much criticized by not just more liberal justices, but also by conservatives. richard pozner essentially said you re cherry picking historical data and making stuff up. he said the range of his tor ral references in the majority opinion is breathtaking, but it is not evidence of disinterested historical inquiry. it is evidence of the ability of well staffed courts to produce snow jobs. so is scalia really using this, you know, very careful process of originalism or is he manipulating originalism to get to the political result that he ultimately wants. that s a good question. scalia sees himself as a good judge of historians as well as history. so he is looking at the kind of history that s sent to him in the legal briefs. and he is picking the pieces that will get him the result that he wants. what he wanted there was, in the heller case, was an individual right of self-defense. that right of self-defense isn t in the second amendment and