There is no better example of the current skewed state of checks and balances in American government than Justice Samuel Alito’s penchant for displaying insurrectionist symbols at his homes. That Alito can do this freely is but the tip of the iceberg that has already sunk the high court’s legitimacy. Let’s not forget about the rest of the iceberg: the lack of ethics policing for Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas, who’ve accepted enormously valuable benefits in luxury vacations, vehicles, tuition payments for family members (all undisclosed by the justices), and the adoption of a toothless code of ethics after decades of refusing to adopt any code of ethics.

But what still lies beneath the surface is the failure of all three branches of our government to do anything about the ethics disaster that has befallen the Supreme Court. And while all three branches are to blame—it is the Executive Branch, via the U.S. Department of Justice—that seems particularly paralyzed.

As first reported by The New York Times, an upside-down American flag—the symbol adopted by supporters of former President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election having been stolen—was flown at Alito’s house on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before President Biden’s inauguration and weeks after Jan. 6 rioters carried that symbol into the Capitol as they stormed it in an effort to stop the peaceful transition of power. On Jan. 17, the United States Supreme Court was still considering whether to hear a case about the 2020 election.

Alito excused the flying of the flag by blaming his wife, telling the Times he had nothing to do with it but that she had flown it in response to a neighbor who had put up an anti-Trump sign. He later expanded on this excuse, telling Fox News that a person who lived at the property with the anti-Trump sign had gotten into a verbal argument with Alito and his wife, calling her names, “including the C-word.”

A common indicium of guilt by people accused of crimes is their ability to recall with great specificity details they think are innocuous (e.g., “I was wearing my favorite pair of Bruno Magli shoes”) contrasted with an inability to notice........

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