Best Of

From the previous thread in response to @Nigelb -

"I'd be interested in Cyclefree's comment on a Supreme Court Justicd failing one of her basic tests.

Samuel Alito’s son has worked as a lawyer inside Trump’s Treasury Department since early last year. The administration hid it.

No public resume, no LinkedIn, no mention on the Treasury website, outdated bar listings. Four former officials confirmed it.

The public was never told.

Here is why that matters.

Philip Alito served as an attorney-adviser in Treasury’s general counsel office, briefed on department matters across the board, while the Supreme Court took up a case in which the Treasury Department was a named defendant.

The department never disclosed the connection in court.

Justice Alito did not recuse.

The federal recusal law is plain. A justice must step aside in any case where his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

That is the test.

Not whether anyone can prove influence but whether a reasonable person looking at this would doubt it. A justice ruling on cases involving the very agency that employs his son fails that test on its face...
https://x.com/MikeLevin/status/2060049428434518037"

This is not just my test. It is basic A, B, C stuff for any judge - let alone a judge in the US's apex court. Alito should have recused himself. That he did not understand this or did but did not care is a disgrace and makes him unfit to be a judge.

We have had similar instances here - in employment tribunals, for instance. And most infamously in the Lords when it was deciding whether Pinochet could be extradited and Lord Hoffmann failed to declare his and his wife's links with Amnesty, which was a party in the case. When it came out, the previous judgment was set aside and a new court without Hoffmann decided the issue. The other judges were pretty scathing about Hoffmann's failure, one of them describing the issue as something that a first year law student would have understood. Ouch!

The current SC justices in the US have pretty much destroyed their own reputations and have come close to destroying that of the court itself. It will take one hell of an effort by future justices - and lot of bi-partisan political will (if that is even there) to put that right.

https://x.com/robkenyonreform/status/2059955153172631613

St Mary’s Church in Ince once served the people of Makerfield. Now it’s a mosque.

Our Christian heritage is being erased. Reform UK will ban the conversion of churches and protect Britain’s traditions.

Oh goody onto Muslim bashing

I'm an Athiest.

But even I can see the merits of a place of worship remaining a place of worship rather than rotting and decaying.

No God could argue with that.

Farage is the devil on earth.