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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

> In early July 2008

Ask yourself this: why are you only hearing about this 13 years later? This wasn't a big deal when the allegedly problematic ruling on the hedge fund came down, only when the ruling on Roe v. Wade did.

I won't comment on the factual accuracy of the claims in the article. I haven't investigated them thoroughly, so I don't have an informed opinion on them. But if you want a rebuttal, maybe read the response from Alito linked to in the article? https://www.wsj.com/articles/propublica-misleads-its-readers...

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Because "Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures." It was extremely difficult for anyone to find out about this.

Parts of Alito's response are extremely difficult to believe.

> Until a few months ago, the instructions for completing a Financial Disclosure Report told judges that “[p]ersonal hospitality need not be reported,”

Alito intentionally cuts out the rest of this sentence. The law says "except that any food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality of an individual need not be reported". Obviously a private jet flight does not qualify as any of these categories. Why did he ignore that part of the law?

> My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups.

On a multi-day fishing trip with a very small group, where you were personally hosted by Paul Singer, you only made small talk? You flew on his private jet, and were photographed multiple times posing with him in front of a tiny boat or plane that only held a handful of people, so you must have spent many hours with him and only a couple other people. It is completely unbelievable that anybody in this situation with a sitting supreme court justice would only make small talk.

Why did he invite you, if he didn't care about your position as a justice and you barely knew each other?

> when I was invited shortly before the event

Who invited you?

> Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.

Alito does not address the third option of not going. What was this event and why was it important he attend? He doesn't say.

If the corruption can be revealed, it exists. This is true whether or not the decision to reveal it is biased.

This calls to mind complaints from a few years ago about fact-checking as "damaging to the reputation" of the person whose claims were fact-checked and identified as false.

One's reputation is damaged when they choose to tell a lie, not when someone else points it out.

Similarly, when someone accepts a bribe, they have damaged their integrity. That damage was not done by the person who exposes the bribe, but by the person who chose to accept the bribe.

Put another way: unethical behavior is unethical regardless of whether one gets caught while engaging in it.

Is your assertion that no reporters disliked Alito enough—and/or, that none were career-advancement-motivated enough—to bother reporting on this in 2008, and that's why it was only reported recently?

It seems to me the more likely explanation is that nobody who might be inclined to report on it, knew about it then.

Maybe. But even if that's true, then why did the people "inclined to report on it" only find out about it right after Dobbs?

You could say it was just coincidence, but this isn't the only story making accusations against conservative justices that came out right after the Dobbs decision. I'd say its far more likely the result of opposition research. Which doesn't necessarily mean its not true, just that you should take it with a few extra grains of salt.

> but this isn't the only story making accusations against conservative justices that came out right after the Dobbs decision

I would agree that it appears to be an alarmingly widespread problem.

Of judges being targeted for character assassination after making objectively correct interpretations of the constitution that politicians don't like?

I completely agree.

No, of actual corrupt behavior. Plenty of us would get fired from our jobs for less. Much of what’s happened would get lower justices disciplined, because there are ethics rules with teeth for them.

Do you read Alito’s rebuttal you linked as an actual rebuttal of the events? It reads as a “yeah, sure, but it’s fine, trust me” to me.

>> Plenty of us would get fired from our jobs for less.

No we wouldn’t. The contention that “plenty of us” would be fired for going on a fishing trip is farcical on its face and even more laughable when you consider how much is given away in the private sector for “business development” or “marketing” reasons.

We get it. You don’t like the conservative justices. There’s no reason to start making ridiculous statements that make you look like an ideological chicken little. While you’re all over this thread hating on Alito and Thomas, I don’t see you saying much about Kagan and Breyer. Why is that?

> No we wouldn’t. The contention that “plenty of us” would be fired for going on a fishing trip is farcical on its face

If someone did business with our company and I was in any way connected with decisions regarding that, and it turned out they’d spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on gifts for me, yeah, I would, even if there was no straight line between the gifts and them later getting what they want, and even if I said I didn’t know, because I should have known. And there are industries with far more scrutiny and stricter rules than the one I’m in. Millions of employees are in the same boat.

These aren’t branded bic pens or a box of doughnuts. C’mon. What’s farcical is pretending this isn’t naked corruption that would get smacked down despite any protestations of “lol it’s fine, trust me” or “oh sorry I didn’t know” from the perpetrators in any other context.

> While you’re all over this thread hating on Alito and Thomas, I don’t see you saying much about Kagan and Breyer. Why is that?

Because the topic has been Alito, and because the known gifts the two you name have received in the last 20 years are under $20,000 combined while Alito’s alone is 10x their combined total(!) and Thomas has received gifts amounting to at least $4m(!!!) in the same time frame. There are two outliers and they both happen to be Republicans, who also have both failed to report really large gifts, not just “whoops I forgot about that $50 lunch”

Let’s absolutely audit the shit out of all of them, I’m entirely on board. Let’s get an investigation right up in these too-powerful-to-touch folks’ finances and see what we find for all of them. Definitely would love to see that. Several of the sub-six-figure gift totals seem too high, too. Drag them all before Congress, subpoena their bank records, by all means, and to all of them, sure.

But what we know now is that two are exceptionally-bad even by lax Supreme Court standards. Maybe more are, too, and I’d say what we know already is enough that they should all have their lives turned upside down to see how far this goes.

>> If someone did business with our company and I was in any way connected with decisions regarding that, and it turned out they’d spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on gifts for me, yeah, I would, even if there was no straight line between the gifts and them later getting what they want, and even if I said I didn’t know, because I should have known. And there are industries with far more scrutiny and stricter rules than the one I’m in. Millions of employees are in the same boat.

Nahhh.

>> Because the topic has been Alito

You elsewhere in this comment section: “I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by billionaires.”

Your partisanship is showing.

> Nahhh

Y—yes, though? I’m dead certain I’d be out the door over that. It’s a pretty common set of policies and that wouldn’t be considered a grey area, or even in sight of a grey area. I’d need serious company-politics pull to have any hope. Have you worked for large companies? Small ones may not emphasize this as much (the ones I’ve been at didn’t)

> You elsewhere in this comment section: “I'll be upset with liberal justices, too, if evidence turns up that any of them are being bribed on a grand scale by billionaires.”

Yes. Got something you want to bring up? Not sure if the relevance of your quoting me there to any of the rest of this, but if you’re trying to broach that topic, absolutely, show me the reporting.

> Your partisanship is showing.

I’m beginning to think this isn’t exactly a good faith discussion, though.

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