This is just devastating, for Alito, the Court spokesperson, Paul Gigot, Murdochs. Breathtaking violations of every ethical standard. Flat out lies by Alito.
Behind the Scenes of Justice Alito’s Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Pre-buttal — ProPublica https://t.co/ygrFBOXipI
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) June 25, 2023
It’s not actually devasting for Alito, because one has to understand the concept of shame to feel shame. But I’ll bet the little Opus Dei gollum spent a couple days screaming at his interns, demanding to know why the Streisand Effect is permitted around important, superior individuals such as Justice Samuel Alito:
Around midday on Friday, June 16, ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan sent an email to Patricia McCabe, the Supreme Court’s spokesperson, with questions for Justice Samuel Alito about a forthcoming story on his fishing trip to Alaska with a hedge fund billionaire.
Fifteen minutes later, McCabe called the reporters. It was an unusual moment in our dealings with the high court’s press office, the first time any of its public information officers had spoken directly with the ProPublica journalists in the many months we have spent looking into the justices’ ethics and conduct…
Monday was a federal holiday, Juneteenth. On Tuesday, McCabe called the reporters to tell them Alito would not respond to our requests for comment but said we should not write that he declined to comment. (In the story, we wrote that she told us he “would not be commenting.”)
She asked when the story was likely to be published. Certainly not today, the reporters replied. Perhaps as soon as Wednesday.
Six hours later, The Wall Street Journal editorial page posted an essay by Alito in which he used our questions to guess at the points in our unpublished story and rebut them in advance. His piece, headlined “Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica Misleads Readers,” was hard to follow for anyone outside ProPublica since it shot down allegations (notably the purported consumption of expensive wine) that had not yet been made.
In the hours after Alito’s response appeared, editors and reporters worked quickly to complete work on our investigative story. We did additional reporting to put Alito’s claims in context…
It does not appear that the editors at the Journal made much of an effort to fact-check Alito’s assertions.
If Alito had sent his response to us, we’d have asked some more questions. For example, Alito wrote that Supreme Court justices “commonly interpreted” the requirement to disclose gifts as not applying to “accommodations and transportation for social events.” We would have asked whether he meant to say it was common practice for justices to accept free vacations and private jet flights without disclosing them…
We leave it to the PR professionals to assess whether pre-buttals are an effective strategy. Alito’s assertion that the private flight to Alaska was of no value because the seat was empty anyway became the subject of considerable online amusement.
And the readership of our story has been robust: 2 million page views and counting. It’s possible that Alito has won the argument with the audience he cares the most about. But it seems equally plausible that he drew even more attention to the very story he was trying to knock down…
Good work everyone but I think we can get them down to Saddam Hussein levels if they keep sending letters to the Wall Street Journal taunting us for trying to report on their corruption. https://t.co/ae0ThBB1Y3
— Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) June 25, 2023
Yeah, that’s certainly the face of an innocent man…
🚨CNN reports Justice Alito’s Rome trip, following his decision overturning Roe v. Wade, was funded by Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Initiative – a group that supported the Roe overturn. @RawStory https://t.co/gn9wLt7SPj
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 24, 2023
(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)
Baud
Not True
Jerzy Russian
At some point the other hacks on the Court will pull Alito aside and say something to the effect “Dude, we at least need to keep up the veneer of credibility in order for our hacktitude to have an effect.”
The Thin Black Duke
Alito is auditioning to play the role of a corrupt judge in the remake of The Godfather. He’s a natural.
patrick II
@Baud:
My favorite Alito moment. Of course, foreign money would not become involved in American politics if we stopped having legal restraints on money in American politics. Foreigners would honor the inalienable rights of American domestic bribers only.
lowtechcyclist
Well, why should only American billionaires have the freedom to bribe SCOTUS Justices? Seems awfully chauvinistic.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Alito might not be capable of experiencing shame for his own unimpeachable (until Dems have a 2/3 majority in the Senate) actions, but:
I suspect Alito is feeling somewhat humiliated by the fact that everyone now views him as Singer’s Lapdog rather than the powerful, brilliant, self-made commander of judicial respect he imagines himself to be.
