Eminent Domain

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a letter to the Boston Herald in response to their recent "obscene gesture" article (I summarized the issue here). Scalia ripped the paper for calling his gesture obscene. He said that the flicking of his hand under his chin was meant to be dismissive, not obscene. The article explains...

To back his interpretation of the gesture, Scalia in his letter quoted from Luigi Barzini's book, "The Italians:" "The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means 'I couldn't care less. It's no business of mine. Count me out.'"

Scalia got in one final shot, which was directed simultaneously at the reporter and the politically correct forces in the country...

"From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene _ especially when made by an 'Italian jurist.' (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)," he wrote.