Last month, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia pronounced
in an interview with the BBC that it was "extraordinary" to think that
"so-called torture" might be prohibited by the Constitution.
Well, to the quotes from that memorable interview ("You can't come
in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture,
and therefore it's no good'" and "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?") you can add this, from Scalia's speech at the University of Central Missouri yesterday:
How is it that you can modify the Constitution to prohibit (yelling fire in a theatre) or you can construe "Make no law" or "shall not be infringed" to allow for modification if right? But with torture we suddenly have to adhere to the Constitution, even though there is no such Guarantee in the Constitution that states what torture is and that it is not permitted.
We generally find torture repugnant, and that's a good thing, yet the Constitutionality is an open question.
