Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

May 6,2008

During a recent interview with the television program 60 Minutes, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked if the torture of a criminal suspect in police custody was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

?No. To the contrary,? Scalia smugly replied. ?Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment?... When [a police officer] is hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn?t say he?s punishing you.?

Indeed not: A police officer in that situation would be committing a crime. Torture is expressly forbidden as punishment by the Eighth Amendment, and government officials have no right or authority to inflict pain of any kind on anyone as a means of extracting information.

Previously, Scalia had invoked the use of torture by Jack Bauer, the fictional counter-terrorism hero of the depraved TV show 24, as a defense of the practice.

Scalia is considered a conservative jurist. His comments reveal him to be a degenerate ignoramus and authoritarian bully.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.