The aristocracy sucks. They buried this for fellow aristocrats Alito and his wife.
The Washington Post admits that it has known about the upside-down American flag at Alito’s house for THREE YEARS but decided not to publish the fact. WaPo claims it was unclear if the flag display was related to politics. Stunning. And lame. (Gift link) https://t.co/J1tZKRneuK pic.twitter.com/UxevZbtLlB
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) May 25, 2024
.
Washington Post (gift link)
The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute.
Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple’s Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived.The incident documented by reporter Robert Barnes, who covered the Supreme Court for The Post for 17 years and retired last year, offers fresh details about the raising of the flag and the first account of comments about it by the justice’s wife.
The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.
The upside-down flag has long been a sign of distress for the military and protest by various political factions. In the fraught weeks before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, it had also been adopted by supporters of the “Stop the Steal” movement, which embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden stole the election from him. Some of the rioters who participated in the attack had carried upside-down American flags with them.
h/t Steeplejack
I am beyond angry. I don’t read the comments on articles, but there are 3,500 of them. I hope the Washington Post is being destroyed in the comments. Or maybe that should just read: I hope the Washington Post is being destroyed. Period.
What is the point of the national news media if they bury the news?
Open thread.
O. Felix Culpa
Oh, I think the point is pretty clear.
Another Scott
I ass-u-me the reporter who sat on the story is the same woman who was shown in a picture a few weeks back of her attending some friendly lunch function with the Mrs. Alito and a bunch of other women. Might have been on MuellerSheWrote, I don’t exactly recall.
Another example of “where you stand depends on where you sit”, and yet another example of the dangers of reporters being too close to their subjects.
Grr…,
Scott.
TBone
I spent two full days being enraged about all this. It was in plain sight before the flags were publicized. But those combined with the Alito opinion on the gerrymandering case brought me to the edge of insanity. Then I read Clarence’s two cents and IT’S ON!
This. This is everything they stan for. I call it A Bronx Tale:
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/05/trump-springs-action-when-bronx-rally
I have to sit with my rage awhile longer before deciding what small acts of resistance best suit this moment. I’m percolating.
SiubhanDuinne
Hey WaPo! Democracy fucking dies in darkness, remember?
TBone
@Another Scott: I saw those photos also.
Michael Bersin
Nine years ago, referring to the “politics” reporter/editor for the Kansas City Star:
The Stenographer develops a crush
It didn’t work out so well after that. It never does.
HinTN
@Another Scott: The continuing saga of cocktail weenies.
SiubhanDuinne
In the 20 minutes since you posted, the number’s climbed to 4,100.
Gregory
The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.
Let’s be clear about something: The flag “appeared” to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito and it was “not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics” because Martha-Ann Alito said that to the so-called “reporter,” and the so-called “reporter” accepted her statement as truth.
My sole regret about not pursuing a career in journalism in the ’90s — I could tell even then that it was a dying institution — is that if I had, I might be a position to fire such lazy, incompetent hacks.
(But maybe not — I’d have fired any reporter I caught reading The Drudge Report, which I’m sure would not have endeared me to the owners.)
Cacti
I haven’t trusted any of the “liberal” media since they rolled over and showed their belly to Dubya for the Iraq war.
laura
This post is crying out for Villago Delenda Est! He knows this subject so damn well.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My hometown newspaper really hasn’t changed it’s tune since the early Aughts when me and DougJ would troll the reporters during “chat” sessions.
Their description of what happened here is very reminiscent of the kinda crap Jim Fucking Vandehei or Lois Fucking Romano would say during the Dubya years justifying the crap the WaPo was peddling.
I’ve refused to give them a digital subscription all these years despite being a home subscriber, 7-days-a-week back when we were in DC.
FTFWP?
CaseyL
Newspapers historically have been kind to the powerful, hiding or minimizing scandals.
Remember, Bernstein and Woodward were beat reporters, not political reporters. Political reporters wanted nothing to do with Watergate. Political reporters aren’t interested in, or capable of, investigative reporting. That involves talking to nonentities, like clerical staff, household help, and small business owners.
And the investigation might not go anywhere! Imagine wasting so much time cultivating unimportant people and then you don’t even get a story out of it!
Anyway, I’m glad I cancelled my WaPo subscription. “Democracy Dies in Darkness… And We’re Helping to Kill It!”
smith
WaPo has lost more than 50% of its online readership since 2020 and is laying off staff. Somehow it doesn’t occur to them that this might be connected to thousands of outraged readers when they pull crap like this.
