Alito’s denial of judicial bias is a joke on the American people

I don’t think of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito as a particularly funny guy. But his recent interview with CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford made me laugh out loud. 

“We are not part of any political movement, and we are not attempting to further any political agenda,” Alito said. 

C’mon, man, you’re killing me!  

Alito’s claim is hilarious in an absurdist deadpan sort of way. But the laughter it provokes is not happy laughter. It’s the kind of grunt that pops out of your mouth when you hear President Trump spout some ridiculous thing. It’s preposterous that he is our president, and yet there he is.

When it comes to Alito’s claim, the history is clear. The right-wing Supreme Court majority — Alito and Clarence Thomas hold down its right-most edge — was built explicitly to further a political agenda.

The Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation and the whole massive right-wing infrastructure built over the past 50 years is the fruit of a long-term campaign by corporations, foundations and wealthy individuals to amass enough political and legal power to reverse a century of progressive advances.

Movement leaders set out to overturn decades of precedent and return the country to a pre-New Deal, pre-Civil Rights Act version of reality. A reality in which the federal government doesn’t have much power to interfere with corporations doing whatever they want to workers or the environment, the bargaining and political power of worker unions has been brutally undermined and the rights of historically marginalized communities are ignored.

When Trump was elected for the first time, right-wing........

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