Kay
Ugh. The kind of bunker mentality displayed in this indicates systemic ethical issues. It’s how the Catholic Church responded to the huge child abuse scandal- as if it was a public relations disaster rather than a complete failure by the institution. Not surprising the religious zealots on the court are taking the same approach, but it won’t work any more than it worked for the Catholic Church.
Suzanne
He’s such a lowlife piece of shit that I don’t even want to give him a nickname.
Kay
If they genuinely didn’t believe these gifts were hinky then why not report them? Why not scrupulously comply with the reporting requirement erring on the side of over reporting? Alito reported a gift of 500 dollars worth of food and wine from a friend. If he reported that, which CLEARLY is exempt, why omit this gift?
Because they know they’re skating too close to the rule and they know it, that’s why. If these gifts are perfectly defensible then there shouldn’t be all this elaborate parsing of the rules NOT to report them.
H.E.Wolf
I agree. Make his own real name a hissing and a byword.
Matt McIrvin
I do think it’s interesting that they even care about reputation, get offended and don’t just go full Bond villain about it all: “muahahahahaha, what are you going to do about it?”
Ken
This would have been so much better if he had guessed wrong, and confessed to things that weren’t in the story. “I categorically deny partying with hookers and blow until four in the morning,” something along those lines.
sdhays
I’d like to get some more reporting around the decision-making that has effectively legalized bribery in the United States. One of the dodges that Thomas and Alito and the rest like to make is that it’s not “corruption” because they didn’t change the way they would vote. Of course, that’s not necessarily true and and is besides the point, but it’s flat-out no ambiguity corrupt that these guys have gone on a spree of making sure that any laws that might outlaw what they themselves were doing are “unconstitutional”.
Albatrossity
I wish all of this stuff mattered, and that substantive changes could be made. But Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Barrett, McConnell and Leo et al. don’t really care. They have what they want; control of the court for the next few decades. The rantings of us peasants are unheard inside that balloon of power.
prostratedragon
Guess now is as good a time as any. Alito reminds me of a certain destuctively repressed character. This character is repressing his gay sexuslity. I have no idea whether that particular issue is relevant to Alito — resistance to considering his sex life is utterly superfluous for me — but there’s no question something’s got him in a twist.
I give you Cardinal Assente.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sdhays: They probably would vote the same way. OTOH, it’s good for them to see themselves as bound by ethical rules, good for them to police themselves. And it’s good for them to be self-conscious about the trips in particular because of the time spent hanging around being buddies with people who have interests in their work.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
One of the funniest things here is that Alito claims to rely on the “common understanding” of the current justices about the meaning of the rules. According to the originalist dogma the majority espouses, their own understanding of the rules has no place in the discussion. The only intent and understanding that matter are those of the people who enacted the rules, which shouldn’t be hard to discover if the majority actually wants to discover them.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Doesn’t this kind of oopsie pre-buttal happen in every mystery? “I was at the yacht club at 7:00 pm on Tuesday night and nowhere near the site of the murder, and I have witnesses to prove it.”
“Well, that’s fine, except we didn’t say anything about a murder yet and haven’t yet asked you about a specific time.”
Roger Moore
@Kay:
This kind of reaction is very common in organizations that know they have problems but are hoping beyond hope they can hide them. Sometimes, they’re actually trying to solve the underlying problem and are just hoping against hope they can keep it quiet until it’s fixed, but more often they just don’t want to get caught. Even the ones who are trying to fix the problem are often prevented from doing anything effective by the need to keep everything quiet. It’s easier to deal effectively with a problem if you aren’t doubling or tripling the effort required by the need to keep everything quiet.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think a big underlying reason is they believe they shouldn’t have to report anything. They think the Courts aren’t supposed to be accountable to anyone, and certainly not to the general public.
JWR
I’m betting that ProPublica has a veritable trove of damaging information on Alito, given that the first little drip is from 2008.
Then again, maybe we should caution ourselves to simply believe that he’s been playing strictly by the rules ever since. /s
Uncle Cosmo
@The Thin Black Duke: IMHO he deserves to be prepping to play the role of the corrupt cop whose forehead gets ventilated by Michael. Without a stunt double.
Delk
Speaking of pieces of shit.