Baud
I’m so old, I remember when it was a scandal that the husband of a candidate exchanges pleasantries with the attorney general on a tarmac.
Anywho, this just reinforces my view that’s it’s us against the world.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
No, the reporter who originally approached the Alitos at their house in 2021 is a guy who retired last year. I suspect that he might have been pissed that his story was originally suppressed and started making noise once he was no longer employed there. My theory, anyway.
I will ask my semi-connected insider friend from college (a former Post reporter) if they know anything.
Baud
I don’t like giving suggestions to Democrats, but maybe fhe party really should consider funding it’s own purely partisan media. That’s how it was done in the old days.
Scout211
I’m just wondering if they (and the NYT) found clarity when they reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop. It must have been very clear to them that his laptop was rooted in politics.
🤬
stinger
1. That’s Alito’s home, right? He lives there, goes in and out? Can see the flag? And is a US Supreme Court justice and knows US law? Such as the Flag Code?
2. Martha-Ann (if ever there was an OfSamuel name) is married to a Supreme Court justice, right? A hyperconservative, religious one? Who believes that marriage means the two become one? The one being… him? So what she does, he effectively does? Or is that just for the peons?
smith
@Scout211: They seem to assume their readers are the same kind of credulous rubes who watch Fox and unquestioningly accept whatever nonsense they’re fed, even if it’s implausible and contradicts what they said yesterday.
TBone
Meanwhile,
Video and deets at link
https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/25/controlling-the-greensboro-rabble/
Baud
@TBone:
Good on those vets.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: @TBone:
Found it.
Photo.
Grr…,
Scott.
TBone
@Another Scott: 👍
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@smith:
A friend, former WH reporter for another paper, walked me thru how in the Aughts, newspaper editors were scared shitless of the changing economics of papers and the fact that right-wing readers would bombard them with critiques, threatening to cancel subscriptions. Said editors would then pass down that message to reporters and the result was the crap we saw.
Whenever I’d get a digital subscription request from FTFWP, I’d write them back explaining why I wouldn’t subscribe and never did I see any real change, similar to NPR’s descent into mediocrity.
Well, they’ve shed their right-wing readership outside of the Totebagger Radio crowd so the only thing left are…people who want to see responsible reporting.
And since 2020, such people have gotten progressively fed up and left b/c if they’re like me, they realized a long time ago the the FTFWP leadership didn’t think the libs were serious about bailing on their “product”.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: FTFWP indeed. During TFG’s term I subscribed bc Marty Baron’s news pages didn’t suck. When he retired, they went downhill. And of course Fred Hiatt’s editorial page was always shit.
The only patriotic way to read WaPo is to pirate it!
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Thanks for the correction.
The photo (just above) is with Shannon Bream – a FoxNews reporter who was doing the “argument with neighbor, nothing to see here” stuff a few weeks ago.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I think I did see that photo on Mueller She Wrote.
Parfigliano
@stinger: Just for the peons.
TBone
Workplace discrimination, harassment (I’d call it assault) and long-term retaliation: not just for opposers of the new Reich, but for his own female employees.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/05/24/trumpian-torture-tactics/
gene108
I’m old enough to remember when conservatives were all grrrrr mad when someone disrespected the flag.
Performative patriotism when it suits them.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
My insider friend is going to get on the listserv for former Post employees and see what’s what. I’ll report back later if I hear anything.
Melancholy Jaques
This story reminds of a blurry memory from back in 2000, and it might have been WaPo or the NYT. There were reports that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris were going overboard to purge Democratic voters. When asked why they didn’t investigate and run stories on that, the paper said, essentially, we called their office and they said it wasn’t true, so we dropped the story.
Think they’d do that for any Democrats?
smith
One striking thing about this whole saga is the fact that Alito has not yet disavowed the message of the flag. When the story first broke he blamed it on a little spat Martha-Ann was having with a neighbor. After the second story broke, about the flag at his summer house, he has so far said nothing. You’d think if he wanted to set the record straight about his loyalty to either insurrection or the rule of law, he’d have been eager to do so.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: ooh, yes, please.
Ishiyama
In the 1970s we had to create our own media. In the 2020s, the media creates you. “The medium is message.”
WaterGirl
@smith: They are hoping this just goes away, and at the same time they are likely taking their time to get their story worked out in case it doesn’t just go away.
