Justice Alito inflames the Progressives with his fiery speech

 

Twitter was aflame last night. A whole lot of Progressives got their knickers in a knot over the speech given by Justice Alito at the Federalist Society. Usually the speeches are not taped, but because of Covid we have the opportunity to be able to view it.

I have a short clip, a transcript as well as the full video of his speech. Take heart fellow patriots. If not now, sometime over the weekend do check out the full speech to warm the cockles of your hearts.

“This speech is like I woke up from a vampire dream,” University of Baltimore law professor and former federal prosecutor Kim Wehle wrote. “Unscrupulously biased, political, and even angry. I can’t imagine why Alito did this publicly. Totally inappropriate and damaging to the Supreme Court.”

Without saying the words “court-packing,” Alito warns about Democratic efforts to “bully” the court with threats to “restructure” it. Tells a story about a foreign judge threatened with death if he didn’t rule for the government, Stern, Salon’s legal writer writes.

As the speech wrapped up Stern observes, “Alito is done. That was easily the most political speech I’ve ever seen delivered by a Supreme Court justice. Wow. Same-sex marriage, guns, abortion, contraception, persecution of the Federalist Society … he really squeezed it all in there. Yikes.”

Alito also gave a regular lament from legal conservatives, complaining that law schools are hostile to those with right-of-center political views and others whose beliefs go against the majority viewpoint.

“Unfortunately, tolerance for opposing views is now in short supply in many law schools and in the broader academic community,” the justice said. “When I speak with recent law school graduates, what I hear over and over is that they face harassment and retaliation if they say anything that departs from the law school orthodoxy.”

Alito didn’t hold back on other controversial subjects, even suggesting that the pressure Christians face surrounding their religious beliefs is akin to the strictures the U.S. placed on Germany and Japan after World War II.

 “Is our country going to follow that course?” Alito asked. “For many today, religious liberty is not a cherished freedom. It’s often just an excuse for bigotry and can’t be tolerated, even when there is no evidence that anybody has been harmed. … The question we face is whether our society will be inclusive enough to tolerate people with unpopular religious beliefs.”

“The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty,” Alito said, insisting that such an observation was transparently true. “The Covid crisis has served as a sort of constitutional stress test and in doing so it has highlighted disturbing trends that were already in evidence before the pandemic struck.”

“One of the great challenges for the Supreme Court going forward will be to protect freedom of speech. Although that freedom is falling out of favor in some circles, we need to do whatever we can to prevent it from becoming a second-tier constitutional right,” he said.

From Reason:

Usually, Justice Alito prohibits his remarks to be recorded, so Zoom has some perks.  He talks about COVID and religious liberty, the freedom of speech, the Second Amendment, and “bullying” of the Supreme Court by U.S. Senators. I ran the video through the Otter transcription service.

For the transcript go to Otter transcription

Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito criticizes the left in speech given at the Federalist Society. Religious liberty and COVID-19 restrictions were some of the issues.

A short clip:

 

 

Here is the full speech.

Address by Justice Samuel Alito

 

 

The swamp is not a bit happy.