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OPINION

Alito’s Opinion in a 2022 Christian Flag Case Flies in the Face of His Recusal Refusal

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Even before his insurrectionist flags scandal, Justice Samuel Alito was already facing ethics questions over his refusal to recuse in other cases, his association with a billionaire businessman, and his non-disclosure of luxury travel gifts. After weeks of damning reports about flags associated with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy flying over not one but two of his homes, the Bush 43-appointed jurist in an indignant letter to Senate Democrats on Wednesday again refused to recuse, this time from any cases involving the attack on the nation’s capitol, or from cases involving the instigator of those assaults on the seat of government and American democracy itself, Donald Trump.

Justice Alito’s defense in his letter boils down to this sentence: “My wife is fond of flying flags.”

In his letter, Alito wrote for the first insurrectionist flag, an inverted American flag carried by some of the criminals who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, flown over the Alito’s Virginia home just days later, he was not just unaware, he suggested he was legally unable to take it down because he co-owns the house with his wife, and she flew the flag.

RELATED: ‘Liar’: Critics Question Alito’s Integrity After His Insurrection Flag Story Disintegrates

On the second insurrectionist flag, the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, associated not only with the insurrection but with Christian nationalists and dominionists, the Supreme Court justice also defers to his spouse, because the New Jersey house it was flying over, he wrote, was purchased with his wife’s inheritance.

Alito does not end his defense there.

After explaining some of the reasons his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, chose to fly the flags, he continues his defense, writing: “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.”

On Thursday, journalist Chris Geidner, who writes about legal issues, declared, “Sam Alito believes you — and, perhaps, his colleagues — are stupid.”

“Alito lashed out in defiance,” Geidner wrote, detailing nine “demeaning quotes” from Alito’s letter.

But there’s another issue at play.

Justice Alito’s own opinion from a 2022 Supreme Court case, resurfaced Wednesday night by a social media user (below).

READ MORE: ‘No Moral Compass’: Legal Experts Call for Intervention After Alito Refuses to Recuse

In 2019, as NCRM reported, Liberty Counsel, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups, sued the City of Boston on behalf of its client to allow a different Christian flag to be flown at City Hall. Its client was Hal Shurtleff, the director and co-founder of Camp Constitution, a group that claims its mission is to “enhance understanding of our Judeo-Christian moral heritage,” and “the genius of our United States Constitution.”

It also says its mission is to “expose some of the abuses and perversions that have brought our nation and economy so far down.”

The case made it to the Supreme Court, and in 2022, Shurtleff won. In his concurring opinion, Justice Alito had a different take on what a reasonable person would think when seeing a flag being flown.

“As the Court rightly notes, ‘[a] passerby on Cambridge Street’ confronted with a flag flanked by government flags standing just outside the entrance of Boston’s seat of government would likely conclude that all of those flags ‘conve[y] some message on the government’s behalf.’ ”

He also noted, “The government can always disavow any messages that might be mistakenly attributed to it.”

According to Alito’s letter, no “reasonable person” who saw those two flags flying at his two homes would associate them, and the Alitos, with the insurrection, or Christian dominionism, and thus here is no need for his recusal.

In his 2022 opinion, a “passerby” would conclude the owner of the flagpole was conveying a message, but the flagpole owner could “disavow” those messages.

As Geidner notes, “Alito believes you — and, perhaps, his colleagues — are stupid.”

Clearly, many Americans, and certainly top Democrats including the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a top advocate of court reform, have equated the flying of those flags to indicate Alito’s support for the insurrection, or at least the appearance of it.

“By displaying the upside-down and ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flags outside his homes, Justice Alito actively engaged in political activity, failed to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and failed to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary,” Durbin and Whitehouse wrote. “He also created reasonable doubt about his impartiality and his ability to fairly discharge his duties in cases related to the 2020 presidential election and January 6th attack on the Capitol. His recusal in these matters is both necessary and required.”

A social media user dug up and posted the Alito opinion in the 2022 Christian flag case, eliciting this comment from professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, MSNBC’s Joyce Vance:

See the social media post above or at this link.

READ MORE: Supreme Court ‘Puppetmaster’ Slammed Over Report He’s Flying Alito’s ‘Theocratic’ Flag Again

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OPINION

Hegseth Successfully Gaslights on Women in ‘Combat’

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8 hours ago

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December 10, 2024

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He’s been called the “least qualified nominee in American history,” and has insisted to reporters that his confirmation battle will not be played out in the press, but Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, after multiple appearances before the cameras, appears to be gaining ground on what some assumed last week was a nomination that was dead in the water.

