Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026873
THE SUPREME COURT
SILLY QUESTION! WHAT BRAIN?
What is going on in Samuel Alito’s brain?
SILLY QUESTION! WHAT BRAIN?
What is going on in Samuel Alito’s brain?
Original article:
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I was never at the top of a truly prestigious organization, but close enough to a number of 'top' people around the world to see how terrribly flawed many of them are. In fact, in many cases their flaws are the only reason some of these people got anywhere near a position of power.
Peter Burgess
When I wrote the subject line above, about Samuel Alito’s brain, I meant something like: How on earth can this man think that he can hoist these symbols of insurrection outside his homes and think he has the right to remain an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court? This was an insurrection against the United States of America. Against the Constitution to which he swore fealty. Five police officers died. Imagine him going out to the lawn and attaching that flag to the snaps and running it up the pole (or his wife, I guess, although maybe at the Jersey Shore house, he did it himself). Was there no part of his brain telling him that this maybe wasn’t such a good look? I would imagine that there was and that the other part of his brain quickly shooed the thought away. Just astonishing to think of it this way, at least to me.
But now, having read this instructive editorial in National Review, I learn that my question can be looked at in a second way. To NR’s editors, natch, the whole business is silly. The editorial points out that the flag enjoys a noble non–January 6 history. It was commissioned by none other than George Washington himself! It referenced a riot in New Hampshire against British tree regulations. To this day, sans the 'Appeal to Heaven' slogan, it remains the official maritime flag of the state of Massachusetts!
So, to the question of what Samuel Alito was thinking, we may now answer: Why, he wasn’t thinking of January 6 at all. He was driven, no doubt, by thoughts of those noble New Hampshirites and their righteous rage against imperial tree regulations—which, like all regulations, were intrusive and totalitarian. Or he was thinking: 'You know, I’m quite overdue to pay proper homage to the bold seafarers of the Bay State!'
Right.
I heard Lawrence Tribe on TV the other day remind us that with respect to Supreme Court judges, in fact all federal judges, the Constitution says this: 'The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.'
Disgraceful.