On behalf of all decent Italian Americans, I apologize for the very existence of Antonin Scalia.

we go on and on and on about the INCREDIBLE injustices fathered by cheney and bush, but where is the IMPEACH NOW banner on this site??

where is the MASSIVE impeach now presence in the blogosphere??

where is the screaming accountabity for pelosi, conyers, et al. ??????

why aren't these people in prison??

because the house is in league with cheney bush!!!

accesories before and after the fact!!!! ISN"T THIS OBVIOUS!!!

Impeach Now Vid!!

marko @ 3:

we go on and on and on about the INCREDIBLE injustices fathered by cheney and bush, but where is the IMPEACH NOW banner on this site??

Imagine how life must have been in Rome during the final days when it all was falling apart.

Scalia was a pompous, righteous asshole on 60 minutes the other night....

Here's Scalia's real "Unoriginal Intent"

L.A. Confidential @ 8:

Every time you drink a beer you support a Republicon.

At least switch to Chardonnay or a Bordeaux.

What about a 40 of Steel Reserve 221?

MikeinMD @ 10:

I watched Scalia's 60 Minutes interview, and it took me a while to pick my jaw up from the floor. A Constitutional Strict Constructionist? He's a corporate tool loonie! Has he even read the 9th and 10th Amendments in the Bill or Rights? He assumes unless a right is explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, it doesn't exist. This is in direct contravention of the intent of the founding fathers, to whom he supposedly looks for direction. Then there's the despicable, un-American rationalization that the Constitution "only" forbids "cruel and unusual punishment", not "cruel and unusual interrogation". As long as you're innocent until proven guilty, you're not being punished, just "interrogated", and anything goes. Just admit your guilt, and the torture ends. Torquemada would be so proud of this "logic".

THIS is what you get when middle americans vote against their interests and let Republicans run the country.

How much is gas today? Milk? Vegetables?

How many bullets got pumped into that poor unarmed man in NY?

Did George Bush call for FEMA to go into Virginia yet? So they can offer taxpayers loans on their own money to rebuild.

Yeah, god bless America.

emphasa @ 11:

L.A. Confidential @ 8:

Every time you drink a beer you support a Republicon.

At least switch to Chardonnay or a Bordeaux.

What about a 40 of Steel Reserve 221?

Whatever gets ya through the day!

7 r Says: Scalia was a pompous, righteous asshole on 60 minutes the other night….

I immediately turned it off.

It's amazing what currently constitutes constitutional erudition.

Liberal AND Proud @ 16:

Ron @ 14:

MikeinMD @ 10:

I watched Scalia's 60 Minutes interview, and it took me a while to pick my jaw up from the floor. A Constitutional Strict Constructionist? He's a corporate tool loonie! Has he even read the 9th and 10th Amendments in the Bill or Rights? He assumes unless a right is explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, it doesn't exist. This is in direct contravention of the intent of the founding fathers, to whom he supposedly looks for direction. Then there's the despicable, un-American rationalization that the Constitution "only" forbids "cruel and unusual punishment", not "cruel and unusual interrogation". As long as you're innocent until proven guilty, you're not being punished, just "interrogated", and anything goes. Just admit your guilt, and the torture ends. Torquemada would be so proud of this "logic".

Start impeachment proceedings against Scalia

Fuck that! Let's waterboard the bastard, its not punishment...it's just a suggestion that maybe he should reevaluate his position.

You're right, we need his confession to be able to convict.

I've been carrying on a debate on Ann Althouse's blog with a couple of people who agree with Scalia's bizarre notion that "torture" is not punishment. Their angle, as I perceived it was Scalia's--although I thought, "surely, no sensible person could accept this interpretation,"--is that "punishment" is only that which is meted out in reaction to--as "punishment for," you see--something one has done. In other words, if you're convicted of a crime, you're punished for the crime by a sentence of judgement. If you haven't been convicted of a crime, no treatment to which you're subjected by the state, even torture, can be considered "punishment," as it is not in response to something you've done. Thus, as it is "not punishment, " (sic), is does not fall under the 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

These people think my view is "novel" and unsupported. I think their view is, if not cynically authoritarian, as I suspect it is with Scalia, simply self-deluded. People will tie themselves into knots to deny that America, the wonderfullest country that ever was, has committed unconstitutional offenses and crimes by torturing people and mounting aggressive wars against other countries.

