The Supreme Court Justice/Hiker

Tough Timothy Egan of The New York Times reveals what the right-wing D.C. establishment really thinks of retiring Chief Justice David Souter...that he's weird because he likes to walk in the mountains.

Souter’s been painted as a strange, little man stranded in the wrong century.... At his 200-year-old family farmhouse — badly in need of a paint job, as numerous observers have noted — he has no e-mail access, no answering machine, a television that’s never been plugged in. And, strangest of all: he’s leaving one of the most powerful positions on earth because he wants more time to hike in his beloved New Hampshire mountains.

To many, this last assertion is proof of his advanced eccentricity. But let’s give him his due: anyone who has climbed every one of New Hampshire’s 4,000-foot peaks, as the springy 69-year-old Souter reportedly has done, knows a kind of exhilaration that his black-robed colleagues in the tidal basin will never know.

How strange is it, really, to want another taste of the savage winds atop Mount Washington before the knees go bad?

In contrast. Egan notes, the supposedly principled, tough Antonin Scalia went on luxury hunting/slaughter trips with Dick Cheney in Air Force Two while considering huge cases in which the VP was directly involved. And Scalia's pal Clarence Thomas has gained no less than 100 pounds while on the bench, and taken more gifts than anyone else on the court.

Then Egan drops the hammer on the current leadership of the GOP:

“David Souter’s a girl,” said Rush Limbaugh in 2006. “Everyone knows that. What’s the big deal? I’m talking about attitudinally here, folks.”

O.K., a show of hands: Who’s the bigger man: the prescription-drug abuser with the cigar stuffed in his mouth, or the buff older gentleman puffing his way up one of the more strenuous climbs in New England?

Did Souter's love for the land turn him against the party that put him in power? And what does that say about the GOP? No hikers or nature lovers need apply? 

Excuse me if I'm obvious, but before Souter goes back to hiking, someone should thank him for standing up for what he believes in -- the real world of rock, water, trees, and sky.

David Souter: apostate to the right, hero to the land. [pic from the Seattle Times story]