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Happy Valentine's Day, loyal readers!

By David Oscar Markus

Well, not much going on in the District the last couple days except that Dore Louis (of Go, Dore, Go fame) was on federal jury duty. I hear that even though he's a former prosecutor, the government struck him! No matter, the jury (in front of Judge Martinez on a misdemeanor case of bringing a knife into a federal building) acquitted in about an hour.

In other news, the WSJ blog posts this interview by the BBC of Justice Scalia. Enjoy:

On physical interrogation:
Smacking someone in the face could be justified. You can?t come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say ?Oh it?s torture, and therefore it?s no good.?

On assuming that the Constitution?s ban on cruel and unusual punishment applies to torture:
Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the Constitution? . . . . It would be absurd to say you couldn?t do that. And once you acknowledge that, we?re into a different game. How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?

On Europe?s view of capital punishment:
If you took a public opinion poll, if all of Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today. There are arguments for it and against it. But to get self-righteous about the thing as Europeans tend to do about the American death penalty is really quite ridiculous.

Full post as published by Southern District of Florida on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).