Legal Torture
Antonin Scalia has been getting a lot of free air time what with a two segment puff piece on 60 minutes followed by an NPR interview replete with softball questions from Nina Totenberg, who should know better. He certainly appears to be able to charm the women. Charm is a good cloak for maleficence.
The man claims to be an “originalist” interpreter of the constitution; one who believes that the constitution should be applied with the same meaning it had for the framers no more no less. I suppose that might be okay if Scalia actually meant it and practiced what he preached.
It became pretty obvious in his opinion delivered on “no-knock” searches a few seasons back that he doesn’t. He used “social cost” to justify his opinion that evidence obtained illegally should not be excluded. That’s an odd thing for a literal “originalist” to say because nowhere in the constitution is “social cost” mentioned. An illegal search is just that. If we’re to allow evidence thus obtained, why did the framers make it illegal? This isn’t originalist, its activism of the dangerous kind.
But say you don’t mind the police bursting into your bedroom unannounced. How about if they beat you for information? Unconstitutional? Not if their quest is for simply information according to Scalia. Neat huh? The Constitution forbids coercing confessions, but if the police torture you to obtain evidence against one of your relatives, well don’t expect any help from Antonin. He said that torture for information isn’t unconstitutional. Yes, he really did!
There are a lot of frightened people in this country right now. They’re so frightened they’re willing to let men like Scalia have free reign. It’s not out of the ordinary for this to happen in difficult times. History is rife with examples of free peoples exchanging freedom for “safety”. None of them ended well.