Memo to Antonin Scalia: YOU ARE DUMB.

You wanna know how bad things are? No, really. Do you want to know how completely fucking awful things have become? I'll tell you. It's become so fucking awful that I, your foul-mouthed chronicler of men being fucked to death by horses, can turn to a sitting Supreme Court justice, and ask him, without a trace of irony or hypocrisy, to SHOW SOME FUCKING DECORUM ALREADY.

It's bad enough that we're torturing people. It's bad enough that we're torturing people and nobody cares. It's bad enough that Bill Dog-raping Kristol can go on A Daily Show and say, with a straight face, that he's ambivalent about torture, and that Jon Stewart responded by saying it sounded human. It doesn't sound human. It sounds bastard. If all you have to do to sound like a reasonable human is to express a small amount of doubt that torture isn't the best response to some situations, then we'd better dig up a bunch of huge fucking rocks, because it's time to crawl back under them.

But then we have Antonin Scalia. Who has never been the most serene, thoughtful bastard to sit on our nation's ultimate arbiting body. So Scalia gives an interview on the BBC, gets asked about torture, and comes off sounding like the definitive Ugly American. Like a Townhall poster without as many opportunities for typos. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"And I suppose it’s the same thing about 'so-called' torture. Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution? Because smacking someone in the face would violate the 8th amendment in a prison context. You can’t go around smacking people about. Is it obvious that what can’t be done for punishment can’t be done to exact information that is crucial to this society? It’s not at all an easy question, to tell you the truth."

Yes it is. It's an incredibly easy question. All you need is the tiniest vestige of a shred of fucking decency, and it becomes REALLY SO EASY. It's not a no-brainer, because people with no brains frequently get it wrong, but it is really just that simple. But wait, there's more!

"There are no easy answers involved, in either direction, but I certainly know you can’t come in smugly and with great self-satisfaction and say, “Oh, this is torture and therefore it’s no good.” You would not apply that in some real-life situations. It may not be a ticking bomb in Los Angeles, but it may be: 'Where is this group that we know is plotting this painful action against the United States? Where are they? What are they currently planning?'"

I'm pretty sure we've covered this ground before, but first of all, Scalia is invoking the Jack Bauer Scenario, so named because it's FUCKING FICTIONAL. But even if it weren't, you don't need legal, sanctioned torture as a matter of policy to prevent the Jack Bauer scenario. In fact, you need to outlaw legal, sanctioned torture to make sure that any torture that does happen only happens in a Jack Bauer Scenario.

I guarantee you, if a law enforcement official were ever to get hold of an actual terrorist who knew actual information about an actual imminent attack, and tortured that terrorist, and got the information, and stopped the attack, and then came forward and surrendered to authorities for violating the law, he'd either get off scot-free, or be convicted, and whatever President pardoned him between the courthouse and the start of the parade would get a 10-point jump in his approval rating.

But if you tortured someone, and they didn't know a goddamned thing? Or there wasn't an imminent attack? Or the guy wasn't a terrorist, but was instead a taxi driver from Afghanistan or a random guy from Canada? Well, then you'd be in trouble. In Scalia's universe, the mere possibility that you MIGHT be justified in torturing someone means that all torture is justifiable. And that's seriously fucked up.

Plus, you know, is it too much to ask that once you get nominated to the Supreme Court, you make an effort to keep up the appearance that you take shit seriously? And not use phrases like "smacking people around" and "shoving things under their fingernails"? And saying things to British journalists, say, on the subject of other countries' positions on torture...

"Europeans get really quite self-righteous, you know... I don't look to their law, why do they look to mine?" Future historians will refer to this as the Fuck That Shining City And The Hill It Rode In On Doctrine. I guess diplomacy is a lost art, and not being a complete jackwad is close behind it.

I know that Supreme Court justices are just regular assholes who lucked into a great job because they knew the right people at the right time. And I can only imagine the shit I'd say if I knew I could never be fired until I quit or died. But I miss the veneer. Even if it was fake, I miss that we used to pretend that we didn't think shit like this, that we had some kind of reputation or image to maintain at the highest levels of power. For all Nixon's faults, he kept his most venal assholery where it belonged - on secret tapes from his private office that we only got to listen to after he died. Now, it's hanging out there for all to see.