A Democratic full-court press is well underway against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Their hope is that, if Alito resigns, President Joe Biden will get to nominate his replacement. Democrats and their media enablers have already seized upon a fanciful ethical breach; and if the Senate Democrats’ savaging of Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings is any indication, Justice Alito is in for some very rough sledding.
Former President Trump’s rapid three Supreme Court picks did not go down very well with Democrats from the get-go. We all remember the frantic efforts Democrats made to torpedo the Trump choices. Next, everyone was talking about a new, Conservative-leaning 6-3 majority on the high court. No longer could liberals count on the justices to rubber stamp legislation embodying their views.
From the onset of the Biden presidency, with Democrats also controlling the Senate and the House, there was much talk about legislating “packing” the Court with Biden picks to create a new left-oriented majority and thereby retake the Court. But even President Biden was hesitant about such tectonic tradition-busting, and the effort didn’t go very far.
That didn’t stop the Democrats from seeking to undermine the legitimacy of a supreme court that was no longer working for them, however. Unseemly attacks from the President on down proliferated. Justice Clarence Thomas was called upon to resign because his wife had expressed a belief in claims of 2020 election fraud; Justice Amy Coney Barrett was considered compromised because of her Catholic faith; and Justice Neill Gorsuch refused to wear a Covid mask.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, the current focus on Justice Alito was prompted by the recent claim from a clergyman that “he heard from a woman who heard from Justice Alito at a dinner party in 2014 about the pending opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a religious liberty case. Justice Alito denies leaking anything, and the woman denies hearing about it.”
This bald hearsay didn’t deter the indefatigable and fiercely Democratic partisan, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse from leaping into action. “We intend to get to the bottom of these serious allegations,” he said.
But even Senator Whitehouse was outdone by The New York Times in advancing the anti-Supreme Court Democratic political spin. It was The New York Times that broke the story, and quickly made the issue the Supreme Court itself. “Allegations of Supreme Court Breach Prompts Calls for Inquiry and Ethics Code,” read the headline, followed by descriptions of the Court as a rogue arm of government without any accountability.
We fear the attack on Justice Alito will continue in earnest. There are not and will not be enough votes in the House and Senate for his impeachment or removal from office, so the strategy seems to be to make it too uncomfortable for him to want to stay. And, as we noted, if Alito leaves then President Biden will get to nominate his successor, who would likely be confirmed by the-still Democratic Senate.
In the final analysis, Justice Alito is a seasoned veteran. We are certain he knows what’s up.
