The flag furore: Justice Samuel Alito, his wife, and the Maga radicals

As the ultimate arbiters of US law, on whose rulings presidential elections can hang, supreme court justices are meant to be models of integrity and impartiality, said Ankush Khardori in Politico. 

Who, now, could claim that Justice Samuel Alito fits that description? He has attracted criticism in the past for going on luxury holidays with conservative donors who have business before the court; he also allegedly leaked the result of a major case to conservative activists before the decision was announced. And he now stands accused of flying insurrectionist flags linked to the far-right.

The New York Times has revealed that an upside-down Stars and Stripes flew outside his Virginia home after the 6 January attack on the Capitol; and that an "Appeal to Heaven" pine tree flag was raised at his New Jersey beach house last summer. Both are seen as symbols of the Trumpist "Stop the Steal" movement.

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No cause for controversy

Liberals are clutching at straws, said The Wall Street Journal. It was apparently Alito's wife who raised these flags – and there was no sinister intent. She flew the first one during a feud with an abusive neighbour (an inverted Stars and Stripes is an international signal of distress). 

As for the "Appeal" flag, it was used in the revolutionary war and references a 1689 work by John Locke about the right to overthrow tyranny. Just because "some bozos brought it to the 6 January Capitol riot", it doesn't mean that it and Alito are extremist. 

To listen to critics, you'd think Alito was flying a swastika, said Dan McLaughlin in National Review. The "Appeal" flag was personally approved by George Washington in 1775 and, until this week, had flown at San Francisco's City Hall without controversy for 60 years.

Alarm bell for voters

To claim that flying this flag proves Alito has become "a Maga radical" is a stretch, agreed Jonah Goldberg on The Dispatch. But regardless of his motivation, for a supreme court justice to have an inverted Stars and Stripes outside his house was "legitimately" seen as weird. 

At the least, it suggested the appearance of inappropriate partiality. For that reason alone, Alito should recuse himself from hearing Trump's election cases, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. He knew the upside-down flag was inappropriate. 

"As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down," he'd said (it seems she refused to do so, for several days). "If he was alarmed then", American voters have "every reason to be alarmed now".