Hegseth has put to use his decade of experience as a Fox News host and leveraged his ties with his former employer to turn the ship around.

In addition to charges of being “wholly unqualified,” Hegseth is attempting to overcome numerous damning allegations, including tattoos that reflect an affinity for Christian nationalism, alleged “aggressive drunkenness,” possible alcohol intoxication on the job, alleged sexual assault of a woman who attended a Republican conference with her husband and children and says she was trapped by Hegseth in his room, and alleged financial mismanagement of two charities that support veterans.

He is also trying to change the accurate perception that he opposes women in combat roles. Women have been in combat roles in the U.S. Armed Forces since 2015. But Hegseth has long been opposed to women in combat.

READ MORE: ‘USA Is a Threat’: Canadians Slam ‘Bully’ Trump’s ‘Arrogant’ Mockery of ‘Governor Trudeau’

Last month, Hegseth took heat after declaring, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” and that “men in those positions are more capable.”

“Rather than fight, women are best suited to ‘carry the banner of Christian love’ into war as nurses and support staff members, Hegseth writes,” opinion columnist Carlos Lozada reported at The New York Times last week, citing passages from Hegseth’s book. “Women’s physical shortcomings compared with male warriors — in terms of bone density, muscle mass and lung capacity — would make the U.S. military ‘softer’ and easier to defeat. He also emphasizes that women are naturally ‘life givers,’ so do we really want to train them to become killers? Besides, if men grow accustomed to treating women as equal targets in wartime, he reasons, ‘then you will be hard-pressed to ask them to treat women differently at home.'”

Even top news outlets and political pundits appear to have been hoodwinked after Hegseth’s appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” Monday night.

Telling Sean Hannity he had a “great” meeting with U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Monday, the fast-talking Hegseth launched into apparently pre-scripted remarks (video below):

“I mean, people don’t really know this. I’ve known Senator Ernst for over ten years. I knew her when she was a state senator, running to be the first female combat veteran, and we support her in that effort and have continued to, because, you get, you get into these meetings and and you get, you get to listen to senators as an amazing advise and consent process, and you hear how thoughtful and serious and substantive they are on these key issues that they pertain to our Defense Department, and Joni Ernst is front and center on that, so able to have phone calls and meetings time and time again to talk over the issues is really, really important.”

“And the fact that she’s willing to support me through this process means a lot, and I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don’t support women in the military.”

“Some of our greatest warriors, our best warriors out there are women, who who serve raised their right hand to defend this country, and love our nation, want to defend that flag, and they do it every single day around the globe. So I’m not presuming anything, but after President Trump asked me to be his secretary of defense, should I get the opportunity to do that, I look forward to being a secretary for all our warriors, men and women, for the amazing contributions they make in our military.”

READ MORE: ‘I Love His Charisma’: Republican Lauds ‘Man of Integrity’ Hegseth Who Will ‘Get Rid of DEI’

What Hegseth did was change the framing of the controversy.

Hegseth isn’t under fire for saying he doesn’t want women in the military, he is under fire for saying he does not believe women are capable of serving in combat—even after nearly a decade of them doing so.

And yet, that’s exactly what he said on Monday, when he conflated “warriors” with combat soldiers, saying, “I also want an opportunity here to clarify comments that have been misconstrued that I somehow don’t support women in the military.”

And he’s getting help from the media.

Here’s CBS News on Tuesday morning, almost using his words as their own reporting: “now clarifying comments he made that women should not serve in military combat roles.”

His “clarification” did not state he now believes women should serve in combat roles.

NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday published a report on YouTube titled, “Pete Hegseth appears to reverse views on women in combat.”

David Axelrod successfully served as Barack Obama’s chief strategist for both of his presidential campaigns, and as a White House Senior Advisor to the President. Now a CNN senior political analyst, here’s what he wrote on Tuesday:

“Watching Hegseth proclaim his appreciation for women in combat, months after denouncing the idea of women in combat, is reminiscent of the SCOTUS nominees who told skeptical senators that Roe v. Wade was ‘settled law.'”

And while he is correct about the justices, the only woman he proclaimed his appreciation for being in combat was Senator Ernst, who largely holds the key to his confirmation.

Watch Hegseth’s “Hannity” interview and the other videos above, or all at this link.

