Of all the many reasons to vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, one of the best ones is the composition of the Supreme Court. There is a good chance that the Republicans will retake the Senate in 2024, and with Trump in the presidency, we could get several more ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices. 

God forbid.

First of all, it should be noted that the three Trump appointees — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett —  are not actually the worst justices on the Supreme Court. No, that honor goes to Clarence Thomas and Clarence Alito, both appointed by Bushes, George H.W. and George W. respectively.

That Clarence Thomas has been deeply compromised — with his wife Ginny practically participating actively in the January 6th insurrection — that has already been well documented, and we need not rehash it here. But now comes Samuiel Alito and his wife’s flags.

Good grief.

First, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times somehow unearthed that at Alito’s house, an American flag was flown for a few days upside down on January 17th, 2021, or just a few days after the January 6th insurrection.

Why did this only come to light now, about 3½ years later?

Who the fuck knows.

As explained in the NY Times article:

Turning the American flag upside down is a symbol of emergency and distress, first used as a military S.O.S., historians said in interviews. In recent decades, it has increasingly been used as a political protest symbol — a controversial one, because the flag code and military tradition require the paramount symbol of the United States to be treated with respect.

Over the years, upside-down flags have been displayed by both the right and the left as an outcry over a range of issues, including the Vietnam War, gun violence, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to abortion and, in particular, election results. In 2012, Tea Party followers inverted flags at their homes to signal disgust at the re-election of President Barack Obama. Four years later, some liberals advised doing the same after Mr. Trump was elected. 

During Mr. Trump’s quest to win, and then subvert, the 2020 election, the gesture took off as never before, becoming “really established as a symbol of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign,” according to Alex Newhouse. …A flood of social media posts exhorted Trump supporters to flip over their flags or purchase new ones to display upside down.

Justice Alito, being the upstanding guy that he is, immediately threw his wife under the bus. Alito claimed that the decision to fly the flap upside down was made by his wife, Martha-Ann, after she had a dispute with at least one set of neighbors, who displayed a “Fuck Trump” sign on their lawn.

Oh well, that excuses it.

Well, hold onto your hats kids, because since this issue became public, it turns out that another provocative flag was flown, this time at Alito’s summer house in New Jersey. 

I wonder which neighbor Alito is going to blame this time.

The flag in question is the “Appeal to Heaven” or Pine Tree Flag. This flag has a long history, beginning with the revolutionary war, and we’re not going to review its entire history here. (Check the Wikipedia link if you’re interested in the details.) What’s important now is that, in recent years, this flag too has become associated with Christian nationalism and support for Trump. (It was carried by a number of rioters during the January 6th insurrection.)

Now, just yesterday Alito announced, in a letter to Democratic member of Congress (who had asked him to recuse himself), that he was, in fact, not going to recuse himself. No surprise there. This time, he threw his wife even further under the bus than the first time. Relying on her right to be a “private actor” he claimed that she is in charge of the flagpoles, that he didn’t know which flags she was flying, and that when he asked her to take down the upside down flag, she “refused.”

Are you effing kidding me?

With respect to their Virginia home, which the Alitos own jointly, the stand-up justice opined that his wife “has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit.”

Are you effing kidding me?

With respect to the “Appeal to Heaven” flag Alito claimed that the flag “did not convey the meaning critics ascribed to it.” 

“I was not aware of any connection between that historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement,’ and neither was my wife,” Alito wrote. 

Are you effing kidding me?

In these matters, Alito is even less persuasive than he is in his obviously biased, outcome-driven bullshit opinions.

Now, let’s remember Fani Willis has been excoriated in the Florida case because she had a relationship with her lead prosecutor. But conservatives seem to think that it’s perfectly acceptable that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have a clear pro-Trump bias. The Supreme Court has already decided that the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment cannot be used to keep Trump off the ballot (Trump v. Anderson) and they are about to decide two additional cases: (1) whether an American President has absolute immunity for his official duties (Trump v. United States), and what qualifies as an “official duty,” and (2) whether 18 U.S.C. §1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, was correctly applied to the January 6th insurrectionists (Fischer v. United States).

So, to bring it full circle, having more of these idiots inhabiting the Supreme Court would be a complete disaster for the country. Vote Joe Biden!