'Paul refuses TSA pat down. Sorry, that doesn’t make him a hero,' one blogger wrote. | AP, Reuters Left blogs pat down Paul on TSA

The liberal blogosphere is mocking Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for overreacting to being stopped by the TSA, and taking the opportunity to slam him for the D.C. pro-life rally he was en route to.

“Government, hands off Rand Paul’s body! The Kentucky Republican claimed to have been ‘detained’ by the TSA this morning when he set off an airport scanner in Nashville… Paul was on his way to Washington, D.C. to speak at the ‘March for Life,’ because of course his deep-seated libertarian, ‘hands off, government’ principles don’t apply to women,” wrote Laura Clawson at the progressive Daily Kos.


Indeed, liberal blogger Charles Johnson slammed Paul at LittleGreenFootballs for attending a “religious fanatic anti-abortion hatefest.”

Other took aim at the fact that Paul has said that he would like a formal Senate inquiry as to why one scanner went off and a second one later allowed him to pass.

“Two different scanners gave different results? It must be a secret government conspiracy… Couldn’t be differences in calibration, or the likelihood that the machines might kinda suck. No, it must be a secret Detain This Person button,” wrote Hunter, a blogger at Daily Kos, sarcastically.

Other just criticized Paul for simply overreacting to the whole incident.

“Rand Paul refuses TSA pat down. Sorry, that doesn’t make him a hero… The metal detector went off and he refused a pat down. Sorry, but I don’t want the guy on my plane if he’s setting off metal detectors and then refusing a pat down… is it really too much to ask that you let them pat you down after you set off the metal detector at the airport?” wrote John Aravosis at AMERICAblog.

With the criticism came a few jokes at the senator’s expense.

“An engraved metal jacketed copy of ‘Atlas Shrugs’ was found to be the culprit,” wrote a blogger at Balloon Juice, poking fun at the senator’s libertarian philosophy.

Meanwhile, however, conservatives didn’t find much that was funny about the incident.

“Now don’t you all feel safer?” wrote Kate Hicks sarcastically at the TownHall blog. “Ironically, Senator Paul has been a vocal opponent of the body scanners, noting that they delay travelers who don’t pose any sort of threat, and frequently go off thanks to technical problems. Seems like Janet Napolitano may have earned an ‘I told you so’ from the Senator.”

It was not lost on most conservatives that Rand Paul, long an outspoken opponent of the TSA’s practices, would cause trouble for the agency.

“Senator Paul is precisely the sort of person who will stubbornly force the TSA to embarrass itself by detaining a Senator on a matter of personal liberty. Particularly since Senator Paul’s ongoing opposition to full-body pat-downs is quite well known,” wrote Moe Lane at RedState.

“On the list of stupid things the Transportation Security Administration could do for their public image: detaining Senator Rand Paul, the politician most anxious to abolish them. is probably right near the top,” added a blogger at the conservative Big Government blog.