Current Events > Upside-down flag at Justice Alito's home another blow for Supreme Court.

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Necronmon
05/17/24 6:46:57 PM
#1:


https://apnews.com/article/justice-samuel-alito-upsidedown-flag-trump-jan6-f5809b9fd3be19b2359907f7b16651e5

In other words a upside down flag means he supported Trump's insurrection and that the election was stolen....it seems...he's blaming it on the wind.

While it seems minor there's more to it then that.

An upside-down U.S. flag has long been a sign of dire distress and versatile symbol of protest. But in January 2021, when it flew over the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, it was largely seen in connection with a specific cause: the false claim by then-President Donald Trumps supporters that the 2020 election had been marred by fraud.
The revelation this week about the flag flying at Alitos home was the latest blow to a Supreme Court that was already under fire as it considers unprecedented cases against Trump and some of those charged with rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Alito has said the flag was briefly flown by his wife amid a dispute with neighbors and he had no part in it. But the incident reported by The New York Times adds to concerns about an institution thats increasingly seen as partisan and lacking strict ethical guidelines.

The high court is now facing questions about whether the spouses of two of its members question the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and if those justices should be hearing cases related to the Jan. 6 riot and Trumps role in it. Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, faced calls for recusal after reports that his wife Virginia Thomas was involved in efforts to overturn President Joe Bidens 2020 election win.Were talking about a fundamental bedrock American value about peaceful transfer of power, about elections, said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog organization. Its just the integrity of the democratic process.

Several Democrats in Congress, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, called for Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related cases. Justices can and do voluntarily recuse themselves, but those are their own individual calls and they arent subject to review.
There was no indication Alito would do so. He did not respond to a request for comment sent through the courts public information office.
While the Supreme Court long went without its own specific code of ethics, an institutional reputation of staying above the political fray has long helped bolster its relatively high levels of public trust. But in the wake of the 2022 decision overturning a nationwide right to abortion an opinion that was leaked before its release public trust sank to its lowest level in 50 years.

Theres also been sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices. The high court adopted a code of ethics last year, but it lacks a means of enforcement.
Alito, a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed in 2006, has been one of the most courts most conservative justices and authored the decision overturning Roe v. Wade. During oral arguments in the election interference case against Trump, he appeared skeptical of Justice Department arguments that past presidents arent completely immune from prosecution, and seemed one of the justices most likely to find that prosecutors went too far in bringing obstruction charges against hundreds of participants in the Jan. 6 riot.
Ethical guidelines generally make it clear that judges should recuse themselves in cases where their spouses have financial interest, but the situation is less clear when spouses have a publicly known political point of view, said Arthur Hellman, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He pointed to a federal judge in California who refused to recuse himself from a same-sex marriage case in 2011 even though his wife was a head of the American Civil Liberties Union there. Spouses finances are generally intertwined, but the idea that wives and husbands always share political views is outdated, he found.
Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether Alito was aware of the inverted flag at the time or its links to Trump supporters, said Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University School of Law. I dont believe Alito knew the flag was flying upside down or if he did know, I find it hard to believe that he knew the relationship to Stop the Steal, he said in an email.
Flags were used as communication devices at sea centuries ago, and sailors would hang them upside down as a signal of extreme distress, said Marc Leepson, author of Flag: An American Biography.
More recently, anti-Vietnam War protesters used the symbol as a statement against their governments actions, he said. Some would put flag postage stamps upside-down on their letters to express their opinions about the war.

The inverted flag has also been flown by anti-government extremists and white nationalists who used it as a signal of a broken nation, said Jeff Tischauser, senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project.
Its one thing to go to a rally and see a Patriot group carrying it. Its another thing for me to go driving past a Supreme Court justices house and see it, he said.

Martha-Ann Alito hung the upside-down flag during a dust-up with a neighbor in Alexandria, Virginia, who had a lawn sign referring to Trump with an expletive near a bus stop during a the heated time of January 2021, Fox News anchor Shannon Bream said in an online post, citing a conversation with Justice Alito. Upset after the neighbor blamed her for Jan. 6 and used vulgar language, she hung the flag for a short time, Bream wrote, saying Alito described some neighbors as very political.

Politics often overlaps into everyday life, and no human can be completely free of personal opinions, said Charles Geyh, a law professor at Indiana University. But the duty of a judge is to do what you can to keep them at bay. That means you dont trumpet your biases by running them up a flagpole, he said.
Appearing to enter the political fray can contribute to a growing distrust of the U.S. Supreme Court, which Geyh warned could have dire consequences.

Demands for recusals by justices and judges have been part of political disputes over the high court and elsewhere in the legal system. Thomas has rejected Democratic calls for him to recuse himself from Trump-related cases.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have called for New York Judge Juan Merchan to recuse himself from Trumps hush-money trial because hes given small donations to Democrats and his daughter is a party consultant. He declined, in a decision backed by a state ethics panel.
But while a system exists for penalizing lower-court judges who are accused of conflicts or other wrongdoing, there is no mechanism to sanction Supreme Court justices.

