The Roberts court has become so political that it is driving itself to term limits. As FDR put it in a Fireside Chat to the nation on March 9, 1937: “We have, therefore, reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the court and the court from itself.”

A new report reveals how Chief Justice John Roberts tried to protect Samuel Alito as he faced backlash amid his flag scandal.

One has to wonder, given how frequently the Supreme Court’s chief justice seems removed from the social and political realities of the country. As revealed by my Times colleagues Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak in their remarkable,

The Times notes that he had originally assigned the opinion to be written by Justice Samuel Alito. But, after the revelation that Alito had flown an American flag upside down to symbolize solidarity with those who had stormed the capital, Robert again sprang into action. He benched Alito and wrote the opinion favoring the insurrectionists himself.