Martha-Ann’s flag, raised for the first time at her home a few days after January 6, initially aroused only the anger of a neighbor. Maybe the neighbor has reason to dislike Martha-Ann, who is funny, feisty, unfiltered and the life of any party, according to mutual friends and my limited impression of her. She and I met at a get-together when the Alitos moved to Washington years ago. Almost immediately, Martha-Ann enthusiastically invited me to be her walking partner.
Long, chatty walks with the wife of a Supreme Court justice? But yes ! Your block or mine?
So, okay, maybe Martha-Ann is a A little impulsive. Alas, we never got together. I guess someone whispered in his ear that maybe long, chatty walks with a Post columnist weren’t such a good idea. Oh, but it would have been.
Meanwhile, this haughty scandal is not about flags, but what else? – abortion. As a judge, who shall remain nameless, once told me: “It’s all about abortion. » This is especially true now. Justice Alito authored the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that ended the constitutional right to abortion. Since then, he has been in the crosshairs of Democratic political operatives.
This is footnote #1 in this teapot storm. Footnote #2: Democrats dislike the court with a 6-3 conservative majority — and the former president who appointed the three justices whose votes tipped the scales to reverse. Roe v. Wade. Footnote #3: Having lost their attempt to stack the court, Democrats are doing everything they can to diminish the confidence of the court and the public.
Everything else is “heifer dust,” to borrow a term coined by the late Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese. Charley was too old school to call it that: BS.
I guess Justice Alito didn’t and didn’t know what his free-spirited wife was doing. His head tends to be in a cloud where words, not flags, occupy his mind. His detractors seem to think that they know better than anyone how he should conduct his marriage. By closely supervising his wife? Surely not.
Long before the Proud Boys appropriated the inverted flag to represent their retrograde dreamscape, it was a distress signal, which surely describes what follows. The enemy neighbor, who claims to have never seen the flag, had a sustained feud with Martha-Ann over a sign the former erected on her lawn that read, Alito told Fox News, “F — Trump.” Martha-Ann objected to the sign because it was near a school bus stop, he said.
Thus began an ongoing, shall we say, “conversation” between neighbors. During one scene, Martha-Ann allegedly appeared to spit on or towards the offending neighbor’s car. (Was it dry Ptwoey or a bad guy hockey? Details matter.) Another neighbor, the judge said, called Martha-Ann a particularly sinister name.
Fast forward to May 2024, and suddenly the flag incident is all over the news. Ethical questions were raised about Alito’s neutrality, and opinion makers began to rally around a demand that Alito recuse himself from matters involving the events of January 6. Harrumph, harrumph, harrumph.
Oh, but there’s more. Yet another of Martha-Ann’s flags, one that featured a pine tree and the words “Call to Heaven,” flew over the New Jersey beach house she owns in the summer of 2023 — long after the riot of the Capitol of 2021. But because this flag also appeared at the Capitol on January 6. The media horde and others have taken a giant step: Martha-Ann must make common cause with white nationalists who want a more Christian government. (Indicates heavy breathing.)
Democratic Senators Dick Durbin (IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), speaking of this, wrote to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., asking him to intervene and force Alito to recuse himself from the two cases involving the January 6.
The senators also requested a meeting with Roberts to discuss court ethics.
Roberts responded by saying, in effect, “no.” Individual judges decide when to recuse themselves, he wrote. And, “concerns regarding the separation of powers and the importance of preserving judicial independence against such appearances.” Moreover, the proposed format – a meeting with leaders of a single party who have expressed interest in the cases currently pending before the Court – simply highlights that participating in such a meeting would be inadvisable. Perfection.
For his part, Alito adopted a defense that anyone married for several decades might recognize. “My wife is a private citizen and has the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” Alito wrote in one of two letters sent to members of Congress. “She makes her own decisions and I have always respected her right to do so.”
And: “My wife loves flying flags. I’m not. She was solely responsible for installing the flag poles at our residence and vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years.
This logic, while probably true, has obviously opened another can of worms in some quarters. Oh sure, blame the woman.
But I can tell you this: my workaholic husband is so busy in his own cloud that he can’t tell you where I am or what I’m doing on any given day. I could hang a flag from his car antenna and he wouldn’t see it. I joked that it took him two years to notice that I had moved to Washington, DC.
I like that about him because I like freedom. I wouldn’t be surprised if Martha-Ann and countless other lucky women feel the same way.
News Source : www.washingtonpost.com
Gn usa