The Thin Black Duke
@Uncle Cosmo: A one-shot take.
hueyplong
@Suzanne: I don’t know, your own “Lowlife Piece of Shit” seems like an ok nickname.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@H.E.Wolf: I, for one, will settle for calling him Mister Alito, in contrast to Justice Sotomayor. Ditto for the other right-wingers.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I’ve read extensively on child abuse – the work that informs child abuse laws- and one of the things that happens is a kind of contagion- so in the case of the Catholic Church (in the schools) all of the employees in a school would become complict in one way or another so while it really was a (relatively) small number of abusers they drew hundreds of “not an abuser but complict” people in – systemic then, like an infection.
There was horrendous child abuse uncovered in the Texas juvenile detention system and while it was perpetrated by this small group of female guards, everyone else pretended it wasn’t happening, so just firing the abusers would no longer fix it- the abusers had poisoned the whole staff.
I feel as if that’s what Alito is doing drawing in McCabe.
eclare
@Uncle Cosmo:
I like the phrase “forehead gets ventilated.”
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@sdhays:
Their Bob McDonnell decision insulates them somewhat.
Would be fun to see something from the IRS about taxing these “gifts” as income, though.
If burnspesq is around, maybe he can shed some light on whether we could see some meaningful action on it. These “gifts” are not little incidentals – they’re big ticket items.
Tony Jay
@Suzanne:
Low-Qualito?
different-church-lady
He means devastating to Alito. But that’s not true either, because there’s so many layers of protection between Alito and accountability.
piratedan
@Matt McIrvin: it’s that old dynamic duo of they want to be in complete control AND be POPULAR/RESPECTED. Apparently under the belief that once you get to the highest court in the land, respect is due to you regardless of your behavior and ethics once that you are there. If your behavior indicates that your just another corrupt hack who’s judicial opinions are for sale to the highest bidder, well then it makes it hard to reconcile that said behavior in the court of public opinion.
WereBear
@piratedan: Wingnut lives are made of illusion. Will put all their effort into their own Potemkin village of a life.
Annie
This really annoys me. I work as a appellate court clerk. I do not have any authority to decide cases — I just explain procedures to the public and docket filings. And no one at my court is allowed to accept ANY gifts from anyone who deals with the court. Nothing. Nada. I once helped a newly-admitted attorney find their way through appeal procedures; at the end of the case, they brought me a loaf of banana bread to thank me. I couldn’t accept it. I thanked them but could not accept it. The idea that Alito and Thomas even took anything, let alone such valuable things, from anyone just blows my mind.
topclimber
@Tony Jay: With a slight Dixie drawl we can go with “Ah lie too.”
azlib
What still surprises me is the cringe inducing part of the prebuttal about the empty plane seat. Does Alito have no political intelligence at all?
bbleh
@Roger Moore: there is certainly that attitude, which raises the question, to whom should they avoid “the appearance of conflict”?
More generally, their behavior — as widely noted — is increasingly becoming “fk you, I do what I want,” which is one of the major characteristics of TFG’s political persona and one that a lot of his supporters — particularly male ones — find attractive in a sort of degenerate alpha-male way.
I don’t think Alito is nearly as good a politician as TFG and so is even less likely to carry it off, and I don’t think either of them realizes that, although some people admire it, it rubs a lot more people the wrong way.
Redshift
@sdhays:
“I was going to do what they wanted anyway, so why shouldn’t I take the money? It wasn’t bribery, it was just taking advantage of them.” That’s not actually a defense against a bribery charge, because the law recognizes that actions can have multiple motivating factors, and the bribe doesn’t have to be the only one. Since they’re big-time legal experts, they should know that.
There’s also the upcoming case about the upcoming case about Chevron Deference, where Thomas has previously authored decisions upholding it, and is considered likely to kill it because his personal billionaire buddy wants it gone. But sure, that’s just a coincidence.
Betty Cracker
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: IIRC, all or most of the liberal justices joined the McDonnell ruling. WTF.
Eunicecycle
@azlib: that empty plane seat argument is maybe 5th grade level? It’s so ridiculous and juvenile as to defy belief.
Old School
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Bribes are taxable income. Gifts are not taxable to the receiver. The giver pays tax on those if required.
trollhattan
To restore his reputation and dignitah, Sammy should redouble his efforts to find out who the “real leaker” of the Roe decision is.
