Defending Dave Souter.

Seems Tim Egan of the NYTimes wants to pick up where Wanda Sykes left off...

Earlier this month, Souter showed a flash of regional chauvinism on the issue closest to his heart when he said there was no good hiking south of Massachusetts. He then described a dream he’s had every day since he announced his decision to step down: he is standing atop the highest point of New Hampshire, above timberline and looking down at the path from which he came.

Now consider Souter’s polar opposite on the Court, in manner and philosophy, the ever-combustible Justice Antonin Scalia. A father of nine — talk about a 19th-century man — Nino Scalia’s idea of a fantasy getaway involves Dick Cheney as a bunkmate in a fortress stocked with single-malts.

Scalia, remember, rode with Vice President Cheney on Air Force Two to a hunting excursion in 2004 that had all the trappings of clueless British royalty on holiday, complete with ground travel to prey in armored S.U.V.’s and sycophants at every turn who all but tracked birds by radar. It rained over several days and the ducks were scarce, giving Scalia much time to get to know the central figure in a secrecy case he would soon help to decide.

Little wonder that former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor dismissed stories of Scalia with the kind of shorthand families use for the daft uncle — “That’s just Nino.”

Or how about Clarence Thomas? He gained 100 pounds after getting his life-tenured easy chair on the Court and accepts more gifts than anyone else on the bench, according to Jeffrey Toobin’s book, “The Nine.”

By contrast, the ascetic Souter consistently listed “none” on the court’s annual gift and travel disclaimer form.

But woe to the public man who fails to maintain his own spin, leaving professional character assassins to the job. “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?

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I love this story too:

Justice William O. Douglas, no stranger to life outside the bounds of conformity, was never happier than when he was home in Goose Prairie, Wash., near the late-afternoon shadow of Mount Rainier. He once made a visitor, Justice William Rehnquist, hike up an 8,000-foot peak (these are Western mountains, pardner, cloud-scrapers), before he’d give him an evening cocktail.

Work it, work it, work it!