Another rotten day in Bushland. Almost 8 years of the worst people this nation could offer up. From the Oval Office to the Supreme Court to the Dept of Justice, to the FBI, to the CIA, to the Pentagon, to Homeland Security and beyond, it is beyond astounding in the depths of incompetence and indifference to the law of the land. You could not invent these people.

Senator Clinton is going on BillO's show Wednesday night. That should be interesting.

I listened to a hearing yesterday regarding fraud and abuse of contracts mostly by KBR. It made me feel sick to my stomach as the whistle blowers told of the waste of our money that they had seen in Iraq.

L.A. Confidential @ 22:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contaminant in Baxter International Inc's recalled blood-thinner heparin appears to have been deliberately added, the company's chief executive said in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Tuesday examining imports of the drug from China.

What? How could our great friends and allies China every do such a thing!

Why is Baxter buying stuff from CHINA???????

LOLOLOL! No...no...make it stop! This is PRICELESS! Welcome to low cost healthcare costs courtesy of the free market! LOLOLOLOL!

IMO, Scalia's not as smart as he believes himself to be. Charming, yes, but that's the lipstick on a pig.

I heard him make a grammatical error in speaking. It was shocking, b/c I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt re his intelligence.

I can't remember his exact words, but it was one my pet peeves--the "all that glitters is not gold" thing. That's wrong, b/c some things that glitter are indeed gold. To be correct, he should have used the construction "Not all that glitters is gold." His use of bad grammar shows sloppy thinking.

who do you think will be around to write the HISTORY

Fat Boy is the Devil's Igor!!

Lindy

L.A. Confidential @ 22:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contaminant in Baxter International Inc's recalled blood-thinner heparin appears to have been deliberately added, the company's chief executive said in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Tuesday examining imports of the drug from China.

What? How could our great friends and allies China every do such a thing!

Why is Baxter buying stuff from CHINA???????

Remember when they told us we shouldn't order drugs from other countries because they might not be safe? Well, they did it and made their point. Okay it was at the expense of other people's lives, but I guess those people might considered "collateral damage".

pissed off patricia @ 35:

L.A. Confidential @ 22:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A contaminant in Baxter International Inc's recalled blood-thinner heparin appears to have been deliberately added, the company's chief executive said in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Tuesday examining imports of the drug from China.

What? How could our great friends and allies China every do such a thing!

Why is Baxter buying stuff from CHINA???????

Remember when they told us we shouldn't order drugs from other countries because they might not be safe? Well, they did it and made their point. Okay it was at the expense of other people's lives, but I guess those people might considered "collateral damage".

Right PoP. Drugs from Canada = bad. Drugs from China (like everything else they make) = good.

NOT!

Yes and Scalia is always portrayed by the press as "a brilliant jurist." How is it that any conservative who can tie his/her own shoes is portrayed as "brilliant," without any demonstrated qualifications for the title, while clearly intelligent men like Edwards and Gore are labele "not serious"? Scalia (along with the other partisan hacks packing the SCOTUS) is in fact a mediocre jurist who decides what outcome he wants and then scrounges around to justify that result, routinely desregarding and twisting president to do so.

Oh, goodness help me, but.......

Scalia's got a point. A textual point. At least in so far as the term "punishment" applies to actions taken against someone post-conviction for a crime.

That's as far as his point goes, though. The follow up should not be an argument about how torture really is punishment no matter when it occurs, but whether something other than the Eighth Amendment forbids torture.

How about Due Process? How about the right to remain silent? How about unenumerated privileges and immunities or unenumerated rights? (There's more, by the way. Scalia sits smug in his chair knowing that he's being unpleasantly contrarian, and that his interrogators don't have the knowledge of the Constitution he does.)

(Now, if you really want to see Scalia go insane on the Eighth Amendment, check out his views on what "cruel and unusual" actually does mean. He thinks the term only applies to a finite list of barbaric acts, like maiming, that were used around the time the Constitution was written. As for whether the term requires any sort of "proportionality requirement," like the punishment fitting the crime, he answers no -- emphatically. So, may a state apply the death penalty to someone convicted of having gay sex? According to Scalia, yes.)

pissed off patricia @ 36:

Justice Scalia came across as the kind of bully who, when caught says, What are you gonna do about it?