TBone
@smith: it flies outside the door of Lil Mike Johnson’s (the Speaker of the House) office at the Capitol as well. And Leonard Leo flies it in the Klan-approved manner (from a tree on his property as is proper KKK procedure). They’ll never denounce it, only offer up plausible deniability and blame someone else, preferably female.
Leonard Leo has his tentacles around ALL 6 Supremacists on the highest court in our land.
smith
@TBone: You’d hope that news of widespread sexual harassment might move the needle a bit, but, just like with the Access Hollywood revelations, we may find it’s a feature, not a bug. There are a lot of not nice people out there who may admire the Defendant’s commitment to his brand.
TBone
@smith: his own staff. His own staff. His own staff!
Might move the needle! I am ever hopeful
smith
@TBone: Good to know there are some optimists around.
NutmegAgain
I commented! I rarely do so, but this was just such bullshit. Every conceivable angle it’s bullshit. All the way down. I’ll say this: if Alito (and Thomas for that matter) were just corrupt, that would really be awful on its own. But the fact that he’s a moralizing, finger-pointing nag, AND is constantly trying to take away rights from normal Americans based on nothing more than his fetid imagination and the fun of being cruel, it’s too much.
JaySinWA
Pulling the blackout shades.
TBone
@smith: I had to be mindful over the past two days of absolute fury in order to recover and re-center my inner optimist who is usually proudly defiant with serious panache! The Supremacists nearly managed to change me. But NO.
lowtechcyclist
Even if the WaPo took Ms. Alito at her word, so what? There’s still a “wife of SCOTUS Justice disrespects the U.S. flag by flying it upside down because she was upset with her neighbors” story. That’s the best spin that can be put on her behavior (even though we know it’s a lie), and it was definitely newsworthy.
Fuck the WaPo.
TBone
@NutmegAgain: come sit by me
NutmegAgain
@TBone: Happy to. We could maybe plot the overtaking of the Supreme Court
JaySinWA
From the dead entertainment thread below
One way to break through the normies avoidance of politics is drama, for good or ill:
Entertainment can affect politics:
Some comments here have referenced Mr. Bates vs the post office.
It is having a real-time impact on UK politics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/10/world/europe/uk-itv-mr-bates-vs-post-office.html
PBS has a timeline here
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/mr-bates-vs-the-post-office-timeline-of-the-uk-horizon-scandal/#
With the original series on Masterpiece (via PBS Passport online)
Drama can reach normies to fire political action for good as well as evil.
Parliament has just passed legislation to effectively override the court system to attempt restitution (and political recriminations).
JaySinWA
Yes, that should have brought on a full court apology tour.
TBone
@TBone: I first saw this article yesterday but it was paywalled. This is when I decided OH HELL NO.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-sotomayor-admits-she-cries-145859932.html
TBone
@NutmegAgain: 💙 I like your style! 🥰
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
uhm…..
Democracy dies in darknessit’s okay if you’re republicanhrprogressive
The point of the national news media is to do the bidding of their corprofascist shareholder owners.
Which is to destroy the republic so that they can reap profit and power after we no longer have a functional country.
It’s been pretty clear for years that “journalism” doesn’t exist outside of independent outlets who do not have the reach, or capital to increase their reach.
This isn’t shocking to anyone who has been paying attention.
cain
@Scout211: there is nothing political about the wife of a SCOTUS using the flag upside down to make a statement. If it wasn’t political what statement was it ?
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Well now, that’s SERIOUS news, not like that trivial story about the upside-down flag. //
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
cain
@gene108:
They are super patriots. All actions are always respectful. That’s why they can have many different versions of the flag. Blue line, red line, black line .. stars in a circle. They love their flags.. except the real one.
lowtechcyclist
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Source? Link?
JoyceH
@cain: I would say that before Jan 6, the upside down flag was considered a universal distress signal, which could be applicable to many situations. But after Jan 6, which is when this happened, it was pretty firmly associated with Trumpism and the Big Lie. Which ought to have made this newsworthy.
Was the reporter who recently retired and had this story but didn’t run it the SCOTUS reporter? Some time ago, I saw Dahlia Lithwick, who is a SCOTUS reporter on a news show, and she said until very recently the Supreme Court was covered differently than other government bodies. Reporters covered their work product, hearings and opinions etc, without dealing with background info, personal lives and so on, of the justices. It was a holdover from the time when the Supremes were considered some august, impartial, above-it-all apolitical body. She admitted that tradition probably did the public a disservice, and it’s probably how all this rather blatant corruption flew under the radar for so long.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@CHETAN R MURTHY:
Hear! Hear!
