Torture is a punishment for not providing information you idiot. You are assumed to have information and then punished for not providing it... that usually is where torture comes from. Wow... this guy has too much power for someone sooo stupid.

Fedquip has one with more complete footage of scalia:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Antonin-Scalia-Torture-Is-Not-Cruel-and-Unusual-Punishment

also there's an olbermann one that I enjoyed! (but discarded)

http://politics.videosift.com/video/Olbermann-Incredulous-Supreme-Court-Justice-Scalias-Bunkum

Oh my god...I just had to create a playlist for this video entitled "People I'd Like to Strangle"

he's such a twisted old man. him and cheney, soulmates.

See, this is why I dislike MSNBC.

I hate Scalia. I just want to say that right out. He is my least favorite Supreme Court Justice. I think his legal opinions are at odds with good ethics, and I find his friendliness to conservatives to be misplaced.


That said, this video gives exactly the wrong reasons to dislike him. One does not become a Supreme Court Justice by making errors as basic as MSNBC asserts. Bush v. Gore was a unique case in US history, with a number of reasons NOT to make it precedent. Given the pressures involved in the situation, I don't think you can fault the Supreme Court for jumping in and making a decision either way. Gore may have won the state courts, but should a national election be decided on that level? I'm not entirely sure that stepping in was the wrong idea for them. And once they stepped in, the decision they made was the decision they made.

Granted, I dislike Scalia's tolerance for torture, but under the legal definition, it's NOT cruel and unusual punishment because it does not legally qualify as punishment. This is not twisting words or playing with semantics. This is the kind of distinction on which our justice system is based. If you're going to go after Scalia, go after his rejection of the right of habeas corpus in the case of non-citizen "terrorists."

I think the first comment by BF said it best, torture is punishment for not giving information. If you tell us what we want to know we wont hurt you anymore. What I dont like about this clip is yeah Scalia is trying to downplay the whole election 8 years ago and in this level i couldnt help agree that its over mainly because the 2nd point was torture and they spent a whooping 30secs on that but damn near 5 mins on an election that is almost a decade old. I'm not saying its not important because there was a lot of shananigans going on there. What im saying is we are RIGHT NOW torturing people in the present but we want to continue to bitch about the past. Lets focus on the issues at hand. PS. Scalia sucks and blows

Jordass, torture is not, from a legal standpoint, punishment. The Constitution is a legal document, based at least in part on legal principles going back to the Romans via English common law.

From a legal perspective, torture is not punishment. Legally, punishment is what happens to you after you've been convicted of a crime. You can't technically be punished if you haven't been on trial.

That doesn't mean torture isn't wrong, of course. Torture is its own crime.

what kind of supreme court justice says the constitution allows torture USA citizens?

You are saying, we cannot torture convicted criminals, but torturing babies and innocents is just fine?

Damn the Democrats and Republicans.

Yeah im with you marinara i guess the constitution isnt nearly as well written as Americans think when you cant legally torture criminals but can torture innocent people based on some semantic loop hole. Damn I hate the bullshit side of law

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