While drunk Republicans in impoverished cities that their party allowed to be literally drowned just might deserve whatever the fuck they get, there's no indication that a Republican couple was beaten up in New Orleans last Friday for political reasons.

Bobby Jindal's chief fundraiser broke her leg and her boyfriend suffered a concussion, broken nose, and broken jaw after a mysterious "incident" after a Louisiana GOP fundraising event at Brenna's Restaurant last Friday night.

Early reports feverishly speculated that the attack was politically motivated, with one blogger "reporting" that the two were beaten for wearing Sarah Palin pins. But they were not actually wearing Sarah Palin pins.

And Michelle Malkin, who loves nothing more than the opportunity to tie some act of violence to some liberal or Muslim, is warning her fellow travelers not to make hay of this incident. That pretty much guarantees that the real story won't conform to the preferred conservative narrative. (All we know so far is that this was "a Friday night altercation with a group of people in the French Quarter," and those generally aren't terribly political affairs.)

The blogger spreading the "liberals and anarchists did this" line now admits that the couple weren't wearing Palin pins. And, furthermore, "Bautsch and Brown remained at Brennan's after the fundraiser was over and by the time they left there wasn't much of a protest going on...." But: this is still pretty clearly the work of anarchists, he is pretty sure, because... well just because. Anarchists! MSM! And so on.

We wish physical harm on no one, and deplore violence in all its forms, but lord knows the people of New Orleans do have their reasons to be angry with Republicans. Still—all the anarchists we've known were much more inclined to destroy property than jaws. This looks quite a bit more like a mugging or a drunken brawl than the elusive Liberal Act of Political Violence that the right-wingers are desperately praying for.

[Photo: Jessie Jacobs / Save UNO Coalition]