He made up his own definition of torture and now he's smugly saying, There's nothing you can do about it.

Yep. That's exactly his attitude.

JudyLou @ 29:

IMO, Scalia's not as smart as he believes himself to be. Charming, yes, but that's the lipstick on a pig.

I heard him make a grammatical error in speaking. It was shocking, b/c I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt re his intelligence.

I can't remember his exact words, but it was one my pet peeves--the "all that glitters is not gold" thing. That's wrong, b/c some things that glitter are indeed gold. To be correct, he should have used the construction "Not all that glitters is gold." His use of bad grammar shows sloppy thinking.

Grammatical errors evince sloppy thinking? That's a preposterous assertion, one that would render sloppy everyone who has ever written or spoken words.

Not only is standard grammar but one dialect of a language among many, but "all that glitters is not gold" is employed despite its grammatical impropriety because of its cadence.

Antonin Scalia is a fucking lunatic, but grammar has nothing to do with it.

Tom Wood @ 44:

Merriam Webster's 3rd entry for "Punishment" defines it as "severe, rough, or disastrous treatment." It's FIRST entry defines it as "the act of punishing" where "punishing" is defined as "dealing with roughly or harshly, or inflicting injury upon." Torture qualifies as punishment under the primary definition of "Punishment" as well as under the tertiary definition.

Good point. The question becomes whether that's actually what the term means in the context of the Eighth Amendment and the Constitution at large, and whether that's what the term meant when written.

Scalia is a moron. If he's the strict construction he claims to be, then he has to find torture to be a violation of the constitution. So he's a hypocrite or a liar, as well. It's about time for him to be impeached, too.

He's not a strict constructionist. He does not believe in strict construction. That's a media-generated understanding.

Karen @ 47:

Tom Wood @ 44:

Merriam Webster's 3rd entry for "Punishment" defines it as "severe, rough, or disastrous treatment." It's FIRST entry defines it as "the act of punishing" where "punishing" is defined as "dealing with roughly or harshly, or inflicting injury upon." Torture qualifies as punishment under the primary definition of "Punishment" as well as under the tertiary definition.

Good point. The question becomes whether that's actually what the term means in the context of the Eighth Amendment and the Constitution at large, and whether that's what the term meant when written.

The 8th amendment reads "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." It does not read there shall be no cruel and unusual punishments only as retribution for crimes for which one has been convicted. It simply says there shall be no cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Period. For anything. But what it means in this context in the constitution is a strict constructionist viewpoint, and, in my opinion, not necessary to know. Scalia, however, has claimed to be a strict constructionist, and so should hold it unconstitutional.

Another point: if one is a strict constructionist, then one could find that all income should be redistributed, that a maximum wage should be imposed on the rich, and that universal healthcare and free college education are constitutional rights. The preamble to the constitution reads "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." To promote the general Welfare is the operative phrase. In my opinion, the general welfare is BEST promoted when everyone is healthy and educated, and no-one has so much money that they can't possibly spend it while others have not enough to eat. I'm a strict constructionist here: I say universal heathcare, free college and income redistribution are required to promote the general Welfare and the whole point of the constitution, as the preamble clearly states, it to promote the general Welfare.

Is that scalia guy crazy? He is an embarrassment,whenever that fat pig opens his trap something stupid comes out .

I'm sorry, I don't know how you do this quoting someone's comment thing works. I don't want it to look like Karen said the things I wrote, in case she does not agree with them. In the following, which I copied from the body of comment 49 (which I posted), the only thing Karen wrote is the paragraph beginning "good point." The rest, which in my comment # 49 looks as though attributed to her, is actually just my response to her. If she agrees with my response, I thank her. If she doesn't, I don't want it to fall upon her to have to distance herself from it. My apologies for not knowing how to "quote a comment."

Good point. The question becomes whether that’s actually what the term means in the context of the Eighth Amendment and the Constitution at large, and whether that’s what the term meant when written.

The 8th amendment reads “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” It does not read there shall be no cruel and unusual punishments only as retribution for crimes for which one has been convicted. It simply says there shall be no cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Period. For anything. But what it means in this context in the constitution is a strict constructionist viewpoint, and, in my opinion, not necessary to know. Scalia, however, has claimed to be a strict constructionist, and so should hold it unconstitutional.

