Just how absurd is the media’s attempted smear of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito over a flag flown at his house that leftists claim is linked to Jan. 6 protesters?

So absurd that even the Washington Post — which basically invented “defense of democracy” porn — refused to run with the story when it initially hit the paper’s radar in 2021.

So what is the “story” here?

Well,in the course of a dispute with an annoying neighbor, the justice’s wife flew an upside-down American flag at their home. 

She said at the time, correctly, that Old Glory upside down is an “international symbol of distress.”

But now media leftists are screeching that the upside-down flag actually proves that Alito was secretly in favor of the Jan. 6 protests and therefore he must now recuse himself from all cases regarding Donald Trump. 

So let’s review.

Alito didn’t fly the flag. 

Even if he had, flying a flag upside down is 100% constitutionally protected speech.

So the demands, like that from AOC, for investigations are — in a word — insane. 

It’s beyond clear what’s actually going on here. 

The court, which long made decisions that progressives favored, has made some recent ones they don’t like so much. 

Like slapping down, 9-0, the absurd Colorado effort to kick Trump off the ballot. 

Or the decision in the Students for Fair Admissions case last June that brought an end to open racism in college admissions. 

To say nothing of Dobbs, in which the weak jurisprudence of Roe v. Wade was overturned and the question of abortion left to the states. 

And if the court doesn’t do what progressives want, that means it’s illegitimate. (Same goes for Congress and the presidency.)

Thus, the silly, empty attacks on Alito (and the attempts to gin up fake scandals around Clarence Thomas).

It’s partisan politics at its ugliest, in other words. 

And yet more proof (though none was needed) that the most strident defenders of democracy are the ones most eager to burn it down.