I wonder who it could be?
He’s 73, and getting a lot of omega fatty acids via fresh fish, so I’m not counting on a magic MI to bail us out.
eclare
@Annie:
I think by the time I left Arthur Andersen in 1997, the gift limit had been reduced to $25. So a client could give you a company t-shirt, some desk thingie, etc., but that was about it.
The Thin Black Duke
@azlib: Alito is a stupid but well-educated man who lives a tastefully-furnished, unexamined life.
The Thin Black Duke
@bbleh: But Alito doesn’t have to worry about getting re-elected.
TriassicSands
Humiliated? No. Furious? Yes.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: Any evidence for the “tastefully furnished” bit?
ETA: Expensively, sure. Tastefully, open to question.
Anyway
@The Thin Black Duke:
Unexamined – yes. Cannot believe that Lo-Qualito has anything resembling taste. He’s too bitter for that.
JML
Hells bells, I work in non-profit fundraising and you can’t even give people much more than a t-shirt as a thank you when they make a gift or it (or a portion of it) becomes non-deductible. The conduct of Bishop Alito and his ilk would be laughable if it wasn’t so corrupt. Everybody else is held to higher standards and has to learn and follow the rules. This $#*@stain thinks he is above all.
(Maybe he thinks he’s Judge Dredd: “I am the Law!”)
hueyplong
@TriassicSands: Until a single contrary example is confirmed, we can assume that Alito’s reaction to literally anything is anger.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Interesting, if horrific. My big touch point with corruption was the gambling in baseball in the 1910s that culminated with the Black Sox throwing the World Series. One of the big, obvious things about it was that it wasn’t possible to simultaneously deal with and hide the problem. They needed to clean house, but it just wasn’t possible to do it secretly. They couldn’t investigate secretly, and they couldn’t punish the corrupt players secretly.
The point you make about the corrupting effect of leaving people unpunished also came up. As long as the crooked players were allowed to stay in the game, they could corrupt the players around them. There’s no indication the core players in the Black Sox scandal had any history of corruption, but there were some corrupt fringe players who got the ball rolling.
Omnes Omnibus
@hueyplong: Rage is also a possibility.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
A very crude way I heard this explained a very long time ago.
They think their shit doesn’t stink.
The worse version is:
They think their shit shouldn’t bother anyone.
Their worst version is:
They think everyone should mind their own damn business. But they forget they work for ALL of us.
Their actual worst version.
Fuck all of you, we can do whatever the hell we want, the laws don’t apply to us, we apply our law to everyone else.
TriassicSands
Maybe because the sheer volume would have required hiring two or three full-time accountants to keep track of all the loot. Better to just pretend…. Or maybe it’s just a matter of people like Alito or Thomas simply refusing to allow the government [EVIL!] to have any say in their conduct. Somehow, hearing the words “You’re not the boss of me…” roll off Alito’s lips doesn’t sound especially farfetched except that he might rephrase it in dense legalese.
Eunicecycle
@JML: I retired from nonprofit fundraising about 5 years ago. The cutoff for the gifts was something like $8 or $9 then. It was hard to find something that was decent but was under the limit.
Splitting Image
@sdhays:
If they hadn’t taken the bribes, they wouldn’t have gotten their jobs.
Literally the reason they hate David Souter so much (and John Paul Stevens) is that he tried to do his job honestly. That meant that when the Republican party was in the wrong, Souter ruled against them.
Their response was “No more Souters”. Picking people for the bench who would take money from the right billionaires is how they have ensured they’ll never get another Souter.
different-church-lady
And we’re still supposed to believe Alito didn’t leak the draft of Dobbs himself?
Tony Jay
@topclimber:
“Ah know y’all do, Yonner. That’s why all y’all are there. Bless your heart.”
@JML:
Dredd’s Mega City One has the concept of ‘public visibility’. So if you’re famous and commit a crime, you’ll get punished much more harshly as an example to the masses that no one at all is ‘above the law’.
