what bush & co. did on 911 are getting the D.P.

Impeachment for treason of course IS off the table.

DAMN the american people who basically are saying unless you are a socialist and have a gang your rights don't exist.

You people have NO INTEGRITY.

enjoy the cornbread.

The constitution was written long before the different races came to America. Now America is devided by race, parties,religion, and will soon find itself devided even more into armed camps. This process began years ago when the new imagrints formed their own communities hired there own people, and if they made enough money go back to their native land, they lived very well. All that will be left behind are the original natives and street gangs killing what is left of several generations of true Americans. I call it the stupid affect of goverment and its inability to halt the ongoing madness of un-inforced laws and fear propaganda. We as a people will be the primary cause of our own distruction for not stoping the rape of America.

I never realized what an ignoramus Scalia is. Conservative, yes. But is he really unable to find any construction in the constitution that prohibits torture?

And his reasoning is backwards. He says that it's OK if the result is good -- e.g. saves lots of lives. But it is impossible to know while the torture is occurring -- even in his hypothetical -- that this "greater good" even exists. So it's OK for police to torture somebody in their custody if -- what? -- they *think* there is sufficient greater good? The legality depends on what the police say they believed at the time?

What an idiot.

Sad day to realize that this person rose to our highest level of legal jurisprudence in this country. God help us all.

Scablia is a lunatic.

Only a lunatic would take a fictional TV show and equate there values to it.

Keep Scablia away from the movie Roots.

Who knows what ideas he would get form that series.

Scalia is brilliant. I think most of your are arguing some sort of legal case, rules of evidence or something along those lines. He is talking about the right of the state to use force to protect our citizens. The use of force is not the exclusive domain of the battlefield, it is also permissible to use force in the interrogation room. Pain compliance is a good technique for interrogation. The alternative is Sharia law then we can have our last rites read from the church and our head chopped off by a local cleric for watching Danish Cartoons. As for TV show hypotheticals, I am all for using the filmakers craft to aide in conceptualization and the formation of legal opinions. Maybe y'all should put your whigs on and crawl back into your Delorean and head for the last century. This is the 21st Century and we have to consider the consequences of using rules of war from the 1940's to fight today's conflicts. I am glad y'all aren't Generals too, then we would dig some trenches to save ourselves... Time to update our legal system to reflect the threats we face on the battlefield and in the courtroom. Scalia is reality based. Jon

BlackwaterJon, Scalia should experience it applied to him directly and then decide. Only then will he be 'reality based'.

This guy is delusional! Comparing hollywood BS to the real world, and on the Supreme Court! Could only happen in America. Hopefully, since voicing these idiotic comments, he will have to recuse himself from hearing or ruling on anything even remotely regarding this topic! Disgraceful!!!

Force and pain is a common law enforcement technique to gain compliance. Think Taser and Baton. I think Scalia is probably too out of shape to withstand much waterboarding personally but I don't think one of his clerks would mind trying it out and reporting back to the court. There is only so much you can gain from simulation after all. You make a good point. Maybe we could get Pelosi and Reid to join in the affair. Makes me horny just thinking about it, kinda like a menaga tois. jk. God Bless.

" The constitution was written long before the different races came to America. Now America is devided by race, parties,religion, and will soon find itself devided even more into armed camps. This process began years ago when the new imagrints formed their own communities hired there own people, and if they made enough money go back to their native land, they lived very well. All that will be left behind are the original natives and street gangs killing what is left of several generations of true Americans. I call it the stupid affect of goverment and its inability to halt the ongoing madness of un-inforced laws and fear propaganda. We as a people will be the primary cause of our own distruction for not stoping the rape of America."

At least we have the benefit of seeing the truly illiterate perspective shown clearly here. No, the Constitution was written in times when virtually all the races were known and many present in the US. And in fact torture was forbidden precisely because it was so well known in all parts of the world as inducing innocent people to lie in order to avoid further pain. I'm sorry to have to share the surface of this earth with the likes of you or Antonin Scalia. You have perverted the very essence of the Constitution.

I'm horrified that a Supreme Court Justice thinks torture is justifiable.

I wonder how Justice Scalia would feel about torturing if he himself had this type of "non-punishment" inflicted on him?????

Of course Scalia is an idiot. He's one of Bush's ####buddies, isn't he?

This statement from Scalia is horrifying. One major reason for limitations on the power of the government with regard to due process is that there is a possibility that the person in custody is innocent. But Scalia seems to ignore that possibility. Another, pragmatic reason for prohibiting such conduct is the difficulty of limiting it, once authorized, to some conceivably justifiable set of circumstances (the bomb about to go off in L.A.). In the real world, how can the authorities KNOW that such a situation exists, or that the person being tortured actually has the requisite information to abort the impending disaster?

The problems start when you assume everyone in detention is guilty and knows something about some horrific
event that might occur. All will be
tortured to get one confession. And the
people who do the work do not have the
same legal/ethical knowledge that a
Justice of the Supreme Court has. Look
what happened at AbuGreb prison.
It becomes torture for torture's sake.
And some among us enjoy it.

Fits with his 8A-is-only-about-imposed-punishments view in Hudson v. McMillan

If I had a bomb and it was set to go off, I would already have factored in that I may get caught or killed in the process. If captured and tortured, I would say anything but the truth to get them to stop. Why? Because I did set a bomb with the intent to kill others and if it didnt go off and kill someone, I wouldnt have accomplished what I set out to do. So torture me. I will tell you what ever you want to hear. except where that bomb is and the time it is set to explode. So you see I DON'T beleive that torture accomplishes what folks beleive it does. It just gives some sadistic SOB an excuse to hurt someone. There are proven ways to obtain information without resorting to torture. So there goes your action Hero who wins every battle and saves the world and wins the girl. Only in the funny papers my friend.