Ted Kennedy Warned Us About Samuel Alito.He Was Ignored.The Supreme Court justice’s flag controversy should come as no surprise to anyone who paid attention to his nomination hearings in 2006Alito’s troubles began two weeks ago, when The New York Times reported that an upside-down American flag was spotted flying at his Virginia home not long after the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.Commentators expressed alarm that a Supreme Court justice would willfully, or through incredible ignorance, associate with an authoritarian movement that has trampled on the Constitution that he took an oath to uphold. Many prominent Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, called on Alito to recuse himself from all forthcoming cases involving Trump and the attempted coup in 2021.
But Alito won’t recuse himself—and his brazen display of disloyalty to American democracy should surprise no one who recalls how he landed on the Supreme Court.Alito’s hard-right ideology [i.e., authoritarianism], and his shameless lack of ethics, were obvious when he was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005. A few Democratic senators sounded the siren, but the mainstream media, even its so-called “liberal” mainstays, largely ignored the warnings, unwittingly cooperating with an elite, right-wing operation to install a dishonest, partisan extremist on the highest court of the country.As The New York Times reported on the eve of Alito’s confirmation in 2006, his placement on the court was the “culmination” of an effort that began during the Reagan administration to staff the judiciary with ideologues of the religious right. Conservatives also deployed an adroit media strategy to temper, silence, and even disparage any attempt to criticize Alito during the nomination hearings. Public relations specialists and legal experts, coordinating on behalf of the Federalist Society, Christian organizations like Focus on the Family, and Republican senators, helped to sell Alito to the Senate, the media, and the public—even before his nomination. “We boxed them in,” one lawyer who participated in the meetings told the newspaper, presumably referring to the Senate and the mainstream media.
Early in the Alito nomination fight, Democrats uncovered a memo the judge wrote while he was working for the Reagan administration in 1985 that articulated his opposition to legal abortion. He advised against waging a “frontal assault on Roe” only because such a maneuver would prove politically unpopular, and instead advocated for a steady demolition of access to reproductive health care at the state level. Until the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe, the Alito playbook is exactly what many Southern and heartland states followed to make abortion all but impossible within their borders.
The memo did not stop Alito from lying to the late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose diary revealed that, while meeting privately in Kennedy’s office, Alito assured him that he would never vote to overturn Roe. Unlike Republican Senator Susan Collins, who believed the same lie from Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Kennedy was not gullible enough to vote in favor of Alito’s confirmation.
The P.R. firm [professional liars for hire] handling the Alito nomination insisted that Republicans counter with the claim that, as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, Alito was only reflecting the views of his client. Planned Parenthood warned that Alito would “gut Roe” if he had the opportunity, but the media soon dropped stories on the memo.
Similarly nauseating events transpired when Democrats learned that Alito belonged to Concerned Alumni of Princeton, an organization that opposed measures to increase admission of women and racial minorities. The group wasn’t merely against affirmative action but also contemptuous of co-education and supportive of quotas that favored men.
Alito insisted that his participation in the group was ancient history. (He had listed his membership on a job application as a 35-year-old applying to work for the federal government.) The mainstream media reacted not with questions about Alito’s biases on race and gender but with vilification of Democrats. Gloria Borger, a CNN commentator, accused the Democrats of “going over the line,” Newsweek likened Democratic senators to “bullies,” and PBS’s Gwen Ifill accused Alito’s critics of “demonization.” Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd had a conversation on MSNBC suggesting that it was absurd to try to “nail him” for belonging to a “club.”
Kennedy gave a thunderous address on behalf of the people that the “liberal coalition” aimed to represent, warning on the Senate floor of the dangers of Alito’s extreme ideology: “If you are concerned and you want a justice that’s going to stand for the working men and women in this country—it’s not going to be Judge Alito. If you are concerned about women’s privacy rights, about the opportunity for women to gain fair employment in America—it’s not Judge Alito. If you care about the disabled … the Disability Act that we have passed to bring all of the disabled into our society, if you are looking for someone that is going to be a friend of the disabled—it’s not going to be Judge Alito. And finally, if you are looking for someone that is going to be willing to stand up to the executive branch of government … it’s not going to be Judge Alito.”
A deeply immoral, chronic liar like Alito is the kind of judge that the radicalized, authoritarian Republican Party likes to put on the bench. That degenerated moral character reminds me a whole lot of the party’s current leader and essentially all of its elected politicians, major donors and hired professional liars known as “PR” firms.
