Hairsplitting is EXACTLY what the judiciary is supposed to do. Whereever you draw the line a hair is split, and the Judiciary's role is to draw lines. If anything this is EXACTLY what textualism and originalism require:

• What does the text say? (it places no limits on the type or duration of use)
• What was the intended limit of the clause? (To preclude the kind of "emmient domain" commandeering that the Crown was using to get out of debts by not paying any meaningful compensation).

So clearly the "textualist" and "originalist" interpretetations here do NOT serve the positions that Scalia, Thomas - and even you and I THINK should be invoked. And curiously it is Scalia and Thomas' BELIEFS that are most predictive of their rulings, not anything in the text of the US Constitution (Raich, Hamdan, Rassul, Hiibel, Terry etc. etc.)

No, any textualist would read the text, and assume that it meant what it said, rather than redefining "use" to mean "purpose."

Since "use" includes in its definitions "purpose" as a synonym, then your hair splitting is not based in the text, but in your belief in its meaning. IE in YOUR BELIEF. And that if you look at the espoused belief systems of Thomas and Scalia, they are the MOST PREDICTIVE of how they will rule. Its not just Raich, its Terry, Hiibel, Hamdan, Rassul, BushvGore, Exxon and any number of rulings going back pretty much for their whole tenure.

Now all of those are consistent with the BELIEFS of a "conservative" approach to life, but they are NOT textualist or originalist approaches. Its not just that these two paragons of originalism and texutalism are imperfect when it comes to such approaches. It is that neither textualism nor originalism provides a reliable means for predicting how Scalia or Thomas will rule - but their BELIEFS DO.

Thus they are no less "activist" than any of the "activist" judges that you and other conservatives have so decried in the past.