Another point: if one is a strict constructionist, then one could find that all income should be redistributed, that a maximum wage should be imposed on the rich, and that universal healthcare and free college education are constitutional rights. The preamble to the constitution reads “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” To promote the general Welfare is the operative phrase. In my opinion, the general welfare is BEST promoted when everyone is healthy and educated, and no-one has so much money that they can’t possibly spend it while others have not enough to eat. I’m a strict constructionist here: I say universal heathcare, free college and income redistribution are required to promote the general Welfare and the whole point of the constitution, as the preamble clearly states, it to promote the general Welfare.

To Tom Wood above.

I should have said that each tag comes between a "less than" and "greater than" symbol.

:)

Karen @ 41:

Oh, goodness help me, but.......

Scalia's got a point. A textual point. At least in so far as the term "punishment" applies to actions taken against someone post-conviction for a crime.

That's as far as his point goes, though. The follow up should not be an argument about how torture really is punishment no matter when it occurs, but whether something other than the Eighth Amendment forbids torture.

How about Due Process? How about the right to remain silent? How about unenumerated privileges and immunities or unenumerated rights? (There's more, by the way. Scalia sits smug in his chair knowing that he's being unpleasantly contrarian, and that his interrogators don't have the knowledge of the Constitution he does.)

(Now, if you really want to see Scalia go insane on the Eighth Amendment, check out his views on what "cruel and unusual" actually does mean. He thinks the term only applies to a finite list of barbaric acts, like maiming, that were used around the time the Constitution was written. As for whether the term requires any sort of "proportionality requirement," like the punishment fitting the crime, he answers no -- emphatically. So, may a state apply the death penalty to someone convicted of having gay sex? According to Scalia, yes.)

Yeah, that's right. I think Scalia was having a little fun with Leslie Stahl. He knows that, pre-sentence, Americans are protected from police violence by the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses more than by Eighth Amendment (and, hopefully, by state laws against assault). Of course, he doesn't believe any part of the Constitution constrains gov't action against non-citizens. She asked the wrong question and he wasn't going to help her. But this makes him obnoxious, not dumb.

I think a better question would have been, the Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture, why is that treaty not self-executing in the same way the WTO treaty is? And why is the gov't allowed to define torture? We have a treaty, don't you want to go back and look at the intent of treaty negotiators and the senators who ratified?

Scalia needs a tire and some fire. Just saying.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Scalia's father is alleged to have been a fascist supporter of Mussolini:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/12/that-revisionist-touch.html

Karen,

I'm with Tom Woods, who quoted from the dictionary. I don't see where the 8th Amendment applies only to post-conviction treatment. This requires a narrow reading of the amendment. Unlike the first amendment, the 8th amendment does not offer specificities such as "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" in order to distinquish between them. "Punishments" is utilized without modifiers and it may be read broadly to limit any treatment the state may apply to a person in its custody from the moment custody begins. In short, I don't agree the word "punishment" is meant as narrowly as Scalia would have it, and I don't agree the text of the amendment implies any such narrow reading. It may well be that other areas of the Bill of Rights also prohibit torture, but that merely amplifies the restrictions of the 8th Amendment.

"Grammatical errors evince sloppy thinking? That's a preposterous assertion, one that would render sloppy everyone who has ever written or spoken words."

That example of Scalia's usage reflects HIS sloppy thinking/lack of clarity. I'm not judging everybody, but if people don't say what they mean, what then are they saying? Sounds like you're an advocate of "reading between the lines" in every occurrence. I make grammatical errors, and so do many smart people I know. As long as we understand each each other, no biggie. But I'm not a justice of the US Supreme Court like Scalia, parsing very fine points of law that we the people all have to live under. The basis of the law is clarity, or at least I always thought so.

Not only is standard grammar but one dialect of a language among many, but "all that glitters is not gold" is employed despite its grammatical impropriety.

I agree. That doesn't mean it makes sense. Music is a good example of bad grammar and good scansion. But again, Scalia ain't a musician or poet. As a judge, if he cain't talk right, he cain't think right, IMHO.

JudyLou @ 65:

"Grammatical errors evince sloppy thinking? That's a preposterous assertion, one that would render sloppy everyone who has ever written or spoken words."

