{"id":34083,"date":"2024-05-31T12:27:56","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T19:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34083"},"modified":"2024-05-31T12:27:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T19:27:57","slug":"ted-kennedy-warned-us-about-samuel-alito-he-was-ignored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/05\/31\/ted-kennedy-warned-us-about-samuel-alito-he-was-ignored\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Kennedy Warned Us About Samuel Alito. He Was Ignored."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Masciotra\/The New Republic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"TedSamuel Alito met with senators, including Ted Kennedy, after his nomination to the Supreme Court in 2005. (photo: Win McNamee\/Getty)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

30 may 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Supreme Court justice\u2019s flag controversy should come as no surprise to anyone who paid attention to his nomination hearings in 2006.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is in distress\u2014<\/em>or at least, he should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His troubles began two weeks ago, when The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>reported<\/a> that an upside-down American flag was spotted flying at his Virginia home not long after the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. (Though the upside-down flag originally was flown by sailors centuries ago to indicate distress<\/a>, it has long been a political symbol in the United States, used most recently by Donald Trump supporters who claim the 2020 election was stolen.) And Alito\u2019s troubles grew last week when the Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that another \u201cprovocative\u201d flag\u2014one carried by January 6 rioters\u2014flew at his vacation home in New Jersey last summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Commentators expressed alarm that a Supreme Court justice would willfully, or through incredible ignorance, associate with an authoritarian movement that has trampled on the Constitution that he took an oath to uphold. Many prominent Democrats, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries<\/a>, called on Alito to recuse himself from all forthcoming cases involving Trump and the attempted coup in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Alito won\u2019t recuse himself\u2014and his brazen display of disloyalty to American democracy should surprise no one who recalls how he landed on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alito\u2019s hard-right ideology, and his shameless lack of ethics, were obvious when he was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2005. A few Democratic senators sounded the siren, but the mainstream media, even its so-called \u201cliberal\u201d mainstays, largely ignored the warnings, unwittingly cooperating with an elite, right-wing operation to install a dishonest, partisan extremist on the highest court of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>reported<\/a> on the eve of Alito\u2019s confirmation in 2006, his placement on the court was the \u201cculmination\u201d of an effort that began during the Reagan administration to staff the judiciary with ideologues of the religious right. Conservatives also deployed an adroit media strategy to temper, silence, and even disparage any attempt to criticize Alito during the nomination hearings. Public relations specialists and legal experts, coordinating on behalf of the Federalist Society, Christian organizations like Focus on the Family, and Republican senators, helped to sell Alito to the Senate, the media, and the public\u2014even before his nomination. \u201cWe boxed them in,\u201d one lawyer who participated in the meetings told the newspaper, presumably referring to the Senate and the mainstream media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in the Alito nomination fight, Democrats uncovered a memo<\/a> the judge wrote while he was working for the Reagan administration in 1985 that articulated his opposition to legal abortion. He advised against waging a \u201cfrontal assault on Roe\u201d only because such a maneuver would prove politically unpopular, and instead advocated for a steady demolition of access to reproductive health care at the state level. Until the 2022 Dobbs<\/em> decision overturning Roe,<\/em> the Alito playbook is exactly what many Southern and heartland states followed to make abortion all but impossible within their borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The memo did not stop Alito from lying to the late Senator Edward Kennedy, whose diary<\/a> revealed that, while meeting privately in Kennedy\u2019s office, Alito assured him that he would never vote to overturn Roe.