The Martha Ann flag was first raised on her house a few days after January 6, initially only to anger her neighbors. Perhaps there’s a reason they dislike Martha Ann. According to mutual friends and my limited impressions of her, she’s fun, lively, down-to-earth, and the life of any party. She and I met at a social gathering when the Alito family moved to Washington a few years ago. Martha Ann immediately and enthusiastically invited me to be her walking partner.
Long walks chatting with a Supreme Court justice’s wife? No no! Your block or my block?
So Martha Ann a bit It was impulsive. Unfortunately, we never ended up dating. Maybe someone whispered in her ear that walking around chatting at length with a Washington Post columnist might not be such a good idea. Yes, but I’m sure they were.
Meanwhile, this scandal of arrogance isn’t about the flag, but what is it about? It’s about abortion. As one justice, whose name I shall not reveal, once said to me, “It’s all about abortion.” This is especially true now. Justice Alito said, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, The case ended the constitutional right to abortion, and he has been a target of Democratic political activists ever since.
Here’s footnote 1 to this noisy teapot. Footnote 2: Democrats hate the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority and the former president who appointed the three justices whose votes tipped the scales. Roe v. WadeFootnote 3: Having failed to change the Supreme Court’s personnel, the Democrats are lobbying in every way possible to undermine the Court and the public’s trust in it.
Anything else is “cow shit,” to borrow a phrase coined by the late Orlando Sentinel columnist Charlie Reese, who was too old-fashioned to call it BS.
My guess is that Justice Alito doesn’t know and doesn’t know what his free-spirited wife is up to. His head is in the clouds, and words, not flags, occupy his mind. His critics seem to think they know best how he should run his marriage. By closely policing his wife? That’s impossible.
Long before the Proud Boys appropriated the upside-down flag to represent their own backwards dreamscape, it was a signal of distress. And it certainly explains what came after. The neighbor’s nemesis, who claims to have never seen the flag, had been in a long-running argument with Martha Ann over a “Fuck Trump” sign she had put up in her yard, Alito told Fox News. Martha Ann objected because the sign was near a school bus stop, he said.
Thus began a “conversation” between the neighbors. At one point, Martha Ann allegedly spat at or on the neighbor’s car. (Was it dry spit?) Ptwoey Or nasty Hocker(Details are important.) Another neighbor, the judge said, called Martha Ann a particularly vulgar name.
Fast forward to May 2024, and suddenly the flag case is back in the news. Ethical questions are being raised about Alito’s neutrality, and commentators are solidifying their calls for him to recuse himself from litigation over the January 6th events. Harrump, harrump, harrump.
Oh, but that’s not all. Another of Martha Ann’s flags, one with a pine tree and the words “Call to Heaven,” was flown at her New Jersey beach house in the summer of 2023, long after the 2021 Capitol storming. But the flag also appeared at the Capitol on January 6th. The media hordes and others took a giant leap: Martha Ann must be making common cause with white supremacists who want a more Christian government. (Heavy breathing can be heard.)
Democratic Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island wrote a letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. urging him to intervene and force Justice Alito to recuse himself from two cases related to the January 6 events.
The senators also requested a meeting with Roberts to discuss court ethics.
Justice Roberts effectively answered “no.” He wrote that it was up to each justice to decide when to recuse himself, and that “the separation of powers issue and the importance of maintaining judicial independence in such appearances only underscores the unwiseness of participating in such meetings, in that the proposed format — a meeting only with leaders of one party who have expressed an interest in cases currently before the Supreme Court — would be a major step forward.” perfection.
Justice Alito, meanwhile, took a defense that anyone who’s been married for decades can understand: “My wife is a private citizen and has the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” Justice Alito wrote in one of two letters he sent to lawmakers. “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.”
And, “My wife likes to fly flags. I don’t. She is solely responsible for erecting flagpoles at our residence and vacation home and has flown many different flags over the years.”
Of course, that logic is probably true, but it raises new problems in some quarters. Oh, sure, it’s my wife’s fault.
But I can tell you this: My workaholic husband is so busy in his own cloud that he has no idea where I am or what I’m doing on any given day. I could hang a flag on my car antenna, and he wouldn’t see it. We used to joke that it took him two years to realize I’d moved to Washington, DC.
I love this about him because I love freedom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Martha Ann and countless other lucky women feel the same way.
