Samuel Alito's Flags

My apologies for being so late today. The power went out and I wrote this the old fashioned way while the phone was charging in the vehicle. Then read it into the text editor and punctuated it. Pretty rough storms and the power is still out. Everyone is okay though.

Does the media buzz over the Alito flag flying incident portend a dire warning or is it simply an innocent occurrence? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Is it an impeachable offense? Of itself, no. Is it a serious breach of decorum? Yes.

Judges and especially Supreme Court Justices typically seek to maintain a certain decorum to inspire public trust. Spouses of Supreme Court Justices traditionally display that same decorum to assist in maintaining that trust. Throwing caution and decorum to the wind is a statement that the judge, Justice or spouse doesn't care about public trust.

Justice Alito's wife said that the upside down American flag is a symbol of dire distress or emergency. Whose life was in danger? What was the extreme distress or emergency? Or was it indeed a political protest because her candidate lost? Taken in conjunction with the dominionist 'Appeal to Heaven' flag, all appearances indicate that it was political.

There have been several articles written about defending a Supreme Court Justice having the same freedom of speech as anyone else, including political speech. Absolutely true. But if you're in the judiciary, just how much trust are you willing to trade off to make political statements?

This whole tangled ball of yarn can be traced back to August 23, 1971 when a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell sent a series of recommendations to the United States Chamber of Commerce. The staid old guard corporations were concerned with flower children, women's liberation, protests against the Vietnam War, in short the rebelliousness of a younger generation against their elders.

What became known as the Powell Memo was not a blueprint but a starting point. The Powell Memo contained a lot of seminal ideas for corporate influence in the judicial branch, the legislative branch, and education. Joseph Coors, Mr Union Buster himself, donated startup funds to the Heritage Foundation, in a serendipitous parallel path.

In 1982 the Federalist Society was started at Yale Law School by a couple of students to counter what conservatives viewed as liberal overreach. The goal was to push the judicial system in a conservative direction. Since the Powell Memo first laid out a basic approach to gaining corporate influence in government the various corporate friendly think tanks and organizations have experienced incremental increases in power.

Leonard Leo has accumulated massive amounts of wealth in the various political action organizations in which he is involved. One major donor, Barre Seid, contributed 1.6 billion dollars to Leo's Marble Freedom Trust. Seid supported climate denialism and alt-right organizations before making the lump sum donation to Leo's organization. Although Seid doesn't appear to be a Dominionist, he is apparently okay with donating to people who are. Leonard Leo is known to have flown the same kind of flag, 'Appeal to Heaven,' as Samuel Alito. The link between corporate influencers and Evangelical Christians has been in some of the right wing think tanks from the beginning. And it is now undeniably in the Supreme Court.

This is only my personal opinion but I believe that the Supreme Court Justices are not afraid to display their political favoritism with a type of arrogant lack of concern because of the backing of the corporate influencers, and because of the number of seats they currently hold on the Court.

In a 2015 interview with Oprah, Jimmy Carter made the statement that we have become an oligarchy. It sure feels that way when a Supreme Court Justice or his wife, whichever it was, no longer feels the need to retain and nourish the trust of the public. It feels like that is the case when the Chief Justice has so little influence with his associate justices. It feels like an oligarchy when more than one Justice has special friends who lavish them with expensive gifts. It seems to me that we can't stand many more of these 'coincidental' happenings that continue to tear down the traditions and decorum of our democratic republic.