Justice Alito Is Very Fair and Balanced.

Let me see if I can get this straight -- Justice Alito doesn't plan on attending any more Obama State of the Union addresses, but he thinks it's perfectly fine to attend extreme partisan fundraisers where Michele Bachman is the keynote speaker:

Last night, the American Spectator — a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton — held its annual gala fundraising event. The Spectator is more than merely an ideological outlet. Spectator publisher Al Regnery helps lead a secretive group of conservatives called the “Conservative Action Project,” formed after President Obama’s election, to help lobby for conservative legislative priorities, elect Republicans (the Conservative Action Project helped campaign against Democrat Bill Owens in NY-23), and block President Obama’s judicial appointments. The Spectator’s gala last night, with ticket prices/sponsorship levels ranging from $250 to $25,000, featured prominent Republicans like RNC chairman Michael Steele, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer (a major donor to Republican campaign committees and attack ad groups), and U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member and former Allied Capital CEO William Walton. Among the attendees toasting Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the keynote speaker for the event, was Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito.

It’s not the first time Alito has attended the Spectator dinner. In 2008, Alito headlined the Spectator’s annual gala, helping to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the political magazine. According to Jay Homnick, a conservative who attended the 2008 Spectator gala, Alito spent much of his speech ripping then Vice President-elect Joe Biden as a serial plagiarizer. 

 Swlip, help me out -- seriously.

What am I missing here?

President Obama Condemns Supreme Court Ruling!

Let me tell you what, I thought it was great the way President Obama got right up into the grill of the Supremes during his SOTU address the other night and told them exactly what they can do with their fancy new pleading standard....

And how 'bout the way Justice Alito couldn't contain himself and had to pull a judicial version of"You Lie" while the cameras were rolling....

Huh?

It wasn't about Iqbal?

You mean the President didn't even mention Twombly?

Oh well, I got excited there for a minute.

Anyway, somebody passed along this awesome chart on Iqbal prepared by the ABA's Pretrial Practice and Discovery Iqbal Task Group (yes, such a group exists) that summarizes in a concise fashion all the most important rulings that have substantively applied Iqbal among the federal circuits.

What do you have to say now, Justice Alito?

Note to Justice Alito: Leave Our Cultural Icons Alone!

Holy hail, what's this:

Last year Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. won praise for quoting Bob Dylan in an opinion (a dissent, actually, in Spring Communications Co. v. APCC Services.) Not to be outdone, apparently, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. today quoted at length from John Lennon.

It came in Alito's major ruling in Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, which redefined monuments placed on public land -- such as a Ten Commandments monument -- as a form of government speech, rather than private speech that can run afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Some briefs had argued that if a memorial was to be regarded as a message conveyed by government, the government ought to be forced to embrace the message through a formal resolution.

In knocking down that argument, Alito, 58, makes the point that public monuments can convey multiple messages, or messages that change over time. The Statue of Liberty, for example, came to New York as a symbol of friendship between France and the United States, Alito said, and only later became viewed as a beacon welcoming immigrants.

Similarly -- and here's where Lennon comes in -- the mosaic in Central Park in New York City that displays the word "Imagine" as part of the memorial to John Lennon conveys several messages. "Some observers may 'imagine' the musical contributions that John Lennon would have made if he had not been killed," Alito said, while others might think of Lennon's song by that name, which imagined "a world without religion, countries, possessions, greed or hunger."

Alito then drops a footnote that offers the full text of Lennon's lyrics to the song "Imagine."

You've got to be kidding me! Can't you leave our treasured heroes alone? It was bad enough when Glenn Garvin suddenly became a book critic too when the Herald allowed him to trash Lennon a few months ago, now we have Justice Alito quoting "Imagine" at length? And Roberts quoting Bobby Dylan?

Please, stick to the musical icons that speak to you and the judges and lawyers you travel with -- you know, like Pat Boone and Celine Dion.

Or maybe that great singer/songwriter, John Ashcroft.

But leave the cool ones to the rest of us.