Over at Vox, Ian Millhiser pretty effectively tees up Justice Sam Alito, a man who does not appear to give a flying f*ck about either justice or the means by which it is dispensed. Keying off the current dust-up regarding the inverted flag that flew above the Alito manse, Millhiser points out that Alito is the most consistently partisan political judge since...well, since I don’t know when.

But this flag is hardly an isolated incident. On the bench, Alito is the Supreme Court’s most unrelenting Republican partisan—a reliable vote for whatever outcome is preferred by the GOP’s right wing, regardless of whether there is any legal support for that position. Alito isn’t simply a bad judge; he is the negation of law, frequently embracing claims that even intellectual leaders within the conservative movement find risible.
The morning before the Times published its flag scoop, for example, Alito published a dissenting opinion claiming that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the brainchild of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was unconstitutional. The opinion was so poorly reasoned that Justice Clarence Thomas, ordinarily an ally of far-right causes, mocked Alito’s opinion for “winding its way through English, Colonial, and early American history” without ever connecting that history to anything that’s actually in the Constitution.
After Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a 2020 opinion that the states of Louisiana and Oregon allowed non-unanimous juries to convict felony defendants more than a century ago to dilute the influence of Black jurors, Alito was livid, ranting in dissent: “To add insult to injury, the Court tars Louisiana and Oregon with the charge of racism.”

Millhiser points out something that hardly anyone else writing about the flag business has bothered to point out: Off the bench, Alito has gone out of his way to become a star on the wingnut lecture circuit.

A little more than a week after Democratic President Barack Obama won his 2012 reelection race, Alito spoke to the conservative Federalist Society, where, quoting from one of his least favorite law professors, he warned that America is caught in a “moment of utmost sterility, darkest night, most extreme peril.” Alito frequently mocks his colleagues, even fellow Republicans, when they attribute government policies to anti-Black racism.
Later in his address to Francisan’s graduating class, Alito had a revealing line about why he believes that freedom of religion is threatened in the United States. “Religious liberty is also threatened,” Alito claimed. Then he warned the graduates that “when you venture out into the world, you may well find yourself in a job or community or a social setting when you will be pressured to endorse ideas you don’t believe, or to abandon core beliefs.” This warning blurs an important line between the kind of pressure that can plausibly violate “religious liberty” and the kind of pressure that is just an ordinary part of living in a pluralistic society.

Alito is not shy about explaining that he and Jesus sat next to each other at a Federalist Society fundraiser and had a nice chat. In his first public remarks after writing the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, Alito went all the way to Rome, to a “religious liberty” conference sponsored by the increasingly conservative Notre Dame Law School. Once there, he spent a substantial amount of time gloating over garroting the privacy rights of 51 percent of the American population. From CNN:

“Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power,” Alito said. “It also probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human DNA—a tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves,” he added. Alito did not discuss the leak of the abortion decision the wrote—Dobbs v. Jackson— last May, and only indirectly referenced the final version that he referred to as an opinion “whose name may not be spoken.” He did so by expressing his disapproval of foreign leaders who had criticized the opinion. “I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders,” Alito said, noting they felt “perfectly fine commenting on American law.”

Ha ha ha. F*ck you.

The flag, and Alito’s series of implausible explanations, gives Congress an opportunity to open up all of Alito’s partisan hackery to oversight. The House is, of course, hopeless. But the Senate still has (theoretically) a Democratic majority. Which means that it is performing a tarantella on its own dick. From Politico:

Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who could greatly influence those next steps by Democrats, said his panel wasn’t prepared to hold a hearing on the matter, after the justice told The New York Times his wife briefly flew the flag amid a dispute with neighbors without his knowledge....“I don’t think there’s much to be gained with a hearing at this point,” Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, said Monday. “I think he should recuse himself from cases involving Trump and his administration.”

I think he should hide his face in shame and move penitently to a cliffside monastery in the Sinai with downcast eyes and a silly haircut. But I'm not making book on it.

Have Another Round: More Charlie on the Nine Wise Souls