Alito – a target, and on target

Justice Samuel A. Alito, the second-oldest and third-longest-serving Justice on the United States Supreme Court, has come under renewed attack. In fact he’s been a target almost since he first joined the Court, 18 years ago. Controversy has always followed him, and he doesn’t shy away from it. He mainly is a target now because his opinions carry greater weight. Beyond that, the flak is always most dense over your own target, and so it is with Justice Sam Alito.

Alito and his controversies

Sam Alito has always ruled for the First and Second Amendments, and against the old Roe regime on abortion. But arguably his first great controversy came in response to Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. In that case the court held (5-4) that a corporation’s speech was not subject to limitation. The First Amendment applies to corporations, which are groups of people, the same as to individuals.

President Barack Obama, thoroughly steamed, said in an almost deathly quiet snarl in his State of the Union Address in 2010,

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.

Alito, sitting in the front row and seeing right through the President’s veneer of pseudo-respectfulness, silently mouthed “That’s not true.” That, for the justice, was only the beginning.

In 2022 the learned justice saw his chance to destroy the abortion-on-demand regime, and took it. (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.) So explosive was his opinion in that case that someone in the Supreme Courthouse – we still don’t know who – leaked that decision seven weeks in advance of its official publication. Recall that CNAV thought it was a fraud, until the Court said it was authentic. Justice Alito made a devastating argument, not only against Roe v. Wade but also against the doctrine of stare decisis. Precedent could stand, he said, but not if it was in error and earned five specific strikes against it. His treatment of stare decisis, and of other times the Court has corrected its errors, will stand for years – decades – as a standard for precedential error correction.

Particular reasons for the stepped-up attacks

Sam Alito has come under attack because certain leftist individuals and groups – like the Brennan Center for Justice – doesn’t like his jurisprudence. He has solidified the Originalist Bloc on the Court, a Bloc that includes himself and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, senior in age and length-of-service to all the rest. Moreover he has proved able – though not with one hundred percent efficacy – to persuade members of the Moderate Bloc. (This Bloc includes Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh.) Even to say that the Liberal Bloc refuses to let him persuade them, would be too facile. Recall that Sackett et uxor v. EPA and more recently NRA v. Vullo were unanimous decisions. (For that latter decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor donned her adult clothes and wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court.)

In short, Sam Alito is a formidable adversary for those who, according to Peter Berkowitz and Yuval Levin,

began to import into politics and public discourse in the late 19^th century,

certain

ideas about the function and purpose of democratic government

that do not conform to the ideals of the Framers of the Constitution – ideas that

explicitly repudiate the Constitution’s spirit of conciliation and intentionally disrupt the intricately organized relations between the legislative, executive, and judicial powers.

Thus Alito and his Originalist colleagues stand on one side of an irreconcilable divide. One can no more “square” this dispute than one can settle a dispute between those who hold (correctly) that two plus two make four, and those who, to paraphrase William S. Gilbert,

That two and two make five – or three – or seven; / Or five and twenty, if the case demands! Princess Ida, Act II

Bear this in mind when evaluating the recent demands for recusal, resignation, or even impeachment in his case.

Fear of Alito jurisprudence applied to upcoming cases

CNAV discussed various attacks on Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas two weeks ago. More than three years ago, Alito’s wife got into a political spat with a neighbor. In reply, she controversially flew a United States flag, inverted, then the Appeal to Heaven flag from the American Revolution. This has provoked calls for him to abstain from all cases involving those under detention over the January 6 Event. One such call came from a sitting federal district judge in Massachusetts. Another came from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

When two Democratic Senators joined the refrain, Justice Alito gave them his answer: no. The Chief Justice similarly refused to hear of any talk of disciplinary action against Alito. At issue are his positions on:

• Trump v. United States, treating Presidential immunity,
• Fischer v. United States, concerning the January 6 event, and
• Any case that might come before the Court regarding the Election of 2020.

That inverted American flag, and the Appeal to Heaven flag, are supposed to represent his bias in favor of Trump and any January 6 defendants, regarding their respective conduct, or whether the Election of 2020 was decided fairly or unfairly. What they actually represent is Alito’s:

• Abiding respect for the Constitution, and
• Disrespect for those “Progressive elites” with their ideas about substituting a “technocratic elite” for the popular will.

Both Trump and Fischer have come to oral argument – as has Murthy v. Missouri, the Big Tech censorship case.

An interview under false pretenses

Last week (June 3), reporter Lauren Windsor attended the Supreme Court Historical Society. Alito was also present, and she obtained – and surreptitiously recorded – an interview with him. By way of gaining his confidence, she said to him,

I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.