Now, I’m not saying it’s a great idea…
TriassicSands
@hueyplong:
That’s understandable since Alito is the personal messenger of God. If it were a simple matter of his having been nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate, that would be one thing. But Cardinal Alito is working directly for the Big Guy. Questioning his actions, motives, and decisions is a rebuke to the same. And that is intolerable. Hence, RAGE! tempered slightly for public consumption.
Captain C
@Ken:
Narrator: This is technically true. He passed out at 3:57am.
sdhays
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I just don’t accept that. These gift showers aren’t about specific quid-pro-quo (at least so far); they’re about keeping these guys in the family. I expect they don’t even realize it because they’re happy in the family. But if they weren’t hobnobbing with billionaires, their lives would be different. The people they interact with would be different.
It might not make a difference on something like Dobbs (although, who knows, maybe it was the difference between Alito’s total overturn and Robert’s incrementalist preference), but I now absolutely believe that their own corruption is the reason Bob McDonnell is now a free man.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I agree with this as I attended an all boys catholic high school for one year. I’m not catholic, as were a very few other boys and a very few of the teaching assistants. The vice principal had one major vice, he was an adherent of the school of hard knocks, in that the only way to get 100% compliance was physical force. And he demanded 100% compliance. The word asshole was coined for him. And he had a free reign as not one of the others would speak up. Some of this may have been church structure, some of this may have been the time (over 60 yrs ago) but I didn’t see this in any public school I attended before or after.
O. Felix Culpa
The LA Times published a scathing op-ed about Alito by two law profs from Univ. of Michigan and NYU. Worth reading.
Final para:
WereBear
@Splitting Image: “There’s the problem! No more quality hires, Johnson.”
Kay
@Ruckus:
Investigators knew the staff were aware of the abuse because staff would take steps to protect kids short of whistleblowing or reporting – not send them to the office without another child or adult present, let the kids know which adults to avoid, etc. These workarounds they developed were an admission they knew something was very wrong.
brendancalling
I love that the WSJ didn’t bother to fact-check. That’s why I’m submitting my own op-ed: It’s an article about how Bruce Wayne is a fraud because I’m the real Batman. Which I am, and don’t you say otherwise.
Kay
@TriassicSands:
The refusal to report pisses me off the most because the Right wing THEORY behind Citizens was we didn’t need regulation because we would have transparency. Then they reneged on the transparency. So now we have no regulation OR transparency.
brendancalling
@H.E.Wolf: “I ate too many refried beans yesterday and this morning I squeezed out a MASSIVE Alito.”
JWR
@Eunicecycle: As for the ’empty plane seat’ argument: that’s just standby for the fabulously well to do.
different-church-lady
@brendancalling:
It’s in the opinion section!
narya
@O. Felix Culpa: By two of the three “Strict Scrutiny” podcasters!
Tony Jay
Sounds like all a journalist (like, an actual real journalist, not a mainstream media access hack) needs to do is contact Low-Qualito’s office claiming to be working on a story about his visits to Epstein Island.
Give it a few hours and he’ll have published a pre-buttal insisting that all the sordid stories about his Three-Breed Daisy-Chain addiction and staring role in a Danish Water Choir are just made up nonsense that no one should give credence to on pain of excommunication!
Ruckus
@Annie:
Many people that arrive at the top of their chosen occupation or position (and quite a few that aren’t there and never will be) think that they have given life a gift by their greatness and therefore they should get suitable gifts for being so great. In a society that we supposedly have in this country – equality, we get paid for the job but the job isn’t supposed to define us as above the standard that everyone is equal and that public life is about all of us, not that one ass who thinks they are greater/better than everyone else. In humanity very, very few societies actually exist in this manner because humans have a need to be better/above others in one way or another. There is a built in competition gene in most people and it has shown it’s nasty side throughout human history. In some ways it is a part and parcel of survival. A part that seems like it really needs an overhaul in this day and age.
Baud
@O. Felix Culpa:
Once again, it’s always projection.
apocalipstick
@Lacuna Synecdoche:
Yes. Alito is perfectly capable of feeling the shame, frustration, and rage of the thin-skinned petty tyrant who is being laughed at.
O. Felix Culpa
@narya: Yes!
@Baud: Truth.
apocalipstick
@Suzanne:
C’mon:
Salmon Alito
Samuel Unethicalito
It’s a fun game.
