26 May—What would men do without their dutiful wives? Like for instance Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. In addition to everything else, Martha-Ann Alito and Virginia Thomas may well be their husbands’ convenient scapegoats. Or scapedoes, as female goats are properly called does.

Incidentally, scapegoats are so called after the ritual in Leviticus XVI, wherein for Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—God instructed Moses’ older brother Aaron to take a pair of goats and send one, with the sins of the people laid upon it symbolically (how else could even God have done it?), into the wilderness while a less fortunate one was to be sacrificed.

Presumably the caprine sacrifice was the scapegoat. Irrelevantly, goats chew their cud and have cloven hooves, so their meat, when knackered properly, is kosher. Ritual sacrifice was (and doubtless still is) normally done by slitting a poor creature’s throat and that’s precisely how kosher murder (a.k.a. ritual slaughter) is supposed to be carried out. Coincidence? So it’s not unlikely that at least the biblical scapegoat’s meat wasn’t wasted.

Back, then, to Sam’s and Clarence’s dutiful scapedoes. With regard to the upside-down Stars and Stripes, Sam told The New York Times, “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

That’s entirely plausible. And the sign kerfuffle has in fact been confirmed with some Alito neighbors. But wouldn’t you think Martha-Ann would have at least mentioned to Sam that she had intended to fly a Stop the Steal flag? And that Sam would have had the good judgement to tell her not to, if only to keep up appearances, such as they may be with him? (Well, on second thought . . .)

Justice Alito insisted that he had “no involvement whatsoever” with the upside-down flag. But he didn’t say that he hadn’t known about it. Dos mere knowledge constitute involvement?

Sam Alito offered no comment about the Appeal to Heaven flag, but it’s a pretty safe assumption that he had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of that flag either; and that it was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to whatever it may have been.

So why should Justice Alito recuse himself from anything?

As for Virginia Thomas (The Monitor isn’t familiar enough to call her Ginni) and her ill-conceived Trumpian escapades, it’s entirely plausible, more than likely, just about certain that she espouses the very same beliefs, theories, and causes as her supremely judicial spouse. So when Virginia denies the validity of an election, why not assume that she’s, inter alia, a public surrogate for Clarence, who has the good sense to keep it to himself? Just like Sam.

So perhaps Mrs. Alito and Mrs. Thomas aren’t scapedoes at all, but rather their husbands’ enthusiastic accomplices and safely remote surrogates . . .