This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
It is perhaps a mark of these times that Propublica’s account of the ‘Alito Affair’ is entirely credible while Hiz Honor’s is not.
Alito and the WSJ are a revolving door. Not sure a judge can rule without favor on financial matters when he has ties this deep with the leading financial newspaper.
Alito’s WSJ piece, released prior to the publication of the actual news story by ProPublica, is out of the same playbook as Attorney General Bill Barr’s order to the Office of General Counsel to prepare a memo exonerating DJT of obstruction of justice prior to the actual release of the Mueller report. It’s called “spinning the narrative” in one’s favor.
Do you mean to tell me that “Trollito” is a damned liar? I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!
WSJ showed their lack of ethics by printing before ProPublica’s release.
Damned liberal media…
Another Murdoch holding. The man that got paid to spoon feed the stupid their drunk daddy’s dumbassery and sell diabetes cures with it.
Maybe they need to get into something dangerous. Helicopter juggling.
Elevator fire.
Blindfolded live action Frogger…
He doesn’t have ties with the newspaper side, he has ties with the editorial-page people, which has been a miasmic den of corrupt “read to finding out what line the far right establishment is pushing today” for at least 40 years. So even worse. He is clearly a part of the relatively small right-wing-loon media cabal.
Not sure that is a corporate hair worth splitting. You can’t have Fox News working in one hand, and serious journalism in the other. Fox doesn’t get any cleaner for the relationship, meanwhile the paper of those that have money or are in the business of using their money to make money, are all harbored in this small paper boat. One side is screaming, the other side can hear.
The days of journalistic integrity died with cable TV. Knowing when the last vestiges are gone isn’t even a calculation I make anymore. Trusted voices prove themselves. Nobody attached to the Murdoch empire can be trusted, no matter how far HBO goes to flatter their machination.
Who at the WSJ Editorial Page decided to needlessly oblige Justice Alito by running his whiny diatribe? Did Justice Alito reach out to right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch for a favor?
Question: Do billionaires collect and trade Supreme Court Justices like regular people collect baseball cards?
ETA: sp correction
"Given Alito’s previous ties to the Journal’s editorial page . . . "
Such as leaking the Dobbs deliberations to the WSJ editorial board a week before leaking the opinion to Politico?
Pro Publica has a dry sense of humor. Well done, guys.
I prefer Josh’s recent hypothesis, that they divvie up the task of sponsoring them. Could anyone actually enjoy hanging out w/ Scalito? Ginnie?
I guess it is true, being a mega-billionaire really is the hardest job in the world!
/snark
Apparently, Little Sammy never heard of the Streisand Effect.
The story reminds me of what a friend used to say about arguing with his wife: “She’ll tell me what I’m going to say, then tell me why it is wrong, then tell me why she’s right — end of argument.” More seriously, the Journal’s conduct shows that they have no confidence in the merits of their arguments, and even less confidence in the merits of honest debate.
“Alito’s behavior underscores that the “no surprises” approach involves taking a risk, allowing subjects to “spit in our soup,” as Paul Steiger, the former Journal editor who founded ProPublica, liked to say.”
How dare you compare Alito to mere waitstaff, of the sort who can only revenge themselves on their betters with covert nastiness. Alito is elite! He gets to be openly nasty. We lesser beings should in fact feel honored were he to deign to spit in our soup, not that he would ever lower himself to waiting at table. Okay, not at our tables. We’re not zillionaires.
Well done to Propublica for their reporting, their follow up and their professionalism
Alito’s proven coziness with WSJ bosses in this story also helps to prove that he was The Leaker of the Dobbs decision through the WSJ. This action, of course, influenced SC wafflers to go with it in its final form.
Alito’s whiny prebuttal of the ethical lapses meet the WSJ’s editorial boards whiny rebuttal of their journalistic lapses for publishing the former:
I will give credit where credit it due - they just coined a new term: Court-thinning
By imposing even tenuous associations as grounds for recusal, litigants can exclude certain Justices from hearing a case. With a Court of only nine Justices, this could determine the outcome. Call it Court-thinning rather than Court-packing, but the effect would be similar.
I’ll just note that the WSJ editorial board didn’t worry about ‘Court-thinning’ when they argued against the Senate holding any nomination hearings during the 2016 election year:
Rupert Murdoch owns the WSJ now, right?