"What would be the particular set of circumstances that would make it legal and constitutional to torture YOU, sir?"
Mukasey gave us the first clue. There is no answer to this question that is not bullshit. The hard part for the "bipartisanally inclined" in Congress or the media is to keep pressing the point home.
Torture is a slippery slope, perhaps the canonical ur-example of slippery slopes. There is no "bright line". Make the case. Press the hypothetical cases. There is NO POSSIBLE ARGUMENT defending torture that will stand up to scrutiny, and if the questioner can keep making the questioned fall back onto "well, it's different when you're talking about ME!", then the hypocrisy can be made naked for all to see. You can't be intellectually honest and make a clear case that there is a certain class of people who it is acceptable to torture, and not eventually admit that this class of poeple couldn't be broadened to include YOU.
I'm not sure who I'm pitching this to. Who gets to make people like Scalia and Hayden sit in front of them and justify their positions? The idealist in me says that it's the duty of all fair-minded, serious lovers of justice and democracy to make the enablers of tyranny squirm and sputter under the hot lights. The realist in me will cheer if we can just get someone like KO to get some good shots in. The optimist in me hopes that my impassioned and pithy statement of the problem and a possible remedy will be the catalyst of an overwhelming movement, and the pessimist in me just wants to buy a bottle of gin.
How do we beat the fscking screwheads once and for all?