Full disclosure, here: I am a libertarian, not a conservative. I believe that a woman is entitled to own and operate her own body—although I do draw the line at executing a viable "fetus" the way Democrats have been advocating lately; there's a technical term for that: infanticide.

Schumer may have fatally damaged his career with these shouted remarks. It is fondly to be hoped. People across all lines—in politics and in the media—have been bashing him, saying that he physically threatened those Justices in a way that's borderline illegal and that he ought to be censured, removed from his leadership position, ejected from the Senate, or criminally charged. All happy endings.

It reminds me of a situation that occurred here in Fort Collins, maybe twenty-five years ago. John Knezovitch was a member of our comic relief City Council with an infantile fixation on violating the Second Amendment and depriving his fellow human beings of their legally-owned weapons. Fort Collins is a very well-armed city and the only reason you don't see rifles in pickup truck windows any more is because their owners don't want to get their windows broken and their rifles stolen.

Unable to get victim-disarmament laws of any kind passed, Knezovitch, an authoritarian deputy police chief, and the morally-constipated sheriff, minced around town from store to store—the kind of store I like best—browbeating and threatening the proprietors if they carried and sold certain kinds of knives—butterflies, for example—that were perfectly legal, but they disapproved of. I don't know about the sheriff and the deputy, but in Knezovitch's case, there were always rumors about a sketchy past back east that he had fled under a cloud. I can't go into detail here because it would likely get me sued. But it is my experience that when a politician wants to render those around him defenseless, especially females, it's because he wishes to harm them with impunity.