'Justice' Alito's wife did it

[ex-khobar Andy]

During January 2021, while SCOTUS was considering the 2020 election results and whether to intercede (they didn't although C Thomas dissented loudly), an upside-down US flag was displayed outside Alito's home in Alexandria VA. Apparently it was, according to neighbors, up for several days. An inverted flag has long been used by the military and others as a distress sign but it came into prominence as the symbol of 'Stop the Steal' just after that election.

"“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The [New York] Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”" Apparently one of the neighbors had placed a "Expletive deleted" Trump yard sign. I'd be curious to know how this was personally insulting to Mrs Alito unless of course she has a second Stormy-lite career and is a wannabe Trump fucker. It all makes sense once you stop to think about it and look for a rationale.

So that's OK then. I bet Mrs Alito and Ginny get on very well.

I thought Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were bad enough. But the stink of a direct threat to democracy does not stick to them nearly as much as it does to 'Justice' Thomas and 'Justice' Alito.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/j ... -flag.html

[Sue U]

Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh are Exhibits A, B and C for the argument as to why we need a 13-member Supreme Court.

[ex-khobar Andy]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... tributions

According to the Guardian, Judge Merchan who is overseeing Trump's Stormy Daniels trial in NY donated $35 to the Democratic Party in 2020. And apparently the NY Commission of Judicial Conduct says that all such donations are prohibited political activity.

In much of the country Judges run for office as Dems or Republicans - how is Merchan's $35 in some way indicative of bias? I don't understand. And obviously it pales in comparison with the six figure rewards Thomas and Alito seem to have procured for themselves.

[ex-khobar Andy]

And now it seems that Alito was flying the 'Appeal to Heaven' flag outside his beach house. NYT has several pics; and makes the case that this flag - which has an honorable history through George Washington and John Locke, signifying defiance - has become a MAGA - Stop the Steal - Jan 6 symbol.

Alito should be toast. He should have been toast long ago of course. I don't know whether he is blaming this one on the missus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/j ... eaven.html

[BoSoxGal]

The Supreme Court is a joke anymore. Alito doesn’t belong there, Thomas is deeply corrupted, the three Trump appointed are all low down dirty dog liars. I have lost all respect.

[Big RR]

Sue--of course, even with 13 members we could have Trump appointing another 4 justices next year.

[Sue U]

Sue--of course, even with 13 members we could have Trump appointing another 4 justices next year.

Well it should have been done 3 years ago or at least right after the Dobbs decision:

And because the Court's decision is so far out of step with super-majority opinion in this country, it is probably a good time to introduce the Judiciary Reform Act of 2022, which among other things should expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices (one for each federal appellate court) and include an enforceable code of ethics for them.

And BTW, my comment above was more than a year before the Clarence Thomas-Harlan Crow story broke.

[Econoline]

[Sue U]

[Sue U]

O hai, Sam, if there is not even an appearance of bias or impropriety in the flags affair, why are you telling Senators such terrible lies about it?

COURTS
Alito Refuses To Recuse In Trump Case As
Reporters Catch Him In Yet Another Lie
It's not so much that Sam Alito is a liar, it's that he's so bad at it.

By JOE PATRICE
on May 29, 2024 at 3:15 PM

Sam Alito just wrote a letter to Senators Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse to inform them that, despite hoisting a “Stop the Steal” symbol over his house in the aftermath of January 6, he sees no reason to recuse himself from the pending case to declare Donald Trump’s objectively false “Stop the Steal” claims grant him absolute immunity from prosecution.

Alito begins by noting that recusal is necessary when “the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties,” before announcing that “an unbiased and reasonable person” requires “having fallen off a turnip truck yesterday.”

The letter reiterates his flagging claim that his wife and only his wife is responsible for flying the flag upside down and that she intended it as a “sign of distress” despite the ubiquity of the flag at that specific moment in time as an emblem of support for the insurrection. As excuses go, this is a lot like trying to spin flying a swastika in 2024 as just an ancient Hindu symbol, but it’s all he’s got.

And while it’s all nigh impossible to believe, he bolsters this claim by really leaning into the “distress” his wife suffered.

My wife’s reasons for flying the flag are not relevant for present purposes, but I note that she was greatly distressed at the time due, in large part, to a very nasty neighborhood dispute in which I had no involvement. A house on the street displayed a sign attacking her personally, and a man who was living in the house at the time trailed her all the way down the street and berated her in my presence using foul language, including what I regard as the vilest epithet that can be addressed to a woman.

The justice noted to Fox News that this incident led to police intervention. Unfortunately, his narrative was foiled by basic research and linear time:



The basis of this “distress” excuse took place weeks later? If only Alito took a second to check the Times before committing to this falsehood in a letter to the Senate. Oh well!

Alas, this isn’t the first time Alito got himself tripped up by an easily checked lie. When ProPublica revealed that Alito took a private jet trip to an all-expense paid luxury resort provided by wealthy conservatives with business before the Court, he wrote to the Wall Street Journal that he barely knew Paul Singer, the man who put him on his private plane.

Except, Above the Law had reported on Alito and Singer hanging out at Federalist Society events years earlier:

Justice Alito was introduced by Paul Singer, the founder of the Elliott Associates hedge fund…. Singer, a personal friend of Justice Alito, gave the typically generous introduction….

Apparently he’d forgotten that reporters go to FedSoc events and, you know, write about them.

I am confident that a reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that the events recounted above do not meet the applicable standard for recusal. I am therefore required to reject your request.

