U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Jennifer Rubin, a never Trumper onetime conservative Washington Post columnist spoke to some Law professor ethics types and she said re Alito and the court

Durbin, who has dawdled long enough, should put on the floor a mandatory ethics reform bill, which Painter suggests should include an inspector general for the court

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/alito-flag-ethics-supreme-court/

A good, detailed article on what a piece of shit hack Alito is.

a mandatory ethics reform bill, which Painter suggests should include an inspector general for the court

This is broadly a good idea. Congress could certainly pass a bill to impose a mandatory code of ethics on the supreme court justices and fund an inspector general to oversee compliance. If it ever came about, the existence of such a code would be helpful, in that it would provide a neutral yardstick by which to determine a justice's fitness to serve and somewhat de-politicize the act of making that determination.

But the separation of powers ensures that the only mechanism for enforcement of that mandatory code of ethics would still be impeachment and in real terms a successful impeachment and removal would be no easier to accomplish than under present conditions. Do I have to cite Trump's two impeachments, or McConnell's stonewalling Garland while ramming through Coney Barrett to prove this point?

In Trump's case the Senate's vote to acquit can be indirectly redressed by Trump's term ending and the electorate voting to reject rather than reinstate him. In Alito's case, there ain't no redress. He's in until he resigns, dies, or is impeached.

If Trump wins, it’s because of deliberate decisions by those in power to refuse to act because of “norms” or “comity” or whatever.

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

ugh, a Christian Nationalist flag

Doesn't he realize that a plurality of his fellow insurrectionists don't think Catholics are Christians? Does he think he'll survive the cull if they get the America they want?

Ellie Mystal , Justice correspondent for the Nation says that Dem Senator Durbin will soon be explaining why his own wife put up a white flag of surrender over their house

Chris Geidner in his Substack is hoping Justice Roberts will pressure Alito to recuse from J6 and Immunity decisions.

In 6-3 decision, written by Alito, Supreme Court upholds South Carolina's congressional map, reversing a lower court decision that struck down the map for racial gerrymandering . Conservative justices raise the bar to prove racial gerrymandering claims

not sure you want Alito writing these opinions right now

https://x.com/mjs_DC/status/1793647147994513760

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/supreme-court-south-carolina-district-black-voting-power/index.html

so Slobbo's cool with overturning Brown

https://x.com/mjs_DC/status/1793650522916102283

Thomas still under the delusion that he will ever be anything but a useful racial slur to the gaggle of racist neanderthals who aid and abet this kind of fascism

Thomas still under the delusion that he will ever be anything but a useful racial slur to the gaggle of racist neanderthals who aid and abet this kind of fascism

If you read Corey Robin's book on him, Thomas is under no delusions at all. He's a black nationalist who will take what he can get out of white people, but doesn't trust them at all.

he believes in the Second Amendment because after their experiences during Reconstruction he thought Black men need to arm themselves.

all that just makes his whole thing make LESS sense

well i imagine it makes him feel that he is the laughing at them tbh

Robin's thesis may be descriptive of young Clarence Thomas but for the past thirty years or so his decisions seem much more based on "Will this make rich people give me free stuff?"

He mentions that too.

He seems to rewrite US history based on how he perceives the criticism he has personally received . Plus by ignoring all the assistance he has gotten.

If you read Corey Robin's book on him, Thomas is under no delusions at all. He's a black nationalist who will take what he can get out of white people, but doesn't trust them at all.

He has no interest in Black people. We're all alone, to quote Boz Scaggs, except when billionaires pay for your trailer.

The Alitos had a big ol’ freak session in their driveway in front of a Washington Post reporter on the day of Biden’s inauguration, and the paper inscrutably decided not to run it

In 2021 the Washington Post's then Supreme Court reporter was there but didn't run a story because he accepted Mrs Alito's take that this was just about her and a dispute with neighbors! Oy veh, that's terrible. So now the Washington Post tells on themselves about it in 2024.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/alito-flag-martha-ann-washington-post/

Democracy dies in "The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because..."

Chris Geidner in his Substack is hoping Justice Roberts will pressure Alito to recuse from J6 and Immunity decisions.

Hope in one hand . . .

Gift link in tweet

NEW

The Washington Post found out about the inverted flag flying over Justice Alito’s home back in 2021.

A WaPo reporter went to the Alito residence on Inauguration Day and had a tense encounter with Justice Alito and his wife Martha-Ann.

The Post says it didn’t report on… pic.twitter.com/Pf2z3lV602

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 25, 2024

I dunno I feel a Supreme Court justice and wife flipping out at neighbors should have been news.

I feel like people should maybe regularly drop in at the Alito abode.

Perhaps every night

Indefinitely

I love the scene from Alito’s confirmation hearing when his wife came down with white fragility:

The distraught wife of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito broke down in tears and fled his confirmation hearings yesterday after Sen. Ted Kennedy led Democrats in a furious bid to tar her husband as a bigot.

Martha-Ann Bomgardner was overcome with emotion after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) lambasted Kennedy for trying to smear the nominee as “a closet bigot.”

“I am sorry that you have had to go through this,” Graham said.

As she sat right behind her husband, Bomgardner’s lips trembled and she wiped away tears. Her sister-in-law Rosemary – herself a top lawyer – put a reassuring arm around her, but Bomgardner hastily fled the room.