<\/em> Unlike Republican Senator Susan Collins, who believed the same lie from Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Kennedy was not gullible enough to vote in favor of Alito\u2019s confirmation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The P.R. firm handling the Alito nomination insisted that Republicans counter<\/a> with the claim that, as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, Alito was only reflecting the views of his client. Planned Parenthood warned that Alito would \u201cgut Roe\u201d<\/a> if he had the opportunity, but the media soon dropped stories on the memo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly nauseating events<\/a> transpired when Democrats learned that Alito belonged to Concerned Alumni of Princeton, an organization that opposed measures to increase admission of women and racial minorities. The group wasn\u2019t merely against affirmative action but also contemptuous of co-education and supportive of quotas that favored men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alito insisted that his participation in the group was ancient history. (He had listed his membership on a job application as a 35-year-old applying to work for the federal government.) The mainstream media reacted not with questions about Alito\u2019s biases on race and gender but with vilification of Democrats. Gloria Borger<\/a>, a CNN commentator, accused the Democrats of \u201cgoing over the line,\u201d Newsweek<\/em><\/a> likened Democratic senators to \u201cbullies,\u201d and PBS\u2019s Gwen Ifill<\/a> accused Alito\u2019s critics of \u201cdemonization.\u201d Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd had a conversation on MSNBC<\/a> suggesting that it was absurd to try to \u201cnail him\u201d for belonging to a \u201cclub.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several reporters, including Katie Couric<\/a>, focused on how Alito\u2019s wife\u2014whom the justice this month blamed for flying the upside-down flag\u2014was crying when Democrats questioned him about his involvement in Concerned Alumni of Princeton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats would later learn that, as an appellate judge, Alito failed to recuse himself in two cases involving companies with which he had financial interest, even after he pledged to do so. The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>shielded<\/a> Alito from suspicions over his lack of ethics, writing, \u201cLegal ethics experts say judges are not obliged to recuse themselves in such cases.\u2026 Judge Alito has said the lapses were inadvertent and occurred long after the initial period covered by his pledge.\u201d The Times <\/em>framed the criticism of Alito not as an ethical worry but as a tactic from a \u201cliberal coalition,\u201d involving women\u2019s rights groups, the NAACP, labor unions, and environmental organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy gave a thunderous address on behalf of the people that the \u201cliberal coalition\u201d aimed to represent, warning on the Senate floor of the dangers of Alito\u2019s extreme ideology: \u201cIf you are concerned and you want a justice that\u2019s going to stand for the working men and women in this country\u2014it\u2019s not going to be Judge Alito. If you are concerned about women\u2019s privacy rights, about the opportunity for women to gain fair employment in America\u2014it\u2019s not Judge Alito. If you care about the disabled \u2026 the Disability Act that we have passed to bring all of the disabled into our society, if you are looking for someone that is going to be a friend of the disabled\u2014it\u2019s not going to be Judge Alito. And finally, if you are looking for someone that is going to be willing to stand up to the executive branch of government \u2026 it\u2019s not going to be Judge Alito.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy attempted to organize a filibuster<\/a> to prevent the confirmation of Alito, convincing Senators John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama to join, but said that many Democrats were unwilling because of fears that Republicans would accuse them of obstructionism. In a 58\u201342 vote<\/a>, with four Democrats joining the Republicans, Alito was confirmed on January 31, 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this month, Nicolle Wallace, the MSNBC host, said the photos of Alito\u2019s upside-down flags \u201cstopped her in her tracks.\u201d She likened them to a \u201cbody blow,\u201d and wondered how we \u201cgot here.\u201d Wallace was working for Bush when he nominated Alito to the court. Unlike most Americans living in what Gore Vidal called \u201cthe United States of Amnesia,\u201d she should remember the deceitful strategy to install Alito on the court. Decades of right-wing subterfuge, media obsequiousness, and Democratic cowardice explain exactly how we \u201cgot here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/001\/ted-kennedy-warned-us-about-samuel-alito-he-was-ignored.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Masciotra\/The New Republic Samuel Alito met with senators, including Ted Kennedy, after his nomination to the Supreme Court in 2005. (photo: Win McNamee\/Getty) 30 may 24 (RSN.org) The Supreme Court justice\u2019s flag controversy should come as no surprise to anyone who paid attention to his nomination hearings in 2006…. Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34084,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083\/revisions\/34084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}