Here's to You, Mrs. Alito (Heaven holds a place for those who pray . . . )

Welcome to my Supreme Court edition of the news. On my plate are Martha-Ann Alito, the abortion pill, and bumper stocks. Let's dive in!

Mr. and Mrs. Alito with son Phil and daughter Laura, and Justice Roberts, in 2006 at swearing-in ceremony. (What is Roberts thinking here?)

I know some folks are up in arms about what Justice Samuel Alito revealed about his judicial philosophy in that secret recording by liberal activist Lauren Windsor. (Windsor posted the audio on Twitter/X.) But, frankly, I thought it was rather anticlimactic. 

Sure, he expressed his fondness for theocracy, agreeing with Windsor, who posed as a fellow conservative at the Supreme Court Historical Society dinner, that the U.S. should return to a “place of godliness.” But was that news? We already know that he wants Christianity (really, Catholicism) to rule the land; he already said as much in his rulings in Dobbs and Hobby Lobby.

Far more fresh, frisky, and fun was what his wife Martha-Ann had to say in those recordings. Clearly, she’s the breakout star who’s giving Ginny Thomas a run for her money as the Queen of the Loonies. 

Mrs. Alito confirmed what her husband has been trying to tell us—that she’s beyond his control and possibly feral. (She literally “meowed” several times at a fellow guest at the dinner, according to the secret recording.) “The feminazis believe that he should control me,” Alito told Windsor. “So they’ll go to hell. He never controls me!”

You go girl! Tell those feminazis—and your uptight husband, while you’re at it—where they can all stick it!

What came out loud and clear is that Mrs. Alito is a woman of passion with an ax to grind—and flying flags is how she tells the world exactly how she feels. Not only was she unapologetic about flaunting the two flags embraced by the January 6 insurrectionists (the upside-down American flag and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag) in front of their homes, but she gave Windsor an earful about some of the other controversial flags she’d like to fly. 

One issue that seems to drive her bananas is support for LGBTQ+ rights. Annoyed that she has to put up with Pride month—“I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” she complained to Windsor—she mused about flying “a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag” in rebuttal. 

But Mrs. Alito isn’t just a passive consumer of ready-made flags. She’s also an artist with her own vision about what the ultimate revenge flag should look like: “It's white and has yellow and orange flames around it. And in the middle is the word vergogna. Vergogna in Italian means shame—vergogna. V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A. Vergogna. Shame, shame, shame on you." 

Is this what Mrs. Alito has in mind?

And once her husband is “free of this nonsense”—as she calls his Supreme Court stint—she’ll be unleashing many more flags. In fact, the Alitos will be drowning in flags at retirement, if Martha-Ann gets her way: “I’m gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.”

At this point, you might be wondering what’s with Mrs. Alito and flags. Why is she so obsessed? Does flag flying tap into something primal? Are endorphins released in the process? Her explanation is simple: “This is how I satisfy myself.” 

I’ll let you parse that statement for yourself. In the meantime, I think we should all support her creativity. Personally, I’d advise her to take it to the next level. (Perhaps she can start a business: Martha-Ann’s Flag Shop?)

But most of all we should applaud her for making us all much more attune to the emotional and spiritual potential of flags. Clearly, she’s the Betsy Ross of our era. 

Now, the Not-So-Fun Supreme Court News:

I nearly spilled coffee all over myself on Thursday when I heard that the Supreme Court ruled—unanimously, no less!—in favor of keeping abortion medication mifepristone available. And the author of the opinion in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine was none other than Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the justices responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.

For those of us who’ve been alarmed, saddened, and dejected by the high court’s extreme rightward tilt in recent years, this was a nice respite.

But that moment of joy was very short-lived. The next morning, the Supreme Court issued a devastating opinion: in a 6-to-3-decision, the court overruled a Trump era ban on bump stocks, devices that essentially allow semi-automatic rifles to operate like machine guns.

It was a big win for the gun lobby, though this was not technically a Second Amendment case. Writing for the majority (I’m sure you know which justices joined the majority), Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had exceeded its authority when it banned the device. 

The majority tried to justify its ruling by arguing that the device wasn’t really a machine gun, while skirting the whole issue of its deadly impact. As The New York Times notes in an op-ed: “The opinion, full of lovingly detailed close-up drawings of a gun’s innards (provided by the Firearms Policy Foundation, a pro-gun nonprofit group), says nothing about the purpose of a bump stock.” 

I guess no one should be surprised by the outcome since the conservative justices never met a firearm they didn't adore, but what about the mifepristone decision? Was I completely off my rocker to think, even for a fleeting moment, that the court was finally realizing the error of its ways in overruling Roe v. Wade?

The answer is yes. The conservative majority didn’t vote to keep the abortion pill on the market because it’s seeing the light on reproductive rights; rather, the anti-choice plaintiffs presented a case that was unbelievably lame—so lame that even Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas couldn’t rescue it. 

The plaintiffs—the doctors behind the anti-choice group (which, curiously, also included a dentist)—totally failed to show that they had been forced to perform abortions on patients who had taken mifepristone. As Kavanaugh writes in his opinion: ”A plaintiff ’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.” 

Ultimately, however, the decision was based on standing—so the door is wide open for other plaintiffs with better claims to step through. (Politico has a good, if thoroughly depressing, analysis of how anti-abortion rights groups can take comfort in the ruling and eventually prevail.)

How did I think for one minute that this court is anything but hell bent on turning back the clock on women’s rights? Sometimes, I’m so silly.

Contact: chen.vivia@gmail.com

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