In the name of not being "hypocritical" we all now pay for an Alito's right to act boorish in public with the loss of our own expectation of privacy. The same reasoning that justifies Alito justifies discussions of the President's penis.

Unlike Joe Wilson or Obama, to name just two, Alito will never answer to the voters.  For him to use his influential position to so publicly demonstrate where his political loyalties lie is a disgrace.  If he wants to do it in his opinions, which he and every other justice does, fine.  Congress, future justices & legal scholars can hold him accountable for that.

So I read the transcript - usually more than once - so it becomes really something more between me and the president than about the irrelevant minutiae of who applauded which kines and for how long, whether the VP and Speaker look bored or about to take a nap, who appears to be talking to whom and who looks like he or she is getting the cold shoulder.  I'm pretty sure there was a camera on Lieberman and commentary about how his colleagues were responding to him, right?

The issue for me is not whether the decision was good or just.
It obviously isn't. The issue for me is the "sandbagging" aspect of it all. Inviting the SCOTUS without first informing that that they were about to be publicly criticized for a specific decision - and would be given no opportunity to respond.

But, just as importantly, IMO, if we aspire to become a more civil, caring, and respectful society we shouldn't conflate class, dignity, and aspirations with hypocrisy.

A few years ago I read about a group of street thugs, delinquents, participating in an experimental program at some detention facility. (now get your flaming snark-balls geared up): They were force-fed hours upon hours of "Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Ozzie and Harriet" tapes. The results were quite astounding; instead of the  hoots, yelps, and jeers you'd expect, they sat and watched silently, as if mesmerized. (No, they weren't stoned.) Some of the toughest boys, and girls, were even visibly crying.... shamelessly. They just couldn't get enough of those schmaltzy, human cartoons.

Of course they knew the programs were impossibly idealized caricatures of real families; they knew no one really lived that way. But, most coming from broken homes, they just loved seeing what perfect families could be like. They saw them as "goals," to aspire to.

The interesting thing about Alito and this decision, though, is that he was the deciding vote.  Had Sandra Day O'Connor stayed on the bench,and Alito not been appointed, the ruling would have gone the other way - at least that's what Sandy O said the other day. And her biggest problem with it is that (wait for it), this decision has the potential to see a huge increase in corporate spending in state judicial races, which could lead to more influence and politicized decisions.

"This rise in judicial campaigning makes last week's opinion in Citizens United a problem for an independent judiciary," she told an auditorium of lawyers and Georgetown University law students in Washington. "No state can possibly benefit from having that much money injected into a political campaign."

This latest was neither ugly nor did it interrupt the proceedings.  Didn't bother this Dem in the slightest.  Added to the entertainment value of the event, in fact.

As for purist Greenwald, with whom I often agree, I would have thought the old Felix Frankfurtian notion of the Justice as being purely objective and above mere-human political and personal influences was thoroughly discredited no later than the Bush v Gore black mark day for the Court.

I think it's much ado about nothing both with respect to Obama's comments and Alito's reaction.  All Obama said was that because of the court's decision that reversed a century of law, he's going to ask Congress to act. All Alito did was take exception with Obama's interpretation of the consequences of the decision. Neither is improper.

Greenwald usually cuts through the crap, and attempts to see things as they are.