Now it emerges that Alito also flew a Christian Dominionist flag at his beach house
The New York Times is reporting this evening that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito also flew a so-called “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his New Jersey beach house that was among those carried by insurrectionists attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Times obtained four photographs of the flag at the Alito beach house taken on different days in the summer of 2023, including one that appeared in a Google Maps Streetview search. The Times story emphasizes the presence of the flag in the mob of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol, even providing this photograph as evidence:
The Supreme Court voted to accept an important Jan. 6 insurrection case during the time that the flag was flown by Alito in New Jersey. The case challenges an obstruction charge against one of the men arrested at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The case has implications in the federal indictment of Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, because he was charged with obstruction under the same federal statute. If the Supreme Court rules that the obstruction charge cannot be used against the plaintiff in the case that Alito voted to accept, the obstruction charge will be dropped against Trump as well.
But it is worse than that. The flag, which shows a single pine tree below the slogan “Appeal to Heaven,” dates to the American Revolution, but in recent years has been used by right-wing Christians associated with the “New Apostolic Reformation” as a symbol of their efforts to turn this country into a theocracy, where all laws would be Biblically based.
A man by the name of Dutch Sheets wrote a book called “Appeal to Heaven” after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in 2015. In the book and in the movement he champions, he has concentrated on influencing the Supreme Court as a centerpiece of his movement’s efforts. According to the Times, in a speech he gave in 2018, Sheets said, “There’s no gate that has allowed more evil to enter our nation than that of the Supreme Court.”
Sheets has made no secret of his admiration of Alito for his decision in Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade, and his vote in the Hobby Lobby case that overturned a federal law that would have required companies providing health insurance to their employees to cover abortion and contraceptive services. Both cases were pushed by right-wing and largely white Christian churches such as the Southern Baptist Convention, which broke away from the main Baptist Church over the issue of slavery before the Civil War. At that time, the Southern Baptists supported the right to own human beings. The main Baptist Church did not.
Sheets has distributed “Appeal to Heaven” flags to conservative Republican politicians, urging them to fly the flag. Many Republicans have taken him up on it. Sheets wrapped a Republican conservative Christian candidate for governor of Indiana in the “Appeal to Heaven” flag at a recent rally. Arch-conservative Christian nationalist Mike Johnson flies the flag outside the office of the Speaker of the House in the United States Capitol. Here it is:
So, the Christian Dominionist flag that once was flown as a symbol of insurrection by Trump supporters as they assaulted the Capitol has now taken its place in one of the most prominent and hallowed positions inside the Capitol.
With a Supreme Court justice not only flying an upside down American flag at his home in Virginia but a Christian nationalist flag symbolizing a movement to turn this country into a theocracy, my personal appeal is, please God help us. We’re in danger of losing our country to these Bible thumping freaks.
The only solutions I see are a Dem majority in both House and Senate, a Dem president and expanding the SC. We need to abolish the Electoral College, end gerrymandering, end the assault on voting rights, and end Citizens United. These are all anti-democratic and used by the wingnuts and billionaires to buy our government officials, judges, justices and enact the laws they want. This is a 5-alarm fire! We can no longer sit back and think the courts are going to save us - the courts have been captured. Our elected Dems need to start speaking out and in the Senate start kicking ass and taking names. They need to call out msm b/s for what it is - corporate captured spin. Read Project 2025 and see where we're headed...
I haven't liked Alito since he mouthed the words "not true" in one of Obama's States of the Union addresses. He was sour and dour then, always an unpleasant look on his face like he's about to throw up burning bile. Now it turns out he's one of the Old Testament ugly life hate-filled vengeance guys. He's repulsive and he has absolutely no business being any kind of judge much less a Supreme. And his wife is as awful as he is. These folks are MAGAs.