For the longest time, their paywall was non-existent. They upgraded it and it was still very easy to bypass. So, as you said, I did my patriotic duty and bypassed it.
But recently, they did an actual upgrade that’s pretty tight, in fact, better than FTFNYT’s paywall (which is still fairly easy to bypass). Now, all you get is the first several sentences of an article and the legions of patriots can’t figure out a way around it.
Peke Daddy
smith
@hrprogressive: I agree with you completely, but since there are still many people who look on WaPo and FTFNYT as not only trustworthy sources of information but also somehow liberal news outfits, it may be worth making a fuss when they commit blatant acts of journalistic malfeasance. It not only (hopefully) signals to people who might otherwise simply accept what’s being fed to them that there are other valid ways to look at events, it also to a certain extent signals to those outlets that there is a limit to their readers’ gullibility.
That may make the effort of protesting worthwhile, but I think it would be foolish to expect such protests to change the papers’ approach to news in any fundamental way. As you say, they have a mission centered on advancing the interests of mobster-oligarchs, not those of the rest of us.
lowtechcyclist
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I can read the WaPo for free through my county library’s website. (I usually don’t bother, though.) Other DC-area peeps might check with their libraries to see if they can do the same.
smith
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’ve not had any problems feeding the URL into archive.is. You’ll get a very irritating captcha, but in the end the article appears.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@lowtechcyclist:
(link 1) (link 2)
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@CHETAN R MURTHY: Steal this
booknewspaper¹Mai Naem mobile
@Baud: Al Gore couldn’t even be bothered to hang onto Current TV. The main reason I have Sirius radio in my car is because terrestrial radio is chock full of RW talk and Christian radio which is basically RW radio. There’s NPR but NPR is not leftie. Even Sirius only has one leftie channel but at least it’s got CSPAN,Bloomberg, BBC, CBC etc.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
The economy is so bad that people are flooded with disposable income and cheap gas
Quadrillipede
@Steeplejack: I’d assumed that the hold-up was Alito’s neighbours waiting to release this info at a politically damaging time for Alito, but I guess I shouldn’t have given the legacy media the benefit of the doubt — I won’t be making that mistake again for a while, I hope…
Marcopolo
So, not a subscriber so I have no idea what else was reported in the WaPo today. But is a possibility that some reporter there covered a story today that was well reported & shed light on an important topic?
Look, I get the outrage over this. And honestly the WaPo opinion page is pretty typically a dumpster fire. But if the WaPo goes away, I suspect there will be a lot of stories not covered at all. Some of them important. That’s the catch. I read last week the the paper has lost 50% of its readers since 2020 & is pretty much hemorrhaging money & sure celebrate that if you want to because there is a fair amount of crappy (or non) reporting but, once again, there will be a void if/when it’s gone. And I’m pretty sure there will be folks rage stoked by this example who will cancel their sub. Which I understand but… maybe be outraged by this but still understand that the WaPo does do some good reporting (which will never get the clicks that this does cause getting people mad is designed to generate clicks) and if we flush the whole thing down the toilet at this juncture in our media environment there will be nothing to take it’s place but posts on xshitter, tik tok, and other social media. And yeah, I know about substack & do read good reporting there but none of that has much reach, you know, compared to the WaPo.
Anyway, just my 2 cents (and yes this makes me mad as hell) as someone who lost a local paper in their community last week.
Harrison Wesley
“Hey, Martha-Ann/What’s your game now/Can anybody play?”
Starfish
@Baud: They have done this a few times, but their viewers want information and not pandering. That costs money.
Halteclere
@JoyceH: “I would say that before Jan 6, the upside down flag was considered a universal distress signal, which could be applicable to many situations”
Here in Texas there were pickup trucks flying the upside down flag the entirety of Obama’s presidency. And of course the truck I most often saw had the “I don’t belive the liberal media” bumper sticker.
Kay
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Oh, yes. They’re destitute yet every vacation/tourist spot is full to bursting, all across the income spectrum, from US tourists in European countries to pricey resorts in the US to travel trailer parks and amusement parks.
No one has ever explained the level of spending. I’m in western Michigan right now – it’s booming. They’re expanding public libaries and building public pickle ball courts.
AWOL
Never pay for paywalled feces again:
Webpage archive
Baud
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
@Kay:
Biggest gaslighting operation since the Allies planned D-Day.
Baud
Liberal lawyers should start wearing upside down flag pins in court.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cacti:
When it comes to big media, there are no liberals.
E.
