Justice Samuel Alito told the leftists screaming for his recusal exactly what he thought of their hypocrisy. He did so thoroughly and far more courteously than his emotions likely preferred or the idiotic criticism merited, but that only shows his class — especially compared to his cynical critics.

Multiple congressional Democrats called for Alito to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases involving Donald Trump or the 2020 election after The New York Times published two hit pieces attacking Alito for an upside-down U.S. flag at his Virginia home and the dreaded “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his vacation home.

Senators Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse wrote a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts demanding Alito’s recusal, so Roberts rightly allowed Alito to respond with a letter of his own.

Alito made several points to distance himself from the decision to fly either flag. “I had nothing whatsoever to do with the flying of that flag,” he said of the first incident. “I was not even aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to my attention. As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused.”

In the Alito household, the patriarchy is evidently not as severe as leftists fear (and, in this case, demand). Martha-Ann Alito has some agency of her own. Indeed, he said, “She makes her own decisions.”

He explained her reasoning, namely a “neighborhood dispute” followed by a neighbor calling her “the vilest epithet that can be addressed to a woman.” I’m probably not going out on a limb to guess that the neighbor is not a conservative but rather an unhinged leftist who clearly has no respect for women.

That likewise goes for the people engaged in what Alito called the “numerous, loud, obscene, and personally insulting protests in front of our home that continue to this day and now threaten to escalate.”

He didn’t mention Chuck Schumer, but he could have. The Democrat leader practically threatened the justices on the steps of the Court in 2020 when he said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you.”

Alito certainly knows what hit him. So does Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom Schumer named and upon whose life a would-be assassin later made an attempt. That was after the gross character assassination that took place in his confirmation hearings.

As for the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, Alito said he was “not familiar” with it and “was not aware of any connection between this historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement.’” In any case, “The use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings.” Moreover, “Our vacation home was purchased with money she inherited from her parents and is titled in her name,” and that his wife chose it as one of the numerous other types of flags to fly at their vacation home has no bearing on his impartiality in any court case. In other words, back off.

Alito concluded more gentlemanly, “I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.”

Democrats have been discrediting the Court since Ted Kennedy made a sick sport of slandering conservative nominees beginning with Robert Bork, whose nomination was defeated in the Senate after Kennedy’s disgusting tirade. Joe Biden chaired the Judiciary Committee at the time. Clarence Thomas was next, as Democrats trotted out Anita Hill to make spurious accusations against him — a template they followed again with Kavanaugh.

Alito, who is guilty only of writing the correct opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, is their current target, but so is Amy Coney Barrett. That paragon of honest reporting known as Rolling Stone put out its own hit piece on her yesterday.

“Amy Coney Barrett’s Husband Is Representing Fox in a Lawsuit,” warned the headline of the “exclusive,” as if that somehow proves that she is also not objective. Short on evidence but long on insinuation, here’s Rolling Stone’s argument in a nutshell:

Fox News regularly covers matters at the Supreme Court and will surely continue to do so as the high court nears the end of its term. It is set to issue rulings soon on a slate of controversial topics, such as abortion, guns, public corruption, and whether Donald Trump is entitled to immunity for life for acts he committed as president.

Jesse Barrett’s work for Fox Corp. highlights one of ethics experts’ biggest complaints about the Supreme Court: Justices are not required to disclose their spouses’ clients, so the public has no way to track who is paying money directly to their families.

Leftists are keenly interested — one might say obsessed — with the activities of the spouses of conservative justices, though no one cared about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s husband’s legal firm or its cases before the Court. And oddly enough, leftists are equally quick to dismiss, just to pick a random example, the wastrel son of a former vice president who used his dad’s name to enrich the family.

The latter, of course, demonstrably affected policy decisions, even becoming the backward template for impeaching Donald Trump. By contrast, no evidence whatsoever exists that any currently scrutinized Supreme Court justice ruled differently on a single case because of the activities of a spouse.

But as the inimitable Rush Limbaugh used to say of the Left, “The nature of the evidence is irrelevant; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters.” In each instance of smearing a conservative justice, the charge is all they’ve got.

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