So Samuel Alito was caught flying an upside down flag at his house and an “appeal to heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach home. And there are reports Leonard Leo has been flying the “appeal to heaven” flag at his Maine summer home. Hmmm. I just published something at Patheos explaining where this flag comes from and why it’s controversial. But there’s something else I wrote about awhile back that connects Leonard Leo and Sam Alito.
Leo and his conplex of right-wing interest groups are pushing to get a Catholic charter school, funded by taxpayer dollars, open in Oklahoma. This would be St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, an online charter school already approved by an Oklahoma state agency called the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board. The school is expected to open in August of 2024 for the 2024-2025 school year. The attorney general of Oklahoma is opposed to this school and says it violates the state constitution, and he’s been trying to stop the school in the courts. But here’s the Alito-Leo connection.
St. Isidore is represented by Nicole Stelle Garnett of the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative, a clinic associated with Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana. Garnett, a law professor at Notre Dame, is on the board of the Federalist Society, where Leonard Leo is co-chairman. She is also on the advisory council of a Catholic University law school initiative that is funded by anonymous donations directed by Leonard Leo. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is the honorary chairman of that group. Lots of connections there.
There’s this vast network of hard-right Christian nationalists trying to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, and the “appeal to heaven” flag is a way to signal each other, I guess.
The irony is that the phrase “appeal to heaven” is taken from John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, and among other things in this treatise Locke was arguing for the end of the divine right of kings and in favor of governments that take their authority from the people. If Locke came back today he wouldn’t be part of Leonard Leo’s theocratic schemes, I’m pretty sure.
Speaking of Sam Alito, he wrote the majority opinion released today siding with South Carolina Republicans over a gerrymandered electoral map. Having gutted the Voting Rights Act passed by Congress, now the justices are saying that little ol’ them just don’t have the authority to override how the states draw their maps or run their elections.
But even worse was what Clarence Thomas wrote. I got a whiff of this watching Joy Reid and looked it up. Thomas in a concurrence actually wrote that the Warren Court back in 1954 overstepped in its decision in Brown v. Board of Ed. Yes, he did. Let that sink in. That worthless fat ass is sitting in the great Thurgood Marshall’s seat saying that, you know, white people will get around to being fair eventually. Let’s not rush things. In effect. You can find this part of the “opinion” beginning on page 64.
"The attorney general of Oklahoma is opposed to this school and says it violates the state constitution"
Well who better to ratify a violation of the constitution than a supreme court justice! These magats they sure do love them some flags. It's not enough for the to hold a particular belief they feel the need to shout it to anyone who will look or listen. Phony "patriotism" MAGA is a fucking mental illness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRCLHBhZPQ4
Even this sad story has a silver lining. Now the conspirators are working on Oklahoma schools, and we are not the guinea pigs for their stupid notions.
The real problem they refuse to work on is how to keep schools going in depopulated areas. We have too many counties and too many churches and not enough students or even grocery stores. One small town in an extremely depopulated county has five churches and no school. I think they still have a school in the county, but at least one other county has none that I know of anymore. Fortunately, school districts can be bigger than county size, but they need to cooperate. That runs into some multigenerational hate issues. Those people in the next county are the wrong shade of white and, of course, belong to THAT heathen religion.
This depopulation trend has been going on for ages. All the patches and all the work arounds are worn out and now inadequate. So too is any hope that this trend may end in the future. The future may be what you make it but the politics in a democracy favors the areas that have voters. Depopulated areas just have no way to make anything happen that is in their favor. So, the trend never ends, and the politicians solve or create other problems as a diversion to the real ones they can't solve. At least they are making this mess in Oklahoma and not here. Our rural schools will suffer, but not as bad as they will.
I like the flag where the last letter "n" came off, saying "Appeal to Heave".
I refused to say anything at the rally, waiting to show the pictures afterwards.
Re the gerrymandered SC map; I've read that Alito was bothered by the fact that the plaintiff NAACP did not submit a proposed alternative map. I wonder if plaintiff had submitted a proposed map would that have made any difference, or would he have said it was too hard to fold. Kagan's dissent countered that expecting the plaintiff to provide a new map for this case was unprecedented micromanaging, diminishing the evidence the plaintiff did provide. She included a not-so-subtle burn directly at Alito; “But as with its upside-down application of clear-error review,” Kagan wrote, “the majority is intent on changing the usual rules when it comes to addressing racial-gerrymandering claims.”
I fully expect it to soon be revealed that Alito drives around in a jacked-up loud pickup with oversized tires and a huge flag. That's a perfect cartoon characterization of the 2 "Proud Boys", this calls for a Dukes of Hazard remake.
"That worthless fat ass" Unusually strong language from maha, I love it!