To me the fact that such a protocol does not currently exist at the court is a real deficit, said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, an advocacy group pushing for judicial ethics.
Only Congress can impeach a Supreme Court justice, said Michael Frisch, ethics counsel at Georgetown Law. One justice, Abe Fortas, resigned from the Supreme Court in 1969 amid a controversy over receiving $20,000 from a Wall Street financier. An impeachment, though, has only happened once, to Justice Samuel Chase in the early 1800s. He was later acquitted by the Senate.
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Gobstoppers12
05/17/24 6:50:32 PM
#2:


Sure does seem like a nothing story

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DarthAragorn
05/17/24 6:52:43 PM
#3:


Gobstoppers12 posted...
Sure does seem like a nothing story
Shut the fuck up you fucking chud. A supreme court justice believing in the continually disproven stolen election bullshit should be alarming to everyone with a brain.

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#4
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Cemith
05/17/24 6:53:23 PM
#5:


Not that it matters since it's a lifetime appointment

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Xatrion
05/17/24 6:55:54 PM
#6:


Gobstoppers12 posted...
Sure does seem like a nothing story

Yes, a institution that should be renowned for being impartial having one of its members showing signs of bias isn't what I'd call 'nothing'.

Kindly shut the fuck up. Adults are talking.

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ClayGuida
05/17/24 6:58:13 PM
#7:


So his wife supported January 6th as well it seems.

Go figure.

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ScazarMeltex
05/17/24 7:01:45 PM
#8:


Gobstoppers12 posted...
Sure does seem like a nothing story
One conservative judge's wife was directly involved in the insurrection and another supported it, but sure, nothing story.

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__starsnostars
05/17/24 7:08:15 PM
#9:


Even if you were to ignore the glaringly obvious connections to Trump's insurrection and election lies it is still alarmingly disrespectful and unbecoming of one the nation's top judges to fly the flag upside down.

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Southernfatman
05/17/24 7:10:50 PM
#10:


...damn it I don't want to get modded. I'll just say if our BS system and laws are holding us back from getting rid of fascists and traitors out of power, then maybe...ah screw it.

And don't feed Gob, ffs people.

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Vegy
05/17/24 7:20:14 PM
#11:


what blow? literally nothing will happen, deir actions never have any consequences

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thronedfire2
05/17/24 7:20:37 PM
#12:


he blamed his wife

must be learning from Clarence Thomas

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HashtagSEP
05/17/24 7:28:17 PM
#13:


When did "Guys, I don't have a conflict of interest. I just have a conflict of interest" become an apparently legitimately accepted argument?

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GATTJT
05/17/24 7:28:52 PM
#14:


Lmao at Gob getting BTFO

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#15
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Bishop9800
05/17/24 9:26:52 PM
#16:


__starsnostars posted...
Even if you were to ignore the glaringly obvious connections to Trump's insurrection and election lies it is still alarmingly disrespectful and unbecoming of one the nation's top judges to fly the flag upside down.


This

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There's enough attention whores on CE already
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#17
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Gobstoppers12
05/18/24 3:50:07 AM
#18:


GATTJT posted...
Lmao at Gob getting BTFO
Where?

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snake_5036
05/18/24 4:33:21 AM
#19:


[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

It's par for the course for someone who argued you need to let presidents be immune from crimes or else they will try to commit crimes

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RchHomieQuanChi
05/18/24 4:50:56 AM
#20:


Cemith posted...
Not that it matters since it's a lifetime appointment

Yup. Zero accountability so there ain't shit we can do about it outside of extrajudicial means

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#21
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cjsdowg
05/19/24 9:19:56 PM
#22:


Gobstoppers12 posted...
Sure does seem like a nothing story

A judge doing this is beyond a story. It is fucking treason.

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Heineken14
05/19/24 9:25:53 PM
#23:


Gobstoppers12 posted...
Sure does seem like a nothing story

You think a Supreme Court justice openly supporting a violent insurrection to overthrow the governmetn and install his dictator of choice in office is a nothing story?

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Antifar
05/19/24 9:27:42 PM
#24:


Semi-related:
https://www.lawdork.com/p/alito-bud-light-stock-sale-anti-trans-boycott

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ablegator
05/19/24 9:34:54 PM
#25:




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#26
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ClayGuida
05/22/24 6:59:38 PM
#27:


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/justice-alito-flag-appeal-to-heaven.html

Last summer he flew another January 6th flag at his beach home in New Jersey.

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#28
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UltimateWing
05/22/24 7:03:03 PM
#29:


ClayGuida posted...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/justice-alito-flag-appeal-to-heaven.html

Last summer he flew another January 6th flag at his beach home in New Jersey.
Time to blame the wife again.

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Bishop9800
05/22/24 8:31:38 PM
#30:


[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


He's too much of a coward to answer.......

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Axiom
05/22/24 8:46:03 PM
#31:


[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Lmao
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#32
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