SCALIA AND THE PAULBOT: SHOWING WOMEN (AND LIBERALS) WHO'S BOSS

A member of MoveOn tried to give Rand Paul a mock pro-corporate award and was wrestled to the curb and stomped. The Atlantic's Joshua Green says she was "brutally attacked," but fortunately (and bear with me as I say this) the attack wasn't even more brutal, because it easily could have been:



Something -- a pang of conscience? fear of a felony rap? -- restrains the stomper just a tiny bit. He seems to stomp on her shoulder, not her head. He doesn't quite put all his weight into it. He doesn't linger -- after one stomp, he walks away, apparently after a hand gesture urging restraint from another member of the mob.

Small comfort, I know. (She was coherent after the attack, as the video shows, but MoveOn says she suffered a concussion.)

Maybe he and the gesturer realized the mob had gone too far. Or maybe they were content just to, y'know, teach her a lesson. Show her who's boss.

Which, oddly, makes me think of this story from the Daily Caller yesterday:

Scalia takes Kagan to gun range, sources say

According to two witnesses, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took fellow Justice Elena Kagan out for a lesson in skeet shooting at his shooting club in Virginia last week....

Scalia was bending down in order to teach Kagan how to hold the shotgun, the witnesses say, and the pair were shooting skeet.

Kagan, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama in May and confirmed by the Senate in August, is generally believed to hold negative opinions toward the Second Amendment....

My reaction when I read that was that it was patronizing at best and a subtle attempt at intimidation at worst. The message seems to be: Little lady, you may think you're tough, and your liberal friends are tough, but this is how we roll our side. We like guns. We like guns a lot. And we know how to use them. Still want to mess with us, little girl?

The Rand Paul stomper and his comrade seemed content to send a similar message: You picked the wrong people to mess with -- but we won't hurt you as badly as we could. This just gives you a taste of what we could do to you if we wanted to.