The succession of stories about Justice Samuel Alito, flags, and beer stock are an accumulation of embarrassments for the reporters involved, not to mention any number of pliant commentators who should know better than to echo the innuendo. This should not be a surprise. The pseudo-ethics outrage directed at the Supreme Court is inseparable from the pseudo-journalism that fomented it. And when pseudo-journalism goes on unabated—even rewarded, as happened when ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for its Supreme Court hit jobs—it can be expected to metastasize.
We are now witnessing even more layers of unfounded and deceptive reporting than usual. The recent spate of Alito stories started with The New York Times report, “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display.” It took mounds of innuendo to suggest that the justice was taking a position on one of the most incendiary political controversies of our time. But it turns out that the upside-down American flag that was briefly flown at the Alitos’ home in mid-January 2021 was not any sort of widely recognized “stop the steal” symbol, and the Times lacked support for such a claim. I had never heard of that supposed symbolism until the Times report came out, and neither did conservative commentators from Ann Coulter to Jeffrey Blehar or, for that matter, anyone else I am aware of.
But even before getting to that layer of the story, there is, by his own unrebutted account, Justice Alito’s complete lack of involvement in flying the flag, which his wife Martha-Ann “briefly placed . . . in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.” That prompts a reminder that we do not impugn the impartiality of judges by the political views of their spouses. That is true even when the spouse works for an appellate litigating juggernaut like the ACLU, holds statewide political office, or serves as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Another pseudo-ethics story concerns Justice Alito’s sale of Anheuser-Busch InBev stock while its price was tanking and the Bud Light brand was being boycotted. There was nothing unethical whatsoever about the stock sale and nothing for the justice to answer for. The story served to conjure gratuitous speculation about a political issue that Justice Alito could not address without appearing political.
For a sense of perspective and contrast on the double standard applied to Alito, consider that the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ripped into then-candidate Donald Trump multiple times in the middle of the 2016 presidential election and ended up having to apologize for her political statements. And her other eyebrow-raising political conduct and (I believe unintentional) conflicts of interest surpassed that of anyone sitting on today’s Court. But that did not lead to nonstop pseudo-ethics outrage, recusal demands, or impeachment calls from the Left.
With none of the other attacks sticking, The New York Times brought into its anti-Alito journalistic circus another flag—the Pine Tree flag, which was commissioned by George Washington during the Revolutionary War. It bears the words “An Appeal to Heaven” above a pine tree. This flag flew at the Alitos’ beach house during the summer of 2023. As Dan McLaughlin points out, the flag is still displayed as a patriotic symbol—usually but not always by conservatives, as is the case with Founding-era symbols generally—and is still (minus the slogan) the flag of the Massachusetts State Navy. Senator Tom Cotton, who displays the flag outside his office, and plenty of other public officials are rightfully mocking the journalistic abuse of this cherished symbol.
If the stupidity and paranoia of it all seems a bit much, consider the curious fact that the 2021 and 2023 displays of the two flags were both tagged as “breaking news” by the Times as the newspaper reported on them this month. Strange timing? Only if we forget that the Supreme Court has just entered its season of issuing decisions in closely watched cases. If the media cannot get any real dirt on the author of the Dobbs decision, it will make stuff up in an attempt to delegitimize him. As I have maintained before, none of these controversies are truly about ethics. They are about intimidating a Court that the Left despises for its fidelity to the Constitution.