READ MORE: ‘You Have to’: Trump Confirms Plan to Deport US Citizens With Undocumented Parents

 

 

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OPINION

SCOTUS Ethics Code Debate Split Liberal and Conservative Justices Amid ‘Legitimacy Crisis’

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1 week ago

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December 3, 2024

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In 2005, President George W. Bush’s nominee, John Roberts, became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Five years later, just over one quarter of the country (27%) disapproved of him. By last year, that disapproval number had risen to nearly half the nation: 46%.

Since 2021, Gallup reports, the Supreme Court’s disapproval rating has consistently remained in the mid to upper 50s—a roughly ten-point increase compared to the previous decade. The majority of Americans have an apparent growing dissatisfaction with a court that wields ultimate authority while becoming increasingly secretive and activist on some of the nation’s most consequential issues.

While the Supreme Court’s job is not to make decisions based on popularity contests, it relies on the other two branches of the federal government to enforce its rulings. And when the Supreme Court’s credibility falls into question, some warn, our institutions may be at risk.

In October, Bloomberg Opinion’s Noah Feldman warned the Supreme Court’s “legitimacy crisis is getting worse.”

READ MORE: ‘Two Things Could Be True’: White House Reveals Why Hunter Pardon Might Not Have Happened

“Democrats’ faith in the court began to fail after the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision, then went into freefall over the last couple of years,” Feldman wrote. “They worry the justices aren’t sufficiently ethical. They deplore the eagerness of the court’s conservative majority to overturn 50 years of precedent on issues like abortion and affirmative action. They are appalled at the court’s defiance of originalism — the idea that Constitutional law should rest on the document’s original meaning — to grant criminal immunity to former President Donald Trump for official acts while president.”

Nearly two years ago the Alliance for Justice (AFJ), a progressive coalition of nearly 140 organizations “advocating for a fair and independent justice system,” published a piece warning that the Supreme Court was “destroying its own legitimacy.”

“The Court’s wounds are entirely self-inflicted,” William W. Taylor, III, wrote at the AFJ. “It has a far-right agenda and the scholarship informing its decisions is often questionable. Worse, new details have come to light of relationships some justices have had with wealthy ideological soulmates, including those with interest in cases before the Court. The Court’s credibility and the public’s acceptance of its decisions depends upon trust that it is not subject to outside influence. While lobbying may be common and acceptable in the legislative and executive branches, it is not — nor ought not to be — conceivable in our courts.”

The New York Times on Tuesday took a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes conversations at the end of the summer of 2023 among the Supreme Court justices as they weighed whether or not to establish a code of ethics, amid a nation angered by numerous reports of what many see as blatant corruption.

“Last year, pressure on the court and the chief justice intensified. Journalists revealed that Justice Thomas had accepted far more largess from Harlan Crow, a conservative donor, than he had disclosed, including decades of travel on private jets and a superyacht, and boarding school tuition for his grandnephew. The public uproar also reflected another concern: Virginia Thomas, his wife, had been involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election,” The Times reports.

“Faced with ethics controversies and a plunge in public trust, they were debating rules for their own conduct, according to people familiar with the process,” The Times adds, revealing that “behind the scenes, the court had divided over whether the justices’ new rules could — or should — ever be enforced.”

In the end, the justices all signed onto a new code of ethics for the nation’s highest court, but one that “had no means of enforcement.”

It was quickly criticized.

READ MORE: Why the Hunter Biden Pardon Is ‘Justified’ According to Legal Experts

Liberals on the court have since gone public with their apparent frustration that although there is finally a code of ethics, there is no way to enforce it.

“All three liberals — Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson — supported enforcement, The Times reports.

“Rules usually have enforcement mechanisms attached to them, and this one — this set of rules — does not,” Justice Elena Kagan said in July.

“I haven’t seen a good reason why the ethics code that the Supreme Court adopted shouldn’t be enforceable,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson  said. “Other justices have posited certain ways in which it could be made enforceable but we have not yet determined or decided to do that.”

By contrast, at least some of the majority right-wing justices appear opposed to any code, certainly one that would have methods of enforcement.

“In the private exchanges, Justice Clarence Thomas, whose decision not to disclose decades of gifts and luxury vacations from wealthy benefactors had sparked the ethics controversy, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote off the court’s critics as politically motivated and unappeasable,” The Times revealed. “Justice Gorsuch was especially vocal in opposing any enforcement mechanism beyond voluntary compliance, arguing that additional measures could undermine the court. The justices’ strength was their independence, he said, and he vowed to have no part in diminishing it.”