JAFD
@Eunicecycle: So that’s why we all have a bunch of ‘public broadcasting totebags’ …
ColoradoGuy
“Assholes in Robes” works for me.
Having recently gone through the Seventh Circle of Hell in Denver and Seattle airports, getting the gate switched three times, and flying on completely full Boeing 737’s, a free seat on a $20,000 private jet ride particularly rankles me.
O. Felix Culpa
OT: Putin says he totally would have crushed the Wagnerites, but let them go out of the kindness of his heart. Or something like that.
(WaPo gift article)
apocalipstick
@Matt McIrvin:
Give Clarence Thomas this: I don’t think he would have written a WSJ op-ed. I think he’d go full doublel-bird finger salute.
lowtechcyclist
@sdhays:
This. Especially the McDonnell decision, AIUI. Not bribery unless the quid pro quo is spelled out in Times New Roman 12-point font with no kerning issues.
jonas
I know we say this all the time, but can you imagine the amount of shit that would hit the fan if it turned out that one of the liberal justices regularly vacationed with George Soros on his yacht before ruling on issues that either directly impacted his investment firm, or political priorities? The country would be in flames.
As it stands, virtually nobody aside from some hardcore news/politics junkies is even remotely aware of this story (or the Thomas scandal) or, if they have heard about it, understands why it’s so fucking corrupt. Ever since Trump, nobody seems to give a shit about Republican corruption anymore. It’s their brand. It’s what they do. Wev.
apocalipstick
@apocalipstick:
I think one of things that eats at Alito is that his reasoning, which he regards as powerful and incisive, is laughable to even a layman. Listen to his oral arguments at oyez. org; he’s a pissy clown. Oyez, btw, is what showed Scalia to be the middle-school level thinker that he was. His oral arguments were embarrassing, especially from someone held out as the intellectual light of the right.
lowtechcyclist
@O. Felix Culpa:
In a speech that was to determine the fate of Russia.
It was short enough to easily feed the text into Google Translate by pieces, and it was a total nothingburger.
Dorothy A. Winsor
apocalipstick
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
That would burn his ass beyond belief.
Ramona
@trollhattan: “He’s 73, and getting a lot of omega fatty acids via fresh fish, so I’m not counting on a magic MI to bail us out”
Dare I cross my fingers for mercury poisoning?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I always thought McDonnell was a lightweight and an asshole, but I also thought his was a marginal case. So I was not surprised when the “liberal” justices joined the majority in overturning his conviction. They included Justice Sotomayor, who went from prosecutor to criminal defense attorney to almost 10 years as a federal a trial judge. She knows this area well.
There have been plenty of federal convictions for bribery since, like those Republican big shots in Ohio a few months ago. So the McDonnell case did not gut the statute, just limited its reach.
And while McDonnell never did prison time, that affair blew his political career to shreds.
piratedan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: wonder if this is crossing the recusatory Rubicon for the DOJ
Frankensteinbeck
@piratedan:
Assholes demand to be praised for being assholes.
hueyplong
@Dorothy A. Winsor: For jackals looking for a preliminary ruling to take to the Eleventh as an excuse to pursue the real goal of forced recusal, we’re either at or nearing that point.
Is it just motion denied or is it instead a denial of the requested relief with a fig leaf much lesser relief ordered in its place
ETA: Or I could have waited a few seconds and seconded piratedan.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@hueyplong: @piratedan: I don’t know. I just saw this on twitter. I think the DOJ has the option to refile? I don’t know why or what that means.
Gin & Tonic
@O. Felix Culpa: They shot down one of a very small number of russia’s reconnaissance aircraft, killing the entire crew of about a dozen. How this is allowed to stand is a complete mystery to me.
hueyplong
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The latter means it’s not appealable yet and she’s stalling. As that election watcher says, I’ve seen enough. She’s fully in the tank again and our best course is to file the J6 case and, with Cannon’s help, try it first.
lowtechcyclist
@TriassicSands:
Where God Went Wrong by Oolon Colluphid
O. Felix Culpa
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Same. Sending out a bat-signal to the legal jackals. I wasn’t able to attend Imm’s Zoom presentation, so I don’t know if he covered potential recusal maneuvers.
schrodingers_cat
Can we send the conservative justices on a cruise to see the Titanic by any chance? Or climb the Everest for bragging rights.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It was opposed by the media. And courts are generally required not to deal unless a specific showing is made. I don’t know what the government argued, but this ruling isn’t the pro-Trump ruling you’re looking for.
hueyplong
@Gin & Tonic: Here’s guessing the next two weeks will work wonders on solving the mystery.
