The conservative reaction to the freakout over Justice Samuel Alito’s flags has been to argue that this is a phony scandal ginned up by liberals and journalists (but we repeat ourselves) to delegitimize the Supreme Court. A Saturday report from the Washington Post appears to confirm those beliefs, as Justin Jouvenal and Ann Marimow reported that the Post passed on the story in 2021. The duo began, “The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was ‘an international signal of distress’ and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute.” They also report that the Post, at the time, saw no reason to view the upside flag as being connected to sympathy for the January 6 rioters and the belief that Samuel and Martha-Ann are different people, “The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.” Back in 2021, since-retired Supreme Court reporter Robert Barnes went to the Alito home where “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.” Jouvenal and Marimow further recall Martha-Ann imploring Barnes to ‘“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.” They also note Alito’s statement to the Post back then was “almost identical” to what he told The New York Times when the story broke. The rest of the article is spent giving biographical details on the Alitos or rehashing the liberal case that Alito did something wrong and should recuse himself from all January 6-related cases, even going so far as to get former federal judge Nancy Gertner, the words "Clinton-appointed" being nowhere to be found, to imply Alito was lying, “The ‘notion that [Justice Alito] let it happen or didn’t pay attention is extraordinary,’ Gertner said. ‘He understood the context. They were having a political battle, and this was a political statement.’”  In 2021, the Post saw nothing newsworthy in the case of the Alitos’ upside down flag, but in 2024, they threw themselves under the bus in order to fall in line with the rest of the media trying to make something into a bigger deal than it is.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently lectured Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for allowing his home to fly an upside-down American flag and another flag with historical significance dating back to the early stages of the American War of Independence. Two Republican lawmakers have come to the defense of Justice Alito following a hailstorm of attacks by liberal media outlets and Democrats. Last week, Obama hagiographer Jodi Kantor wrote an article in the New York Times centering on an American flag that was displayed upside down outside Alito's New Jersey vacation home in mid-January 2021. Alito said that his wife – Martha-Ann Alito – flew the flag in their yard "in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."Alito explained that his neighbor had a "F*** Trump" sign that was within 50 feet of where children await the school bus. The neighbor allegedly blamed the January 6th riots on Mrs. Alito and "engaged in vulgar language, 'including the c-word.'"The conservative Supreme Court justice noted that the flag was only flown for a "short time." The New York Times then ran another article highlighting that an "Appeal to Heaven" flag was displayed outside Alito's vacation home in July and September 2023.The Times attempted to frame the flags as having negative connotations because some protesters carried the flags during the Jan. 6 demonstration and riot. The Appeal to Heaven flag, also known as the "Pine Tree Flag," has historical roots in the Revolutionary War. The flag was commissioned by George Washington, and has been in existence since 1775. The flag was first used by the Massachusetts Navy during the American Revolutionary War. It was among the first flags to symbolize the American colonies' pursuit of independence from the British. The flag features a green pine tree and the phrase "An appeal to Heaven." "An appeal to Heaven" is a quote from British political philosopher John Locke – who is often credited as a founder of modern liberal thought. The quote is from Locke's "Second Treatise," written in 1689.The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of? I answer: Between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a Legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on Earth: As there can be none, between the legislative, and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave, or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on Earth, but to appeal to Heaven.Locke adds: And therefore, tho' the people cannot be Judge, so as to have by the constitution of that society any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves, which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on Earth, viz. to judge whether they have just cause to make their appeal to Heaven. And this Judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: And since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let anyone think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder: for this operates not, till the inconvenience is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come in the danger of: And 'tis the thing of all others, they have most need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.The U.S. Postal Service issued the Appeal to Heaven flag as a stamp in 1968.Graham pilloried Alito for flying the flags."Emotions are apparently high in that neighborhood," Graham told reporters on Monday. "But no, it’s not good judgment to do that. He said his wife was insulted and got mad. I assume that to be true, but he’s still a Supreme Court justice, and people have to realize that [at] moments like that to think it through."'Martha-Ann Alito has every right to hang whatever flag she wants.'Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) took Graham to task over his criticism of Justice Alito. Responding to a post on the X social media platform with Graham's response to the flag controversy, Lee fired back: "Martha-Ann Alito has every right to hang whatever flag she wants. In whatever manner she wants. She is a free citizen. And a freedom-loving, American patriot."He continued, "Her husband doesn’t speak for her. And she doesn’t speak for her husband. Why can’t the left accept that?"House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also defended Justice Alito. Johnson declared the Pine Tree flag has "nothing to do with" the "stop the steal" protests. He told CNN on Wednesday, "It's George Washington’s flag. It goes back to the founder’s era. I’ve always flown that flag."Johnson currently has an Appeal to Heaven flag outside his office. A Rolling Stone hit piece on Johnson from November 2023 tried to manufacture outrage because Johnson had the Pine Tree flag outside his office in the Cannon House Office Building.The article – titled "The Key to Mike Johnson’s Christian Extremism Hangs Outside His Office" – claimed of Johnson, "He's also a dyed-in-the-wool Christian conservative, and there’s a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism as unknown to most Americans as Johnson was before he ascended to the speakership."The far-left outlet alleged that the Pine Tree flag was a "symbol of Christian warfare.""To understand the contemporary meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag, it’s necessary to enter a world of Christian extremism animated by modern-day apostles, prophets, and apocalyptic visions of Christian triumph that was central to the chaos and violence of Jan. 6," the article reads. Like Blaze News? 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On August 23, 1956, Jackie Kennedy gave birth to her first child with John F. Kennedy, a stillborn daughter she would later call Arabella. The post Inside The Tragic Death Of Arabella Kennedy, John And Jackie Kennedy’s Firstborn Daughter appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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