Yeah, it it was absurd to try to nail Alito for merely belonging to a club, sort of like belonging to a club like the Klu Klux Klan, the Communist Party, the American National Socialist Movement (racist Nazis), the Proud Boys, or these days, even the modern Republican Party. (Oops, was that last one over the top? 🥺)
If I recall right, another trip down history memory lane leads me to think that at one time, the US was antifa fighting against the Nazis and fascists somewhere. Maybe Europe and Japan I think. My goodness, how times have changed.
Qs: What about the rank and file who give power to morally rotted, anti-democracy politicians like this? What are they? Patriots? Complicit, whether they know or believe it or not?
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Off on an American extremism tangent: That stuff about Alito’s brand of lying, bigoted, extremist authoritarian politics got me to wondering, who are the radicals that represent this kind of mental moral rot? One can only hope they are still fringe groups. But with today’s modern radicalized, extremist GOP and elites like Alito and Thomas, maybe they are not so fringy any more. The following comes from something called the Counter Extremism Project. The CEP has a page for worldwide far-right extremist groups and another page for American White Supremacist groups.
The CEP comments on the American White Supremacist page:
A February 2017 Southern Poverty Law Center report identified 100 active white nationalist and 99 active neo-Nazi groups in the country. In an October 2020 assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf declared that white supremacist violent extremists “have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years.” In March 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas declared domestic violent extremism “poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to the homeland today.”
The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) has identified multiple virulent white supremacist groups, which principally espouse white ethno-nationalism and/or National Socialism (neo-Nazi). Neo-Nazi groups, such as the National Socialist Movement (NSM), generally make no effort to hide their belief that the white race is superior to others. Their ideologies also usually include antisemitic and homophobic components that are in line with Nazi dogma.
I think Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas was wrong about the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to the homeland today. I think that honor really should go to the radicalized modern Republican Party. Or, is that assessment unreasonable or over the top?
This one has some fascism going on in it 😊
Israeli public opinion update: Most Israelis rate military’s campaign in Gaza ‘about right’ or not enough -- A survey by Pew Research found only one in five Israelis said the military campaign in Gaza had gone too far. The survey found 39 percent of Israelis said that the country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, and 34 percent said it has not gone far enough. 19 percent said they think it has gone too far.
Heck, even the weather is getting on the American extremism wagon: The hail in Texas was so big Tuesday that it required a new description -- Forecasters warned of “DVD-size hail” as stones larger than grapefruits bombarded an area near Lubbock.
Also in Texas: In a Texas G.O.P. at War With Itself, the Hard Right Is Gaining -- The speaker of the State House, Dade Phelan, survived a primary challenge from a Trump-backed activist, but many other Republican incumbents were ousted in bitter primary races.
This fun-filled American club
is racist and pro-Nazi
Alito might be at home here
Another fun racist American
Nazi club
Alitolandia?
The authoritarian racists at The Right Stuff, are self-righteous monsters
who know they are right, while we are scum that needs to be put down like dogs
(Fortunately the juicy stuff at The Right Stuff is paywalled off
Thank goodness, I am not willing to contribute to that cause)
In other radicalized Republican moral rot news, Nikki Haley was criticized for writing ‘Finish Them!’ on artillery shell in Israel -- Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential candidate and U.N. ambassador, wrote “Finish Them!” on an artillery shell during a days-long trip to Israel
Well, now we know where Haley bravely stands on the Palestinian issue. It can be summarized in three words: Kill 'em all! Excellent foreign policy thinking. her experience at the UN shows.
Haley sends her love and respect
to the Israeli people
Something else goes to the Palestinians
Israeli public opinion update: Most Israelis rate military’s campaign in Gaza ‘about right’ or not enough -- A survey by Pew Research found only one in five Israelis said the military campaign in Gaza had gone too far. The survey found 39 percent of Israelis said that the country’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, and 34 percent said it has not gone far enough. 19 percent said they think it has gone too far.
Well, 73% public support for pulverizing Gaza and the people in it is a pretty good level of support. One does not see that in the US much any more, if ever. Maybe Israel has radicalized too!
Israeli pulverizing machines,
a/k/a/ tanks
A new record! 5" hail!
Ouch, ouch, OUCH!
Also in Texas: In a Texas G.O.P. at War With Itself, the Hard Right Is Gaining -- The speaker of the State House, Dade Phelan, survived a primary challenge from a Trump-backed activist, but many other Republican incumbents were ousted in bitter primary races.
Well the NYT, like most of the rest of the MSM, still cannot bring itself to call the Republican Party what is it, i.e., obviously anti-democratic and obviously authoritarian.
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