@Marcopolo: I would be satisfied if the WaPo showed some awareness of the horrible breach of standards and gave an accounting of what steps they were taking to keep it from happening again. But when they don’t do that, do I still have to support them?
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I’m old enough to remember when Lee Atwater smeared Kitty Dukakis saying she burned a flag in the sixties and the liburel media ran with it even though there wasnt a scintilla of evidence.
WaterGirl
@hrprogressive: It’s just so much more in your face than it used to be.
They’re not just saying the quiet parts out loud, they are shouting them from the rooftops!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
They’re more desperate because they’re more at risk.
Baud
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
She burned the evidence!
Parfigliano
@Marcopolo: Your argument boils down to, “Im sure he loves me. He bought me this bracelet. He wont hit me again.”
stinger
@Parfigliano: 👍
Baud
@Parfigliano:
What kind of bracelet?
TBone
@JoyceH: that’s the S.C. reporting I grew up on. Plus in some of the law offices where I worked, the S.C. was highly respected, almost revered. Years ago.
It’s a whole new world now.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud: What’s below cheap?
Gus diZerega
One step too far. I have cancelled my subscription. My mainstream newspaper is now the Guardian.
WaterGirl
@Parfigliano: Well done!
@Baud: Too funny!
eclare
I just canceled my subscription and told them exactly why. I predict I will not be alone in this.
I will sub Al Jazeera for the WaPo.
prostratedragon
@Harrison Wesley: Hmmm … now if someone can come with a catchy tune I think you’re onto something.🙂
WaterGirl
@eclare: The L.A. Times is an excellent newspaper.
eclare
@Baud:
Yep. I remember TIFG going off on that, saying something like who can talk for twenty minutes about their grandkids?
The Big Dog could talk for twenty minutes about his toothpaste, ffs.
Papa Boyle
Disappointed that the Washington Post flavor of Catch and Kill isn’t noticeably better than the National Enquirer.
prostratedragon
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
What’s below cheap?
[sigh] Whatever it is, in this person’s case it’s somewhere between axiomatic and defining.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Thanks!
Lethe
@SiubhanDuinne: It was +6000, adding mine. I’m behind on news usually, which is why I come here. Cancelled them and deleted the app. Truly pissed.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
I’ll look into that, thanks.
prostratedragon
@Papa Boyle: Thanks for putting that name to it. Lacks only the legalistic frufru.
WaterGirl
@Papa Boyle: @prostratedragon: New rotating tag!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, let’s watch a famous TikTok cook make a quick dinner for her kids… (57s video).
[ rofl ]
(via AngryBlackLady)
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@Another Scott:
I get tweet not found…
hrprogressive
@Baud:
Are they, though?
This is a country that still believes there are problems with “both sides”, when, objectively, only one of them wants to destroy the republic and rule them with an iron fist.
Not sure that same citizenry can be convinced that the “papers of record” are in on the Fascist Fix.
Another Scott
@eclare: You might have to refresh it a few times (Nitter can have glitches at times).
Or try the Twitter version.
Sorry for the hassle.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: Rremember when Obama had to give a speech about race because his preacher saying some things that offended white folks on a sunday when Obama wasn’t even at church?
Baud
@hrprogressive:
They perceive their risk of failing differently than you do.
prostratedragon
Spanning set
divF
@Another Scott: Really good (the video, not the dinner).
Chet Murthy
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’ve found that I almost never need to read about something in FTFNYT or FTFWP. There are lots of other news outlets that don’t have paywalls, where I can read about things.
zhena gogolia
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I know, isn’t it maddening?
RaflW
Apparently even prior to this specific shit show, the Washington Post has lost 50% of its audience since 2020.
And I’m going to all too confidently believe WaPo management will come up with all the wrong reasons for why that is.
AFAIAC the two big east coast dailies have taken their subscribers for granted, refused to hear the volumes of valid criticism actual readers and buyers of their product have offered, and when the fruitless banging of one’s head on a wall becomes too painful, the eyeballs and dollars stop showing up.
All of which — the shitty coverage, the loss of readers, and soon, the slashes to newsroom staffing — are terrible for our bleeding, staggering democracy.
Melancholy Jaques
I just cancelled my WaPo. I still had it mostly through my usual laziness, but this bullshit has gone on too long. I am sure they do not give a rat’s ass that I cancelled, but I just don’t want to be a part, however small, of their income.
RaflW
@Citizen Alan: Yeah but Alito is not a politician [massive, visible from space eye roll].
