Ted Kennedy Warned Us About Samuel Alito. He Was Ignored. [View all]

[In It to Win It]

Ted Kennedy Warned Us About Samuel Alito. He Was Ignored.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is in distress—or at least, he should be.

His 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. (Though the upside-down flag originally was flown by sailors centuries ago to indicate distress, it has long been a political symbol in the United States, used most recently by Donald Trump supporters who claim the 2020 election was stolen.) And Alito’s troubles grew last week when the Times reported that another “provocative” flag—one carried by January 6 rioters—flew at his vacation home in New Jersey last summer.

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, 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.