Alito won’t recuse himself

I can't rule that out, but IF the reporting is accurate, his explanations seem to keep crumbling. Whether his wife relayed information that was inaccurate, whether his memory is faulty or whatever the case, it seems strange to me that Alito would go out and make public comments without having a handle on the timeline and the facts. My guess he doesn't care that much since he's basically untouchable. Not that I'm saying it's connected, but I didn't know or had forgotten that Alito served under Trump's sister before she became a Federal Judge.

 

It is also plausible that he really didn’t know what the flag meant. If it were a confederate flag or a nazi flag I’d agree with you.

 

A lot of things are "plausible." It is "plausible" that Trump genuinely believed the election was stolen from him.

 

I can't decide by your join date if you are really new here or just a disgruntled poster hiding under a different name. So i will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are "new".

So please inform us where I have defended lines being crossed by the orange stain on our nation or his redneck posse on 1/6?

It would be news to most posters here on both sides of the aisle.

The "" in my post was basically just an elbow to the ribs of @Trickster, who is not really a chauvinist of course, and who is a great poster.

My larger point of the delicacy of his wifes rights compared to his position as a justice is a valid point of discussion however. Again, assuming it is even true.

 

Do tell? Are you meaning that because his name is on the mortgage too that he has the right to oppress the speech of anyone living there? What if its actually in her name only? (Not uncommon for tax purposes and such)

How is her right to speech and expression trumped by his position?

 

If you take your wife's flag down, it doesn't implicate her free speech rights. The same is true of Alito. He's acting in his personal capacity, not as a judge.

 

Ha! Tell that to my wife!

Seriously, not sure her being his wife changes things. A Supreme Court Justice can not take down a flag he disagrees with. Not sure if his marriage license really matters.

Some nobody in Non Profit management like me cant even go around removing flags, but a SCOTUS justice can?

My guess is legally this would come down to who's name is on the mortgage/deed etc, no?

 

It's his house too, and he wouldn't be taking them down in his capacity as a Justice. He could have taken down the flags, and she could put them back up. I guess they could go back and forth like that as long as they wanted so long as their dispute remained peaceful. I don't think that makes it a First Amendment issue any more than if they had been fighting over a display of the leg lamp from A Christmas Story.

 

At this point I think Trump has convinced himself it was stolen.

when I say plausible I mean a reasonable probability. I have no way of knowing but I suspect he is telling the truth. I will agree he probably should have pushed back harder but I understand why he may not have.

 

What about the husband's free speech and expression? If a wife puts up a flag in the yard that the husband disagrees with isn't that just as much a violation of the husband's free speech?

 

Yes, you can. If you or your family own the flags and the land, you certainly can. No, you can't remove other people's flags on land they own, but that's due to criminal laws, not because it violates their free speech rights.

 

Well, the story he initially told was refuted by his neighbors, based on that and his tendency to repeat Newsmax talking points at oral argument, I don't believe him.

 

But flag displays (burning for instance) have legally been deemed speech have they not? A leg lamp has not.

And again, do we know if he legally owns the house? I am suggesting this is not as simple as people want it to be.

Most of us have normal spouses who would not railroad out position (which certainly leaves me skeptical of it even being factual), but if one did...what then?

 

Their house was flying a pro-insurrection flag. Which contradicts everything our nation stands for. And he is a USSC justice. That this is both vile and far beyond the pale of what is acceptable is really about the only sentiment that needs to be expressed. Maybe whether or not he should be impeached.

But here you are, debating whether this is no big deal due to the free speech rights of his wife.

Can we suppose you would have the same approach should your wife fly a flag with the N-word? ("I just can't take it down from my home. That's her right.") It's all amazing, really.

 

There are no free speech rights in one's home, just like they don't exist on Gator Country.

 

If we're searching for a strange hypothetical, how do we know she owns the house for that matter? Maybe it's titled in a Trust? Putting the issue of ownership interest aside, they live in the home together and each have possessory property rights (unless they squatters or something, which I highly doubt). The fact that he's a Justice doesn't make any disagreements they might have had about flag-flying on the property a First Amendment issue.

 

Hardly. Robert Redford was killed in The Last Castle just because the warden thought Redford was going to try hang it upside down.

Even if the idiot didn't know what it meant, he knew it was disrespectful. With all the flag cases that have been in the federal court system, I find it extraordinarily unlikely he didn't know exactly what it meant.

 

I would like nothing more than Alito to be proven to be lying and revealed as a full blown MAGAT and recuse himself.