Here he exhibits willful blindness to what “motivated by political or ideological considerations” means. Liberal critics obviously see the worst in the flag story… but conservative apologists are just as motivated by political and ideological considerations. When ideological fellow travelers are trying desperately to invent more credible excuses because they understand the justice’s ACTUAL attempts to explain himself are failing, it’s a conflict dominated by political or ideological considerations warranting recusal.

Justice Ginsburg called Donald Trump “phony” and would absolutely have needed to recuse herself if it turned into a Bush v. Gore situation. And that falls several rungs below “displaying a known sign of insurrectionist sympathies.”

In distancing himself from the Appeal to Heaven flag — a banner that faded into obscurity until Christian nationalists made it their symbol — Alito, a former Army officer in the Signal Corps, explains that he doesn’t actually much care for flags:

My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.

What’s vexing about his claim that she’s just an avid vexillologist, is it runs headlong into his insistence that she has no political motivation for flying any of these flags. She’s totally obsessed with flags… also she has no idea what they mean and just kind of flies things she finds pretty doesn’t really resonate.

As I said in reference to the other flag event, my wife is an independently minded private citizen. She makes her own decisions, and I honor her right to do so.

Sam Alito… noted feminist.

But, seriously, if the excuse is that she doesn’t do any of this for political reasons, then why does that matter? You don’t need to defend her First Amendment right to political speech if you don’t think it’s political speech. There’s no advantage to arguing in the alternative! Pick a story and stick with it!

It’s just such lazy dissembling. Maybe life tenure just invites complacency in everything.

Appropriately-named source: Above the Law

[Big RR]

I didn't think it was possible, but I have even less respect for Alito after this; somehow I doubt many of his defenders would as sanguine if another of the justices had hung and anti Trump flag outside the residence (even if their wife or husband did so). This is just getting ridiculous.

[Sue U]

[Scooter]

[Big RR]

Just saw this.

[liberty]

Alito's wife can do whatever she wants. The justice has no control over his wife; it is unfair to blame him for what she does. A man does not own his wife she is not his property. I can't stop my wife from doing things that I know are bad for her; I nag but that has only a limited effect.

An upside-down flag means a situation of distress and the nation is in distress; I may start flying mine like that. However, I think a more powerful symbol might be the American flag ripped from corner to corner with only half of it flown to signify that we are two nations forced to live together.

[Econoline]

You may or may not remember this, lib...

But...

Flying the stars-and-stripes upside-down as a signal that the nation was in distress/danger was also a symbol used quite a bit back in the '60s by the dirty, draft-dodging, hippies protesting the war and LBJ and the draft... and the napalm... and the killing of the Vietnamese people... and the police... and—oh, I'm sure you must remember this one—the Democratic Convention in Chicago!!!

(So we'll just wait for it to come back around on the guitar here, and sing it when it does. Here it comes.)*

Hey, bring your flag and your gas mask up here to Lake Michigan, and we could take a stroll down Memory Lane this summer...

*apologies to Arlo Guthrie and Alice (remember Alice? It's a song about Alice)

[Big RR]

Alito's wife can do whatever she wants. The justice has no control over his wife; it is unfair to blame him for what she does. A man does not own his wife she is not his property. I can't stop my wife from doing things that I know are bad for her; I nag but that has only a limited effect.

Perhaps, but nothing prevents him from taking the flag down either--it's his house as well and if he does not agree with the political sentiment he can choose to take it down. My wife and I don't always agree on political matters (even though we usually do), but we are also aware of that fact and do not do things like put political signs on our property. Indeed, I think this would be even more important when one of the spouses is a judge (or a supreme court justice) who has a duty to keep an appearance of neutrality in political matters (to say the very least). It's all part of being in a partnership.

Blaming one's spouse is just asinine. This is not like her wearing a Stop the Steal button; it's more like doing an overt act that can, correctly or not, be attributed to him. I think he's smart enough that would have taken the flags down if he disagreed with their implied message.

[Bicycle Bill]

Hey, bring your flag and your gas mask up here to Lake Michigan, and we could take a stroll down Memory Lane this summer...

You ARE aware, of course, that both conventions are being held on the shores of Lake Michigan this year?

The Democrats have their convention in the Windy City from August 19 through 22, while the Trumpanistas will be meeting a month earlier in Beer City (Milwaukee), a hundred miles or so north, in the middle of July (the 15th through the 18th).

Place your bets now as to which one will be the bigger shit show.

-"BB"-

[Scooter]

[liberty]

You may or may not remember this, lib...

But...

Flying the stars-and-stripes upside-down as a signal that the nation was in distress/danger was also a symbol used quite a bit back in the '60s by the dirty, draft-dodging, hippies protesting the war and LBJ and the draft... and the napalm... and the killing of the Vietnamese people... and the police... and—oh, I'm sure you must remember this one—the Democratic Convention in Chicago!!!

(So we'll just wait for it to come back around on the guitar here, and sing it when it does. Here it comes.)*

Hey, bring your flag and your gas mask up here to Lake Michigan, and we could take a stroll down Memory Lane this summer...

*apologies to Arlo Guthrie and Alice (remember Alice? It's a song about Alice)

That could happen; I still have a $1000 set aside for a bucket project, but Witching has mentioned that she would like to take a trip back to Okinawa. However, I don't believe that two people could fly to Okinawa and back for the weekend for $1000. I might look into it.