The Times also reveals that the justices “seemed to codify their own preferences” when they drafted, or signed off on the code of ethics.

Those preferences appear largely financial.

The justices “gave themselves no firm restrictions on gifts, travel or real estate deals. Nothing in the new rules appears aimed directly at the trips and gifts Justice Thomas accepted. The code says only that justices should uphold the dignity of the office and comply with existing gift guidelines, in separate federal rules, which make allowances for ‘personal hospitality.’ Justice Thomas has maintained that his nondisclosure of gifts and free travel did not violate those rules,” according to The Times. Other legal experts disagree, with some saying he broke the law.

Since signing the new code of ethics, “questions about the justices’ behavior have continued. The Times revealed that two provocative flags associated with the Jan. 6 riot had flown at the homes of Justice Alito and his wife. The second was displayed at his New Jersey beach house just as the justices were considering the new ethics rules. That summer, he also accepted concert tickets from a far-right German princess. He later disclosed those, but in keeping with the new rules, said nothing about his free stay at her 500-room Bavarian palace.”

Last month, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), among the Senate’s top proponents of Supreme Court reform, wrote: “As long as the Court maintains a secretive billionaire gifts program for justices and unique immunity from ethics scrutiny for itself, and as long as its decisions predictably align with those billionaire interests, its reputation will continue to crash.”

READ MORE: This Michigan Lawmaker Wants to ‘Make Gay Marriage Illegal Again’

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OPINION

Key GOP Senators Start Paving the Way for Gaetz’s Attorney General Confirmation

Published

3 weeks ago

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November 19, 2024

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Several key and influential Republican Senators are helping to support former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz‘s efforts to be confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump’s Attorney General, despite credible allegations he allegedly had sex with a minor, sex trafficked a minor, paid to have sex with at least two women, engaged in illicit drug use, and other damning claims.

The House Ethics Committee had been investigating Gaetz for years over the numerous allegations, including, it announced, that he “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.”

Bipartisan concerns have grown, including from U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), who suggested last week the Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz could be subpoenaed if it is not released. Two other Senators on Tuesday came out to support the Florida Republican who abruptly resign from the House of Representatives just two days before the Ethics Committee was to be vote on releasing its report.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice also reportedly investigated Gaetz, but declined to file charges.

READ MORE: ‘Someone Who Says Tap Water Turns Kids Gay’: House Dem Slams ‘Insane’ Trump Cabinet Picks

While they did not state they support Gaetz’s nomination, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) did offer their fellow Senators reasons to not reject Gaetz.

Asked if Gaetz is qualified to serve as Attorney General, Senator Graham, who has strong ties to Donald Trump, did not answer CNN’s Manu Raju’s question but instead declared, “No one should be disqualified because of a media report.”

The allegations are not media reports. The two women who allege Gaetz paid them for sex gave sworn testimony before both federal prosecutors and the House Ethics Committee, according to their attorney. Another allegation comes from at least one of Gaetz’s fellow members of Congress.

Senator Hawley told CNN that Gaetz “said he wants a shot to lay out his vision for the Department, and also to respond to these various allegations. You know, I said, ‘Hey, the confirmation hearing is the place and the chance to do that.'”

As far back as President John Adams in 1801, over a dozen controversial nominees for Senate-confirmable roles, especially Cabinet-level positions, by presidents from both parties, have been pulled before they get to a full confirmation vote to avoid a massive embarrassment that could weaken an incoming administration. Among them, three from Donald Trump’s first term in office: Andrew Puzder (Labor), Ronny Jackson (VA), and Chad Wolfe (DHS).

READ MORE: ‘Damaging’: Unredacted Sealed Sworn Testimony in Gaetz Case Accessed by Alleged Hacker

But Donald Trump has been adamant about having Gaetz serve as his Attorney General.

If confirmed, Gaetz would become the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

CNN’s Manu Raju describes the current state of support from the GOP for Gaetz as “soft,” but he notes Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance on Wednesday “will be on Capitol Hill, meeting with Republicans including Senator John Kennedy [R-LA] who sits on that key Senate Judiciary Committee … to get Republicans to fall in line.”

Watch CNN’s report below or at this link.

READ MORE: Nancy Mace Slammed for Trying to Ban First Trans Member of Congress From Restrooms

 

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