What "tortured reading"? The text says

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation

IOW if The Government deems a use to be in the public interest and justly compensates the owners for taking that property then the "natural meaning" is met. Thomas doesn't like this so he layers n the contemporaneous understanding of what "public use" means - just as you do. But that is a contemporaneous understanding, it is NOT a textualist reading.

QED Thomas is betraying the type of analysis he claims to use.

As for Writ of Attainder, no it wasn't "mostly about separation of powers". It was very specifically about the acts of King George who would define various colonists as "traitors to the crown" or some similare "enemy combatant" designation, appropriate their property, throw them in jail and all without due process and for an indeterminate amount of time.

IOW exactly what GWB has done on Gitmo. No "tortured reading" at all. Just plain and simple originalism. The Writ of Attaineder clause is specifically there to PRECLUDE a POTUS from holding prisoners on a prosecutorial accusation of some arbitrary threat to The Government in prison without access to Due Process. Plain and simple.

Exactly what has been done with "enemy combatants" wh are being accused of violating Geneva Conventions (ie attacking without being part of a militia or organic insurgency), imprisoned for a duration tht is up to the discretion of the POTUS. QED Writ of Attainder