Alito Removes Obama as Friend on Facebook

The public spat between Associate Justice Samuel Alito and President Barack Obama that took place during Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address has received enough coverage and analysis to make Wolf Blitzer’s whiskers start to twitch. The seemingly never-ending buzz, however, is understandable. Even though Supreme Court Justices receive extensive training on how to sit completely emotionless at such speeches, Alito couldn’t help himself from having an inaudible Joe Wilson moment. What’s next? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raising the roof when she agrees with an applause line? A public battle between the Executive and Judicial branches? Well, maybe.

Just yesterday, Alito took the growing rift with Obama over the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC to the next level. In a move that some commentators are calling “childish,” Justice Alito has removed President Obama from his list of friends on the internet social networking site Facebook. According to Ashton Kutcher’s twitterfeed, the judicial diss occurred at some point during the early afternoon while Alito was supposedly hearing oral argument at the Supreme Court. This begs the question, are jurors not the only ones inappropriately feeding their internet fix when court is in session?

“Look, this is completely off the record, but I talked to him about the State of the Union and I’ve talked to him about surfing the web during oral arguments,” said Chief Justice John Roberts [sorry about that record, Chief]. “He’s just a guy that marches to the beat of his own drum. I told him that no matter what Obama says about the Citizens United decision, he was absolutely not to break our signature ‘watching paint dry’ expression. Apparently, that fell on deaf ears.”

Analysts say Alito’s move to drop Obama as a friend should not be taken lightly. Of all of the Supreme Court Justices with Facebook pages, Alito has the fewest number of friends. In fact, Associate Justice Sandra Sotomayor, has more than thirty times as many friends as Alito even though they both went to Princeton and Yale. Is that Alito’s discretion at work or an indication of his lack of social skills? White House Press Secretary Roberts Gibbs thinks it’s the latter. At today’s press conference he had this to say about the Alito snub – “let’s just say the President was being diplomatic when he decided to accept the friend request in the first place.” Oh snap!