The Alitos really let their far-right freak flags fly in secret recording

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was secretly recorded agreeing with the proposition that the U.S. has to be returned to "godliness" and insisting that there are "fundamental things on which there can be no compromise.”  Documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor attended a meeting of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a charity aimed at preserving the history of the court, and presented herself as a conservative Catholic. She secretly recorded her conversations with Alito, his wife Martha-Ann, and Chief Justice John Roberts, during which she told Alito that “people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that—to return our country to a place of godliness.”  “Well, I agree with you, I agree with you,” Alito replied. Windsor pressed Alito on whether it’s possible to find a compromise with people who hold a different view.  “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that, like, needs to happen for the polarization to end,” she said. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.” Alito again agreed with this hard take.  “I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other—one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised,” Alito said. “They really can’t be compromised. So, it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”  This is a Supreme Court justice declaring that he has preset positions on “fundamental things” and that he doesn’t believe it’s possible to compromise. He also expresses that it is difficult to “live together peacefully” with people who don’t share his beliefs. Nowhere in the conversation does Alito reference the law or Constitution. It doesn’t even seem to enter his thoughts. By contrast, Roberts came off in a much better light. When Windsor confronted him with a similar question about how to keep the U.S. a “Christian nation,” Roberts gave a more appropriate response. “Yeah, I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation,” Roberts said. “I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not. And it’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases as best we can.”  There’s a lot not to like about that response, particularly how Roberts seems to only back off to the extent of admitting that there are other religions. But compared to Alito’s, this is head and shoulders—maybe even an entire body—better. Despite his portrayal in the media, Roberts is no moderate. He’s been at the center of multiple destructive decisions that strengthen corporations and weaken workers’ rights. He has made rulings that made it more difficult for women to sue over unequal pay. Finally and most decisively, Roberts was the author of a concurrence in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. But when it comes to the basic function of the Supreme Court being discussed in a public forum, Roberts at least goes through the motions of upholding the court's basic function as an arbiter of constitutional law. Alito does not. Windsor also pinned down Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, who is supposedly responsible for the flags that flew outside of two of their homes in apparent support of Jan 6 insurrectionists. She fumed over “femnazis” who wanted her husband to curb her from flying these flags. “So they’ll go to hell,” she told Windsor in the recording. “He never controls me.” Alito gets to control the reproductive rights of hundreds of millions of Americans, but his wife draws the line at his having some say in behavior that signals the political alignment of their household.  Martha-Ann also complained that someone on the other side of the "lagoon" has a Pride flag, which she deems a personal attack, saying she wants to fly a "Sacred Heart of Jesus" flag because Jesus famously said … absolutely nothing about LGBTQ+ people. The Supreme Court Historical Society has slammed Windsor for secretly recording the justices, and in The New York Times’ abbreviated version of the recordings’ content, leaving off the conversation with Martha-Ann Alito. The Times compares Windsor’s actions with the conservative Project Veritas, which also carried out secretive recordings. It doesn’t mention how Project Veritas lied about its recordings from the very beginning, setting up “stings” in which it purposely distorted the framing and edited responses to get the results it wanted. Whether Windsor edited these recordings is not yet clear. But based on what has been heard, it appears that Alito is making his court decisions as a Christian nationalist, not as a conservative jurist. Windsor might have misrepresented herself to obtain that information, but she doesn’t appear to have forced Alito into a verbal trap or taken his response out of context. His answers should be regarded as not only terrifying, but as absolutely disqualifying