[Viva Le Dissention]

I'm admittedly a little unsure about what you were saying about Google, but I can say most definitely that there was not an ad hominem attack towards Scalia.

I didn't take a personal attack to try to disprove a position--an ad hominem attack would be, for example, that "handcuffing a prisoner to a hitching post, et al., should be unconstitutional because Scalia thinks it should be allowed, and Scalia smokes crack, and we can't believe anything a crack smoker says." (Disclaimer: I am not claiming that Scalia smokes crack--this was just simply a personal attack that came to mind. I use it only as an example.)

All I was pointing out was that Scalia found the practice of chaining a prisoner to a hitching post all day in 100+ degree heat without food or water well within the government's right.

Off the subject, although I believe that Scalia usually finds the Bill of Rights a cumbersome inhibitor to the government's iron fist, I enjoy his opinions, as they are unusually witty and generally the most entertaining to read of all the Justices--so he's got that going for him, which is nice.

[AmishDude]

Strike one: You lied about your political and ideological affiliations.

Strike two: You made me look up a nongermane case.

Want to go for strike three?

As to the non-sequitur you mentioned about the hitching post:

1. I am not sure why you mentioned Scalia (unless you wanted to be ad hominem), because Thomas wrote the dissent, Scalia and Rhenquist joined.
2. I scanned the dissent. It's an interesting read and a careful and delicate treating of the facts, but the bottom line is: They sued the wrong guys. God forbid Thomas, Scalia and Rhenquist pay attention to the actual case at hand instead of throwing their judicial weight around.

[AmishDude]

And be sure to check out the footnotes on that dissent!