Scalia, Jack Bauer and Dubbya - what do they have in common?

"Has anyone ever referred to torture as punishment?"

Lesley Stahl interviews Antonin Scalia on ABC's 60 Minutes

STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–

SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

Does Terror Trump Torture?

Jan Crawford, Legalities - ABC News
February 12, 2008 5:43 PM

We all know Justice Antonin Scalia is a big fan of 24's Jack Bauer, the fictional hero of the popular television show who sometimes tortures terrorists to derail their fiendish plots and save lives. Scalia mounted a spirited defense of Bauer during a judicial conference in Ottawa last year when a Canadian judge said, "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' "

Scalia shot back: "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives…Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so." (Read more)

But it's only TV!

Punishment and Amusement

Documents Indicate 3 Photos Were Not Staged for Interrogation

By Scott Higham and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A01

Spec. Joseph M. Darby told investigators that he returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison's "hard site," which contains Tier 1A. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier's night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.

"It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "

READ MORE COMMENTARY:
ThinkProgress: Scalia interview with Lesley Stahl
Radical Right Wing Republican Antonin Scalia, Says Torture Not Punishment

Scalia on Bush v Gore: "Get over it!"

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