nuts and washers

They say that Old Man Scalia was an originalist (By the way have you noticed that there are already conspiracy theories about his death.  It seems pretty obvious that the internet is a boon to conspiracy theories).  This means that he believed every word of the constitution was to be interpreted perzackly the way he thought the founding fathers thought at the time.  This is opposed, I suppose, by the guys who believe in the living constitution which is not so concerned with little details written in quill pens as they are in the spirit of what those guys wrote down, they were, after all, revolutionaries. 

Of course both theories involve interpreting the constitution, so either way you are giving yourself some leeway.  I think you could be an originalist or a believer in the living constitution and still be either liberal or conservative, but it seems like the more conservative judges call themselves originalists or strict interpreters, and the more liberal tend to claim the living constitution.  It's sort of like the way hard shell baptists and their ilk read the bible one way and liberal theologians read it another way.

Either way as you say, you can't just toss the constitution into the trash bin.  Right or wrong it is something we can kind of agree on, we can maybe bend a rule, but we can't ignore it.  I think both our ilks think we are in tune with the constitution, so that if push comes to shove and the case comes before the supremes they will decide for our side.

And they do, roughly half the time.  And the other half of the time, well they are wrong.  Here are these scholars from our finest schools who have spent years examining the law and spent days debating the case on one side and on the other side is the guy on the next barstool who couldn't name the three branches of government, and he is dead sure that the supremes are dead wrong.  Because dadgum it, he knows what's right, and what they decided ain't.

Well the law is a funny thing.  I have probably told you, because I am sure that over the course of the institute we have both told each other everything we know, that at one point I was thinking of going to law school, and in the course of that endeavor I read up on it a bit and prepared a bit for the test you have to take to get into it.  Before this I had thought that the law was like mathematics where this is this and that is that and everything can be proven true or false. 

But it is nothing like that, everything is more or less a matter of opinion, because in math we are dealing with numbers which everybody knows what they are but in the law we are dealing with words and as you know, we can't even be sure what 'is' is.

As for your genius attack, I agree that both our ilks have maybe 45 percent of the vote, and that ten percent in the middle is what you call the wishy-washers (kind of interesting the way we have nuts and washers, where are the bolts?), and some call them independents, and some call them moderates, I'm pretty sure you mean guys who could go either way (but not in that way), who vote rep in one election and dem in the other.

But you know they don't sit out elections, they decide elections.  Maybe ten percent of Americans live in purple states, and maybe ten percent of those people are washers, and these are the guys, and maybe half of them are principled thinkers, but the other half are the guys who can't name the three branches of the government, and these are the guys, roughly one percent of the population who the parties try to appeal to and who decide who the next prez, who will be appointing supreme court judges, will be.