Frankensteinbeck
@apocalipstick:
I like to make a distinction, and since the English language doesn’t, here are my semantics:
Guilt is discomfort because of an internal sense that you have done wrong.
Shame is discomfort because of public criticism.
Alito is a perfect example of someone who feels no guilt, but does feel shame. He reacts by getting angry rather than retreating.
hueyplong
@Baud: What’s your thought as to why Trump didn’t oppose?
I get why the media opposed.
O. Felix Culpa
@Gin & Tonic: Inorite? I believe they also downed some helicopters. I’m glad that Wagner reduced the inventory of aircraft that can be used against Ukraine, but I’m baffled by Putin’s milquetoast response, unless he has something up his sleeve for later.
Baud
@hueyplong:
Don’t know anything about the specifics. Generally, I think, defense counsel prefer not to have information out in the media. But Trump is a different animal, obviously.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Putin likes aircraft crews that don’t get shot down.
Baud
@Baud:
Deal = Seal
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
Assholes demand to be praised for being assholes.
I believe they have always done this. It’s part and parcel of being an asshole. “Pay ATTENTION to ME or I will be a BIGGER asshole.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I feel dirty taking a side against the media.
OTOH, those people are going to be harassed if their names are made public.
If the list is sealed, does that mean Trump and his attorneys don’t know who’s on it? Or is it just the public?
Scout211
Deleted.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Just the public. Trump will get a list of potential witnesses. He has to, not only for the trial, but also to comply with the order that he not talk about the trial to them.
catclub
we quite before 3:30.
JPL
@O. Felix Culpa: I’m just guessing, but I don’t think he has complete control right now. Both Putin and Prigo are terrorists and bloodshed means nothing to them. Something doesn’t seem right.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It’s just like the Libertarian theory that we don’t need most government regulation because people injured by a business’s malfeasance can just sue, but also that we need tort reform to protect businesses from lawsuits. Pick one or the other, guys; you can’t have both.
hueyplong
@Baud: I phrased my last one inelegantly. I was wondering why she’d deny a motion unopposed by her master.
WhatsMyNym
@sdhays:
Ballotpedia
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Not that it matters, but I can live with that.
Baud
@hueyplong:
Now I’m not sure what you’re asking. The media opposed the sealing, so she had to decide one way or the other. She chose to give the government another chance to make a showing why sealing was necessary.
cain
@Scout211: I think all those witnesses will probably be bugged and monitored for witness tampering. You can bet that it could also be a trap. Of course, with this judge who knows…
eversor
@prostratedragon:
Alito, like Barr, like Leo, has out and out said that because we don’t have Christ demanded patriarchy, gender roles, and heirarchy everything is fair game. It’s Christianity, it’s always Christianity. So if you aren’t specifically anti Christian than you are helping and aiding Alito.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There’s bribery, and there’s undue influence. But they are splitting hairs.
hueyplong
@Baud: That’s rational.
WaterGirl
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: “I won’t claim this if you won’t.”
“If none of us claim stuff like this, then maybe no one will notice.”
Marmot
@Tony Jay:
I can’t look away. Sorry. “Y’all” is plural. “All y’all” is for addressing a larger group after you’ve spoken to a portion of it already, so I guess it works here?
There might be looser rules in the Coastal Southern accent, or numeracy is in shorter supply. Dunno.
The Lodger
@apocalipstick: Son of Sam works too, although I’m not at all gratified that he’s a fellow Jr.
Anyway
Salmon Alito FTW. There’s even a photograph to illustrate this…
O. Felix Culpa
@eversor:
To fill in for the currently absent Omnes, bigot says what?
ETA: Aaand Omnes is in the house, calling out the bigot!
Omnes Omnibus
@eversor: No, we aren’t signing on to your bigotry campaign.