The hearing exploded in anger when Kennedy tried to link Alito to a racist and anti-feminist article written by a member of a group to which he belonged over 30 years ago, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP).

His voicing rising, Kennedy demanded to know if Alito shared the belief that blacks and Latinos “just don’t seem to know their place.”

And the kicker:

In another flap, Biden showed up in a white baseball cap blaring “PRINCETON” to question Alito about CAP. “I want to, kind of, set the record straight on Princeton,” said Biden. A day earlier, he’d claimed “I didn’t even like Princeton,” only to have old news reports show he’d once said he wanted all his kids to go there.

More:

The police in Fairfax County, Va., received an unusual phone call on Feb. 15, 2021. A young couple claimed they were being harassed by the wife of a Supreme Court justice.

“Somebody in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop,” said the 36-year-old man making the complaint, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times. The officer on the line responded that there was little the police could do: Yelling was not a crime.

The couple placed the call after a series of encounters with Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., that had gone from uneasy to ugly. That day, Emily Baden, whose boyfriend (now husband) contacted the police, had traded accusations with Mrs. Alito, who lived down the street. In a recent interview, Ms. Baden admitted to calling her a lewd epithet.

The clash between the wife of a conservative Supreme Court justice and the couple, who were in their 30s, liberal and proud of it, played out over months on a bucolic block in Alexandria. It was the kind of shouting match among private citizens, at the height of tensions over the 2020 election, that might have happened in any mixed political community in America. But three years later, that neighborhood spat — which both sides said began over an anti-Trump sign — has taken on far greater proportions.

Mrs. Alito ran toward their car and yelled something they did not understand. The couple continued driving, they said, and as they passed the Alito home again to exit the cul-de-sac, Mrs. Alito appeared to spit toward the vehicle.

Ms. Baden admitted to calling her a lewd epithet.

Hmmmm. I'm betting it was spelled C-U-N-T.

See You First Monday

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/24/biden-alito-controversy-silent-00159968

Biden has publicly warned that Republicans are undermining democratic norms and threatening its institutions. But he is reluctant to extend that argument to the judicial branch, aides say, fearful it could be cast as politically motivated and undermine his broader effort to portray himself as a champion for strengthening democratic institutions. They believe it’s crucial to maintain a clear contrast with Donald Trump, who has readily attacked an independent judiciary for political gain.

“The central pushback should come from the legislative branch, and not the executive branch,” said Anthony Coley, a former senior official in the Biden Justice Department, arguing that Congress has wide-ranging investigatory authority. “That’s the right place where we should be seeing aggressive oversight, and right now they are not meeting the moment.”

On the Hill, however, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin has resisted calls to hold a hearing into the matter. “I don’t think that’s going to achieve anything,” the Illinois Democrat told POLITICO of calling for Alito to appear, indicating a preference instead for the chamber to consider ethics legislation for the Supreme Court that has already passed his committee. Durbin on Friday sought a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts to discuss the matter.

yeah if theres one thing we all know Joe Biden for it's strengthening democratic institutions. like who am I Hank Hill

And Durbin who never followed through on subpoenaing Leo from the Federalist Society, or Thomas' billionaire buddy Crow, and who was already turned down once by Chief Justice Roberts for a committee hearing , is going to try for a meeting with Roberts....

Biden, like Obama, is a fucking coward who is always obsessed with optics and being the nice guy. That shit doesn’t work today

Thomas and Alito should be out of a job by this point, how egregious does this shit need to be

The Wall Street Journal board editorial is fine with what he's doing:

We’ve discussed those flag cases in previous editorials as irrelevant to the Justice’s views on cases before the Court. But that didn’t stop the Democrats from asserting that the flags create “reasonable doubt as to his impartiality in certain proceedings, thereby requiring his disqualification” from cases involving Donald Trump.

I was paywalled from more of this

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s husband is representing Fox Corporation — Fox News’ parent company — in a defamation lawsuit, according to court records reviewed by Rolling Stone.

new 2024 paywalled story

Coney Barrett tries to hide from the public whom her lawyer husband represents

2022 article - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/29/justices-spouses-conflict-of-interest-disclosures-00059549

"A flag is simply a rectangle of cloth or fabric with a design on it - and we fail to see how a piece of fabric can pose a threat to the independence of the judiciary"

Try burning it and see what happens

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/29/supreme-court-alito-recuse-flag-jan-6/

Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. announced Wednesday that he will not recuse himself from Jan. 6-related cases at the Supreme Court after Democratic lawmakers questioned whether he could be impartial following reports that an upside-down flag flew at his home in the weeks after the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

In a letter to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Alito said that flag and a second, religious-themed flag were raised by his wife, without his knowledge, and the incidents do not meet the conditions for recusal outlined in the Supreme Court’s code of conduct.

Alito disclosed for the first time that he was not aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to his attention and that his wife initially resisted taking it down.

“As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” Alito wrote in the letter to Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

Alito said in the letter that the second flag was also raised by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito.

“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote.

Cucked by his wife in a flag beef

His full letter is linked in the article. He doesn't address the argument of many legal ethics scholars that his wife's free speech has to take a back seat when it impedes the appearance of impartiality for him

“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he wrote.

I read this and could see him in my imagination, making his customary frowning "I am filled with disgust" face.

https://i.imgur.com/X3dyJk4.gif