Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.

Toughened or coarsened by their worldly lives, the other dissenters could shrug and move on, but Souter couldn't. His whole life was being a judge.

He saw the Constitution as the vehicle to keep ecumenical passions in check.

Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.

He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.

He denounced self-pity and pitied himself.

The result always mattered more than the rhetoric.

In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life she for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patricia Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother.