ProPublica published an article on Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito taking luxury fishing trips with a billionaire that he did not report and who had cases before the court that he did not recuse himself from. Alito did not like ProPublica that was doing the piece…not…one…bit. So, Alito wrote a reply to ProPublica’s report. There are two very strange unorthodox things about his reply.

First, his reply was in a rival publication, The Wall Street Journal. Second, it was published in the Journal BEFORE ProPublica ran its report. Alito didn’t play this like a federal judge with a lifetime appointment. No, he played this like a politician. Politicians try to get ahead of negative stories about them. In this instance, readers of the Journal’s opinion page where the reply ran, did not have the opportunity to read ProPublica’s report first. How did Alito know about the ProPublica piece before…