From today’s Supreme Court deliberations concerning lethal injections, and the fact that they can inflict excruciating pain:

Justice Antonin Scalia said states have been careful to adopt procedures that do not seek to inflict pain and should not be barred from carrying out executions even if prison officials sometimes make mistakes in administering drugs. “There is no painless requirement” in the Constitution, Scalia said. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito also indicated their support for the states’ procedures.

Apparently, Scalia believes that the Eighth Amendment doesn’t exist, unless I missed something and “excruciating pain” and “cruel and unusual punishment” are not as similar as they seem.

This is the same Scalia who believes there is no separation of church and state, and that the Ninth Amendment is irrelevant. You’ll also recall that Scalia dismissed innocent people put to death by the state an “insignificant minimum.” He said that if the wedding of religion and government offends non-believers, they can just “turn their eyes away.” As to the Ninth Amendment protection of unenumerated rights, Scalia said that the Congress was best equipped to decide which rights the Congress could strip the people of. Not to mention that Scalia has ethics problems, even beyond stuff like not recusing himself when cases involving his buddies reach the Supreme Court.

Can’t a Supreme Court justice be impeached for flagrant disregard for the document he is sworn to protect and uphold? The Constitution says they can hold office as long as they serve with “good behavior,” and SC justices can be impeached. One would think that the outright denial of clearly stated constitutional rights by a Supreme Court justice is not precisely “good behavior”–but in this day and age, such an observation would simply be dismissed as “political.”