Teddy bear?

Did you see Justice Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes last night? He was like a big teddy bear, all smiles and self-deprecating comments. And CBS played along. All the questions were asked by Lesley Stahl; the only other comments came from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a "liberal" on this court, but a great friend of Scalia.

When Scalia dismissed criticism of the court's decision in Bush v. Gore ("get over it") and even blamed it on Al Gore for having the temerity to file suit to keep Katherine Harris (now there's a blast from the past) from stealing the election, Stahl missed the opportunity to follow up and ask why, if the decision was not political, the majority declared that its principles would not apply in any other case.

Scalia also flummoxed Stahl--who is not a lawyer--by asserting confidently that torture is not cruel and unusual punishment. And, you know what? he's right. It isn't. Now, to the ordinary person--the layperson--the cop who's beating on your head or the CIA interrogator who's pouring water down your gullet, certainly is inflicting punishment. What Scalia knows, and Lesley Stahl understandably did not, is that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, applies to sentences after conviction. What the Justice conveniently failed to mention is that torture violates the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process.

Then today, the Court held that the Indiana law requiring a photo ID is constitutional. The majority decision was written by John Paul Stevens, but Scalia wrote a concurring opinion including the following: "The burden of acquiring, possessing and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not 'even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting.'" Apparently, he wasn't listening when the court was told, during oral argument, that some people might have to travel as much as 17 miles to get a free ID. The people who would need to do so are, of course, are the ones too poor to have a car , or a driver's license.

Some teddy bear.