…the main one being that the distress signal is appropriate, because the Axis of Unethical Conduct proved with this fiasco that it is ruthless, shameless, untrustworthy, and will do anything in 2024 to mislead the public if it might mean a few extra votes for Democrats. Or maybe the main one is that your friendly neighborhood ethicist was right about this story from the very start, which is why Fredo asked to make another appearance as my spokesman.

And this, my friends, is why we can’t have nice things.

Or a functioning republic.

Let me not get to far ahead of myself. Right now, the whole, biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, anti-conservative, Biden-protecting propaganda-spewing mainstream news media, the third partner in the Ethics Alarms-dubbed Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” and Desperate Democrats completing the troika) is doing a mass Jumbo (“Flags? What flags?”) regarding what was its favorite earth-shattering scandal a week ago. This sudden amnesia was brought on because the Washington Post, perhaps seeking to embarrass its old rival, effectively eviscerated the Times’ “Get Justice Alito!” scoop, which EA first discussed here, and subsequently here, here, and here. (Don’t make me describe it again: I was sick of it days ago.)

Two days ago, the Post revealed that it had known about the first flag episode more than three years ago and had decided that it wasn’t newsworthy (because, as the revealed facts showed clearly, it wasn’t). Now-retired SCOTUS reporter Robert Barnes traveled to the Alito’s home on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration, to follow-up on an anonymous tip he had received from some Alito-hating asshole neighbor about the flag. After investigating, Barnes and the Post concluded there was no story, because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, Alito’s wife, not the Justice, as part of her dispute with her neighbors.

” (Barnes) encountered the couple coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he “get off my property,” the Post story explained. “As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, ‘It’s an international signal of distress!’ Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway, where they had been headed on their way out of the neighborhood. The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it.”

 The account continued, “Martha-Ann Alito then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: ‘Ask them what they did!’ She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. “There! Is that better?” she yelled.”

No story! Never mind, though: the New York Times was directed to pretend it is one now, in 2024, by its dark masters in the DNC, or somewhere, so Democrats would have something to claim Alito is biased in favor of Trump and needs to recuse himself for all the “lawfare” related cases on the Supreme Court’s horizon.

When Alito told the Times that he had nothing to do with the flag-raising, the Left’s flying monkeys, as conservative blogger Stephen Kruiser likes to call these awful people, accused him of lying. The deranged Nation hysteric Elie Mystal, all of MSNBC (of course), CBS’s “all-Republican hate all the time because it’s funny!” late-night host Stephen Colbert, the Times’ anti-white racist pundit (well, one of them) Jamelle Bouie, and, sadly, many of the alleged ethicists in the legal ethics association I hang with and many more all impugned Alito’s character because they wanted this to undermine his credibility.

The Times follow-up attack about another historical flag raised at an Alito abode was also debunked by the Post’s revelation (which, of course, it could have published as soon as the Times story first appeared, but no, better to let the hated conservative Justice twist in the metaphorical wind for a while). Mrs. Alito is obviously an irrepressible flag-flyer. Justice Alito is obviously unable to control his wife. Gee, imagine that.

I guess nobody remembers Martha Mitchell any more.

Alito is my third least-favorite Justice on the Supreme Court (behind Thomas and Sotomayor), but this whole episode infuriates me. I want to echo lawyer Joseph Welch, in the inspired moment he took down Rep. Joe McCarthy, by asking the our “journalists,” “Have you no sense of decency…? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

But the answer is so evident that the question doesn’t have to be asked. No, they don’t! None at all. They are liars, assassins, propagandists, tools, and enemies of the people and democracy.

And in this election year, they are just getting started.