Quiltingfool
@Kay: Here at Lake of the Ozarks, lots and lots of tourists. When my husband got home from work Thursday night, he said the WalMart parking lot was completely full, and cars were streaming in (not a good time for locals to shop, lol!). We dashed into town early Friday to shop and don’t plan on going back this weekend.
Obviously the economy isn’t too bad around here, or in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska or Illinois, because lots of folks from those states like to vacation here. Me, I’m good with them spending money in my county; we pull in about 4% sales tax on everything they buy.
Omicron
I find the differing editorial positions of the WaPo and the NYT to be quite interesting. I was a newspaper reporter and editor (not in that league, to be sure) long ago, and I think that if as, say, a managing editor I were faced with the choice of publishing or not publishing the original Alito flag story I would have hesitated, but come down on the side of publishing. There must be a very high ethical standard for SCOTUS justices, and the flags are clearly way below that standard. It doesn’t matter whether Alito was directly responsible for their display.
*Both* papers need to be a lot tougher on the politicians they cover. I was working in the legal/financial world of Wall Street in the mid 80s, and everyone, and i mean *everyone* knew that Donald J. Trump was a criminal, fraud, and mountebank of the worst sort. If someone as insignificant as I knew that, the NYT knew it (and so did the WaPo). They should have published what they had and pushed for more once Trump’s presidential candidacy came to the fore.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, RParloff (from Lawfare) decodes what’s going on with Smith and Cannon in Florida.
10 tweet thread.
I’d like to think that Cannon is on her way out, but that’s probably too much to hope for at the moment.
Grr…,
Scott.
dark patriot
@Mai Naem mobile:
what’s the lefty channel?
eclare
@Another Scott:
Twitter worked! So funny…
RaflW
@Melancholy Jaques: I can only conclude, at this point, that CJ Roberts wants the specific reputation he is earning.
He is well and truly satisfied to be leading the Court that utterly destroys Voting Rights and sets a new low bar for public respect and approval.
His legacy will be shit, and given his fuck-it attitude to Thomas and Alito, shit is his preferred wallow. Ok then.
Harrison Wesley
@WaterGirl: I dunno, it’s not always Catch and Kill. Sometimes it’s Cut and Run.
WaterGirl
@Omicron: Say it again!
WaterGirl
@Harrison Wesley: Catch and Kill because they are cowards and want to cut and run?
Jinchi
If Michelle Obama had flown a Black Power flag at their private home after Trump’s election in 2016, you better believe it would have been front page news.
WaterGirl
@Jinchi: I’m sorry, didn’t we have a scandal about a fucking scarf that Michelle wore???
Steeplejack
@JoyceH:
Robert Barnes was the Post‘s SCOTUS reporter, and my connected friend said that he covered the court in the old-school way that Dahlia Lithwick describes.
Villago Delenda Est
“Democracy dies in darkness”
And the WaPo is eager to turn out the lights.
hrprogressive
@Baud:
I think they’ve succeeded quite nicely, and are nowhere near close to failure.
Curious your perspective, though.
Baud
@hrprogressive:
When you’re at the top, you are sensitive to threats to your position. I think they think more highly of the threat we represent than we do.
Almost Retired
@eclare: Seconding WaterGirl’s recommendation of my hometown newspaper, the LA Times. Editorial page is excellent, and most of the regular columnists are top rate (especially Michael Hiltzik – but George Skelton needs to retire). International coverage could be better and you’ll get more information about the entertainment industry you could possibly want. But a solid source of news, opinion and some investigate journalism. Also Pearls Before Swine in color.
steve g
Yes, the dispute with the neighbor was that they had a sign reading “Fuck Trump,” you’d have to be a mind reader to discern that the disagreement was “rooted in politics,” the reticence of WAPO is totally understandable, they are morons.
Eyeroller
@steve g: Oh, it wasn’t that it was about Trump, don’t you see, it was the obscenity, that children waiting for the schoolbus might see (even though the local schools were remote at the time). Won’t somebody think of the children??
eclare
@Almost Retired:
I’ll look into it! And I like entertainment gossip, I check out tmz, so it sounds like a good fit.
Thanks!
Mai Naem mobile
@dark patriot: 127. It’s called Progress. If you’re a streaming right now you will get mostly reruns during the weekend. They also simucast MSNBC. They also have 124 POTUS which is a mix of center left and center right.
eclare
@Almost Retired:
I just signed up for a trial period. Looking forward to it!
brantl
@lowtechcyclist: I think that should be WaPoo!