Tony Jay
@Marmot:
Blank look, followed by slow, creeping smirk of understanding.
“Thissun heyya wenna school!”
I keed. I haven’t followed how all y’all colonials mangle the
Queen’sKing’s English since we lost Patrick Swayze.JML
@Eunicecycle: I think it’s like $11 these days, and there’s some “cheats” around it, but at the end of the day it’s pretty nominal value for things. But everybody in the business knows there’s a rule and it’s not all that complicated. If a bunch of underpaid, under-resourced, and overworked non-profit punks can figure out the IRS reg without breaking a sweat, a goddamn Supreme Court Justice can follow some fairly simple ethical guidelines and reporting rules.
Alito is a corrupt SOB. An arrogant weasel who shouldn’t be anywhere near the levers of power.
apocalipstick
@Frankensteinbeck:
Nicely put.
Uncle Cosmo
Harassed, my ass.
Axe yerselves a question folx: If Cheeto Benito is as terrified of prison time as current whizzdumb has it, how far would he go to avoid it?
I could be wrong – I hope I’m wrong – but sounds to me like the Trumplthinskin defense team would be deelighted to have that witness list out there, where it’s only a matter of means and opportunity til some motivated not-really-stochastic terrorist arranges for one of them an, uhh, unfortunate accident. Or til the first one of their loved ones barely escapes one of those….
Shana
@H.E.Wolf: Just like Santorum.
Marmot
@Tony Jay:
Awesome. And so close! I kid you not, that’s “all y’all’s.” Yeah with two apostrophes, what of it? We lost interest in the King’s after y’all destroyed Alderaan.
EDIT: Oh, nope I see now that it works. My bad!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@WaterGirl: Bribery, influence peddling, to-may-to, to-mah-to, ♫ let’s lock the whole gang up! ♫
Tony Jay
@Marmot:
That Peter Cushing. Everyone said what a nice guy he was, and Chris Lee got all the suspicious stares, but my god, Cushing’s death toll was in the billions!
Not that Alderaan didn’t have it coming. Bloody rebel scum.
Eunicecycle
@JML: agree 100%. And there are enough regs we have to help our donors follow, yet somehow we figured them out.
Shana
@azlib: I’m kind of amazed that more people aren’t talking about how the whole trip was most likely set up as a vehicle to get Singer and Alito together so the “Oh the seat would have been vacant anyway” defense is just more bullshit. They may not have mentioned it to Alito until shortly before the trip but that doesn’t mean the planning wasn’t done before with the aim to have him in that seat from the start.
sab
@Marmot: Y’all can also be used in the singular to imply (with sarcasm) “respect.” or formality. I heard it used in Mississippi 50 years ago when addressing really pretensious people.
Shana
@lowtechcyclist: No matter their decision on McDonnell’s case, we have heard NOTHING from him here in Virginia since then. Almost worth the tradeoff. Almost
artem1s
So now I’m wondering are the bribes just the tip of the iceberg? is the outrage over the gifts being revealed a precursor to fear that Politico’s next story will be that there was extortion too?
sukabi
don’t know if anyone has linked to this, but there is MORE, varied corruption…
https://www.rawstory.com/samuel-alito-2661896418/
Wife of Justice Samuel Alito leased land to oil company while he penned opinions overseeing EPA: report
O. Felix Culpa
@sukabi:
This is my shocked face.
Seriously though, until recently I entertained the (apparently) naive belief that R-appointed Supreme Court justices cared at least somewhat about law and jurisprudence, even if I might disagree with their interpretive frameworks. Silly me.
Edited.
Marmot
@sab: Ah, like the Royal We? Coastal Southern I still can’t get.
WaterGirl
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That would be acceptable!
sukabi
@O. Felix Culpa: since the Federalist society has been picking and the gop has been rubber stamping their choices I’ve figured it was a corrupt process with corrupt judges being moved up…what does surprise me is the lack of interest, until recently, in taking a peek at what they’ve been up to…
Glidwrith
@Dorothy A. Winsor: OMG, they keep harping on how they would make the same decisions, therefore this isn’t bribery.
They’re right. It’s not bribery.
It’s EXTORTION. The Justices are extorting the billionaires to not decide against them.
ETA: And artem1s, beat me to it.