From The Pensito Review
By Jon Ponder

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution could not be clearer:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And yet, beginning in 2002, the most senior members of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Sec. of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft and others, met dozens of times to draft a set of torture guidelines for use by CIA interrogators. It’s no wonder that Jonathan Turley, a strong advocate of impeaching Pres. Clinton, called their actions a war crime and compared their sessions to a meeting of gangster Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing Club.

On “60 Minutes” Last Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia offered a new and, well, tortured rationale for the legality of what Bush has euphemistically called “advanced interrogation techniques”:

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.

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