Supreme court

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. This old adage has taken on a new meaning for the left as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is developing a bit of a habit for displaying allegedly "far-right" flags. In under a week, the New York Times has unearthed images of dissident flags waving proudly at the justice’s house on two separate occasions, leaving Democrats clamoring about judicial ethics.   The smoking gun in the controversy is an “Appeal to Heaven” flag that was seen flying at Alito’s summer home on Long Beach Island in New Jersey last summer. The flag, which depicts a pine tree, was first used during the American Revolution but has since become associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement after being brandished by January 6 protesters.

Donald Trump crushed the New Hampshire primary, as every poll in Alpha Centauri predicted he would. Nevertheless, his sole remaining opponent for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, “vowed to fight on.” Why? A cynical person might suggest the interaction of two volatile liquids: cash, on the one hand, and consultants, on the other. Haley is swimming in both. The cash is coming from two sources: brittle, establishment faux conservatives like the Kochs and wily Dem operatives like the billionaire Reid Hoffman who, in addition to shoveling gobs of money to Nikki Haley, is also funding such entrepreneurial activities as E. Jean Carroll’s bizarre lawsuit against Donald Trump. In a sane world, the support of a malignant figure like Hoffman would be disqualifying for Haley.

What happens now that the Colorado Supreme Court has kicked Donald Trump off the primary ballot? The first thing, apparently, is similar lawsuits in other “blue” states. Those will continue despite the Wednesday decision by the Michigan Supreme Court that Trump’s name can remain.   Nearly all the commentary has been devoted to the legal reasons for these rulings and their political implications. But it is important to consider the effort to exclude Trump in a wider context, one that goes beyond his personality, polarizing candidacy and events of January 6.  That wider frame is a century-long progressive effort to reframe the way America is governed and to loosen the constitutional barriers to those changes.

You don’t have to be a Trump supporter (I am not) to be deeply troubled by Colorado court decision to keep Donald Trump off the primary ballot. Let me count the ways. First, the reason Trump is being excluded is new, untested, and profoundly controversial in its application here. Basically, the court is saying Trump cannot appear on the primary ballot because of a subsection of the Fourteenth Amendment meant to exclude Confederate officials who waged a civil war against the United States. Using that provision to exclude Trump is utterly novel. Its unprecedented use here invites the conclusion that it is being wielded as a political sledgehammer by Trump’s opponents and that some of those opponents wear judicial robes.

In the basement of a Washington, DC restaurant, 200 ticket-purchasing fans have gathered to witness the live recording of a multifaceted conversation about the villainy and corruption of the Supreme Court, and one justice in particular. It only seems appropriate to order the shrimp and grits: it costs $19.99 and comes with a white-wine tomato sauce. This may seem rather hifalutin, but it also comes in a glass mason jar that references tired hipster kitsch — perfectly suitable for a live podcast hosted by Slate.

Last Friday, a day after the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, I noted the gap between the Democratic Party’s leaders and its voters on race-based admissions. Polls find a majority of Democrats opposed to using race as a factor in admissions. The party’s elite, however, is almost universally in favor of affirmative action — as hysterical reactions from the president and others made clear.  But that was last week. Now that the dust has settled, and everyone has had a chance to cool down over July 4, have the Democrats gained some Independence-Day perspective on the end of race-based decisions? Not really.

Joe Biden’s best days may be behind him, but the president’s talent for feigning moral outrage is undiminished. That much was clear from the president’s reaction to Supreme Court decisions in the last few days, in particular his remarks in response to the court’s rulings on affirmative action and his administration’s student debt forgiveness program.  This week has served as a reminder that Biden is a president who knows his survival depends on drawing the most demagogic caricature of his opponents he can get away with.

Anyone looking for a villain in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down decades of affirmative action precedent will find one in Clarence Thomas. Critics have long found Thomas’s politics vexing in light of his race, a frustration that has only grown more pronounced as the affirmative action decision drew near. To hear his detractors tell it, Thomas was himself the beneficiary of affirmative action policies, both as an undergraduate at the College of the Holy Cross and later at Yale Law School. That Thomas could have such an experience and still strike down race-based admissions policies seems to make him a hypocrite — and an ungrateful one at that.