House of Eratosthenes

Me, I’m just shaking my head and giggling. Dionne has just ‘fessed up to writing about the decision without reading it, and the poor bastard doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s done. But to anyone who’s so much as skimmed through it, it’s crystal-clear.

Dionne writes…apparently, thinking he’s making a great point, and playing the English language like a virtuoso plays a fine Stradivarius violin…

Conservative justices claim that they defer to local authority. Not in this case. They insist that political questions should be decided by elected officials. Not in this case. They argue that they pay careful attention to the precise words of the Constitution. Not in this case. [emphasis mine]

I’m rewording slightly, here, my comments to Phil’s post (pending moderation there as of this writing):

Um, E.J., Justice Scalia began to parse out the exact wording in the Constitution on p. 2 (5 in the Adobe PDF file), and is concerned with absolutely nothing else until p. 27 (30) when he turns to relevant historical events. He even has footnotes in his analysis in which he respectfully deals with opposing viewpoints of the language.

I struggle to remember the last time I’ve seen so few words in the Constitution, analyzed by so many words in the decision that labors to fairly and accurately interpret them. Each significant noun and verb is subject to cool, reasoned scrutiny about what it might possibly mean and what it could be reasonably interpreted to mean. The reading within those 26 pages, as one might expect, ends up being a little dry; so I suppose it’s understandable you couldn’t get around to grinding through it — except, that is, for your wanting to write about it, in which case I would have expected you to at least crack it open.

Now you’re nailed. How embarrassing for you.

How did a talented, intelligent guy like Dionne get here? By being overly concerned with what others are thinking, and trying too hard to be a loyal member of a group. From there the words “The Constitution,” seemingly unambiguous, take on a life of their own. That phrase comes to represent the intents not of the Founding Fathers as they signed a specific document, but of liberals in good standing.

So he ends up bitching at Scalia for not being a good liberal. But as he delivers his snotty lecture, behind him the trained eye can see the DC v. Heller decision lying on his desk, with the seals intact, under a thin layer of dust. Dionne didn’t read it. Dionne didn’t skim it. Dionne knows not of what he speaks. Dionne’s opinion is utterly worthless, and he’s the last one to know how much.

But where it really sucks to be Dionne? A year or two from now, DC v. Heller will be a part of law that you will be expected to know if you’re a first-year law student. It does what Supreme Court decisions are supposed to do — end the debate, not with phony aristocratic authority, but with reasoned scrutiny and logic. It’s settled, and the nation will by then have moved on…and Dionne will be hoping-against-hope that the law students will somehow remain ignorant of his ignorant comment on it.

If this were an isolated article, it wouldn’ve been so bad. It just happened to be the last straw for me the other day.

People go out and read this stuff and eat these instructions to believe like ice cream. And then they go “Rock the Vote”.
- philmon | 06/30/2008 @ 10:18

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Dionne Didn’t Read the DecisionSunday, June 29th, 2008

Dionne Didn’t Read the Decision
Sunday, June 29th, 2008