From: cortez@milton.u.washington.edu (Tom Warner)
Subject: Re: Hyperbole about Clarence Thomas
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 10:46:11 GMT

lyford@dagny.webo.dg.com (Lyford Beverage) writes:

>In article <VwDHRB1w165w@unkaphaed.UUCP>, popec@unkaphaed.UUCP (William C. Barwell) writes:
>|> mvp@netcom.com (Mike Van Pelt) writes:
>|> 
>|> > In article <3uXcRB3w165w@unkaphaed.UUCP> popec@unkaphaed.UUCP (William C. Bar
>|> > >  Your bizarre rationalisation that the beating was not ordered by the 
>|> > >prison administration, and thus is OK, is shit.
>|> > 
>|> > Your continued assertion that Clarence Thomas ruled that the
>|> > beating was OK is a lie.
>|> > 
>|> > -- 
>|> > Mike Van Pelt       |"Dreams of flight are universal among space-faring races
>|> > mvp@netcom.com      | Indeed, such dreams may form much of the motivation for
>|> >                     | becoming space-faring."   --  T'chaih Hrinach
>|> 
>|> 
>|> Time Magazine July 13 1992
>|>   In a dissent joined only by Scalia, he (Thomas), wrote that while the 
>|> guards behavior was deplorable, the majority ruling was "yet another 
>|> manifestation of the pervasive view that the federal Constituition must 
>|> address all the ills of our society....The Eighth Amendment is not...a 
>|> National Code of Prison Regulation"      -Clarence Thomas
>|>    In other words, according to Tommy, if you fall into the hands of a 
>|> jailer or a couple of sadistic southern prison guards, you can be beaten, 
>|> manhandled, or otherwise abused, and your eighth ammendment rights have 
>|> not been taken away.  If the prison administration giggles, "don't have 
>|> too much fun" to a gaggle of vicious guards as you are hauled of to a 
>|> private place in the prison, arms and legs cuffed, to be viciously beaten 
>|> because you got into a verbal argument with the guards, this summary and 
>|> vicious summary punishmentConstitutionally passes muster as regards the 
>|> 8th amendment.  According to Thomas and Scalia.  Thus are our rights 
>|> eroded away to the approving nods of neo-con reactionaries and idiots.
>|> We now have a gaggle of idiot activist supreme court jurists who are 
>|> nibbling away at our hard earned rights by interpereting the law in a 
>|> most narrow and cramped way and using some of the damnedest 
>|> intellectually weak and foolish "reasoning" imaginable.  Summary brutal 
>|> beatings as punishment are OK?!  What about electric shock.  I mean one 
>|> can be real imaginative now that the gloves are off.
>|>   "In my view, a use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a 
>|> prisoner may be immoral, it may be tortius, it may be criminal, it may 
>|> even be remedial under other provisions of the federal Constitution, but 
>|> it is not cruel and unusual punishment"  - Clarence Thomas
>|>   Yeah, great.  note the word "may".  And just what is insignifigant 
>|> harm?  We could have lots of cases where we argue which punishments 
>|> inflict signifigant harm and just what is signifigant harm any way?  How 
>|> much pain is signifigant harm.  Would electrical shocks administered from 
>|> a phone generater as favored in many third world countries be viewed as 
>|> causing signifigant harm?  Who the Hell knows what these fools would say 
>|> if such cases came before them. "Other provisions of the Constitution"?  
>|> If the 8th isn't clear enough, I don't know any others that these jerks 
>|> would find sufficient to outlaw crap like this.  Who knows what wierd 
>|> "reasoning" these geeks would indulge in if you tryed to attack this from 
>|> another point in the Constitution.  The Constitution is silly putty in 
>|> the hands of fools like this.
>|> 
>|> 
>|> Lie!?  Idiot!  No lies here.  Just noting the erosion of our 
>|> Courts as Bush packs 'em with neocon weirdos with some of tghe strangest 
>|> ways of thinking about the law.  Thomas is unfit to be on this court.
>|> I am deeply disgusted at him and Scalia over this case.  Thankfully,
>|> the rest of the court saw clearly on this one.
>|> 
>|> 
>|> Crawl back to Fan.Rus Limbaugh and leave this Alt. for Dan Quayle Bashing 
>|> like god intended it!
>|> 
>|> --
>|> popec@unkaphaed.UUCP (William C. Barwell)
>|> Unka Phaed's UUCP Thingy, (713) 943-2728 in Houston, Texas
>|> 1200/2400/9600/14400 v.32bis/v.42bis


>Please follow this carefully.

>	1)  People commit crimes.
>	2)  Not every crime is a violation of a specific constitutional right.

>	.
>       . .

>	3)  Not every crime deserves a specific redress from the Supreme Court.


>Now, let's try a hypothetical situation.  I am (in this scenario) a soldier in
>the United States Army.  The 3rd amendment says, in part, that "No Soldier
>shall, in times of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of
>the owner..."  I break into your house, tie you up, and spend a week there,
>sleeping and eating, and watching your television, and reading your books.  When
>the police comes, I am certainly guilty of many crimes, but does this need to
>go to the Supreme court on the grounds of your 3rd amendment rights being 
>violated?  No, because the Bill of Rights are there for the protection of the
>people against abuses by the government, and there is no government action
>involved here.  The government as a whole cannot always be held responsible for
>every action of every employee, any more than the president of IBM would go
>to jail for an IBM employee cheating on his income taxex.

>So are the guards who beat the prisoner guilty of crimes?  Yes.
>Were the prisoner's 8th amendment rights violated?  Not unless the guards actions
>were either supported, or instigated, by the government, that is, not unless
>this was considered standard operating procedure in this prison.  Is there
>any evidence that this was the case?  In the absence of evidence to this
>effect, it is difficult to fault Thomas's and Scalia's logic. 

Nonetheless, even most of the Reagan/Bush-appointed neocon justices did
exactly that.

You're not following your own thinking through. The 8th amendment prohibits
the government from dishing out cruel and unusual punishment. The case cited
is clearly an example where the government dished out cruel and unusual
punishment. It wasn't just two rogue guards assaulting a prisoner. It was the
fact that the government did not do enough to prevent guards in general
from assaulting prisoners in general, and this one guy took the brunt of
that failure.
	By arguing that laws should address these kinds of actions you're
missing the point of the Constitution. What if the laws aren't there? What
if the government chooses not to enforce them? Then the individual's
Constitutional right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment
is as meaningless as the government of China's on-paper democracy.

Tom Warner

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