And he said:

I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.

How right he is – but of course Lauren Windsor thinks that’s wrong. She published her recordings to X on this thread:

Rolling Stone rounded out the transcript:

Windsor: People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.

Alito: I agree with you. I agree with you.

In the first place, this constitutes entrapment. But in the second: what is wrong with returning the United States to a Godly place? Indeed what could be wrong with anything he said? To repeat: one cannot reconcile truth with deliberate falsehood.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, / in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side. James Russell Lowell

One does not compromise between good and evil, any more than one compromises between right and wrong arithmetic.

And what does returning the country to a Godly place mean? Start with obedience to the Ten Commandments, six of which specifically treat human relations in a sound society:

And God spoke all these words:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before[a] me.

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

“You shall not misuse the Name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses His Name.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

“You shall not murder.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:1-17, NASB

Continue, ironically enough, with what Alan Jay Lerner jokingly called “The Seven Deadly Virtues”: courage, purity, humility, honesty, diligence, charity, and fidelity.

What is wrong with any of these – apart from Roddy McDowall’s interpretation of Mordred’s scornful attitude: What is virtue, but manly honor? (From the Latin vir a man.)

And for championing these honorable qualities, the left calls Alito “not a neutral umpire.” Again, how can anyone be neutral between right and wrong, fact and error, truth and lies, good and evil?

A is A

The great Aristotle knew the score when he said:

The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect.

Or as the late Ayn Rand so ably condensed it,

A is A.

Bear this in mind when judging MSNBC’s Joy Reid’s evaluation of Justice Alito.

Ben Kew of The Gateway Pundit provided this transcript:

It feels like Alito is unrestrained at this point. He doesn’t care who knows that he wants to make the country into a Christian nationalist, you know, ethno-state or whatever it is he thinks he would create under this Handmaid’s Tale vision. He doesn’t care if people know that he takes lavish vacations and the right doesn’t care.

Christian nationalism and Caucasion ethno-centrism are mutually incompatible – or didn’t she know that? The careless reference to Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale recalls his ruling in Dobbs, without sharing any of his reasoning. But again: leftists do not reason; they emote. And as for “lavish vacations,” that shameless skank Beyoncé gave concert tickets to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Just in reading through the litany of things that Alito has said in the past, he’s criticized the Warren court that’s the court that gave us all of the civil rights and women, people of color, immigrants, everything, the disabled, all of that came in the 20th century. You’ve now had Clarence Thomas question whetherBrown v. Boardwent too far. This just tells me they’re gonna take a case to overturnBrown v. Board.

Justice Alito specifically defended Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka as a necessary correction of an earlier error. That error was Plessy v. Ferguson. If Brown “went too far,” then it was only in exchanging one mandate for another – exit forced segregation, enter forced integration. Both actions violate freedom of association. Integration did not succeed until its voluntary aspect returned – when James Coleman, the “Father of Busing” called for abandoning it. In any event, no imaginable case challenging Brown is likely to come before the Court any time soon.

We have decisions coming Thursday and Friday. My assumption is they make Mifepristone illegal and give Trump absolute immunity. That’s my guess because Alito is saying that’s the plan.

Mifepristone is already illegal. Sending it through the mail violates the Comstock Act. And what sane black person would plump for letting people send that drug through the mail? That is an anti-black genocide drug. Anyone who has studied the history of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger should realize this.

Summing up

In any event, Sam Alito said nothing about any “plan.” But if Joy Reid thinks that recognizing Presidential immunity and upholding the Comstock Act is part of any “plan” for a “Godly society,” then her preference for prosecuting Trump because he is Trump, and letting people send abortifacients through the mail, is part of the plan she prefers. And that plan is self-contradictory. Recall that one of her complaints against Sam Alito is that he plumps for white ethno-centrism. Lay aside for the moment that he does not. But if he did, he would vote to let people send the anti-black genocide drug through the mail. Which he almost certainly will not.

And a propos of this, let Joy Reid ask herself why Kermit Gosnell, M.D., set up his notorious abortion practice in the Black neighborhood of Philadelphia. Actually, Joy Reid seems to have ignored Kermit Gosnell completely. Perhaps someone should ask her opinion of him and his practice.

But that’s neither here nor there. Samuel A. Alito became a target because he is on target. He has attacked the threat that strikes at the heart of our Constitutional republic. For that he deserves high praise, and the continued support – including prayer support – of all who love life and ordered liberty.