That example of Scalia's usage reflects HIS sloppy thinking/lack of clarity. I'm not judging everybody, but if people don't say what they mean, what then are they saying? Sounds like you're an advocate of "reading between the lines" in every occurrence. I make grammatical errors, and so do many smart people I know. As long as we understand each each other, no biggie. But I'm not a justice of the US Supreme Court like Scalia, parsing very fine points of law that we the people all have to live under. The basis of the law is clarity, or at least I always thought so.

Not only is standard grammar but one dialect of a language among many, but "all that glitters is not gold" is employed despite its grammatical impropriety.

I agree. That doesn't mean it makes sense. Music is a good example of bad grammar and good scansion. But again, Scalia ain't a musician or poet. As a judge, if he cain't talk right, he cain't think right, IMHO.

Oh, come now. You said that you were giving him the benefit of the doubt about his intelligence, but changed your mind when he used a grammatically incorrect sentence in an interview. Now because he's on the Court, he doesn't get the same basic slack you'd give to anyone else, even in an interview, and even when the phrase he used is so commonly employed for its cadence?

My point was that grammatical errors have nothing to do with one's intelligence. Moreover, Scalia is probably the best writer on the Court. His writings are very clear, which is often more than I can say for the rest of its Justices. If he commonly made ridiculous flubs in his rulings, and had little command of standard English, I'd acknowledge your point. I hardly see how his using "all that glitters is not gold" in an interview puts his intelligence in question.

Scalia is nuts. His grammar is a stupid reason to judge him, though.

Scalia's legal analysis:

torture doesn’t qualify as cruel and unusual punishment because torture is not “punishment.

So if you torture someone as a consequence of something he/she did, then it's cruel, but if you torture someone for no reason whatsoever, then it's not cruel because it is not in punishment. Uh....

WHERE THE HELL DO THE WINGNUTS FIND THESE PEOPLE?!

I swear Scalia is on meth.

Will we see Clarence Thomas, Roberts, Scalia, Alito in GOP attack (swift boating type) ADs for the GOP
this election year.?

@44: "We all want change, but none of us are willing to risk our lives or freedom for it."

Well, now I have a clear-cut choice. I am free as can be to either

A) Spend all my rent money on some kind o' leathery/lacy tricked-out rig and a stick of black lipstick, eye-shadow, all that schtuff, then just slit my wrists and die a Black Death...

Or...

B) Cry BULLSHIT on that SHOCKINGLY AWFUL attitude, Sonny-lad! But really, tell me, just how many media-enjoyin', media-driven, media-producin', media-envyin' twentysomething-to-fortysomething showbuzz kidz just really ain't had any proper education in non-violent overthrow of brutal dictatorships? Someone else wanted to waterboard that deadly-serious moron Scalia. WRONG-O - and an Einstein Fellow shall show you exactly why if anyone will just take the time to read the book.

Online. FREE. (Please?)

Violence in all forms is a plague and a poison upon the human soul and spirit. IN all seriousness (for the hour is late), here is exactly what has gone lacking from your Conceptual World-View's maybe-college-guided (Heaven only knows) moral compass' care-and-feeding regimen. Let it nourish us every one, very well indeed:

http://www.hermanos.org/nonviolence/dictodem.html

KIndly do relay this link to others, as much as can do. Everyone. While we still can.

Now, someone real just might want to start here first, but they'd be smart, too, and move up a level. They'd browse the whole nonviolence directory - no hassle. NONE of us are devoid of resource, ya' got it, Brother? (Let an Einstein Fellow steer you aright.)

Any serious student of US history who is also aware of today's and tomorrow's dock/truck stopwork action will do well to Google out { "Economic Impact"+"Dock Shutdown"+2002+Cohen } if the linked-to .pdf @ http://brie.berkeley.edu/~briewww/publications/ships%202002%20final.pdf should ever "disappear". (Grab it quick - it's a key treasure, liable to be "faded" by the TerrorWar PTB from the Web, I wot... I saw my first URL-link to this key doc go to 404 today.)

For the love of Goodness if not of any Christlike figure: Kindly just lay off the self-pity blubbering and TOOL UP QUICK for this. General Quarters. This is NO DRILL. It is ALREADY HERE.

General Quarters.

Increase the Peace.
Reverse the Curse.
Reject ALL Terror!
(You KNOW you WANT to.)