“My wife is a private citizen, and she possesses the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” Alito wrote in one of two letters sent to members of Congress. “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.”

“In the years prior to [Roe v. Wade], about a third of the States had liberalized their laws, but Roe abruptly ended that political process. It imposed the same highly restrictive regime on the entire Nation, and it effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. … (I)t represented the ‘exercise of raw judicial power’… and it sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half-century.”

“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions. On the contrary, an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Alito said in a written statement to The New York Times, which first reported the story. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

So the wife did it to get back at the neighbors. Her first name is Martha-Ann, by the way.

A Supreme Court justice being unmasked as having a partisan tilt wouldn’t be illegal – just awkward and icky. Alito won’t even have to recuse himself from any cases for possibly showing an electoral preference since there’s no binding code of ethics for Supreme Court justices. He clarified on May 29 in a letter to lawmakers that he would not recuse himself from any cases as a result of the flag controversy. His wife, Alito said, is entitled to her First Amendment rights.

“My wife is fond of flying flags,” Alito wrote. “I am not.”