Oh dear. What whiny babies these Tea Party "patriots" are! What frail, delicate flowers they are when they're not carrying guns or making anonymous threats! Take, for instance, this story about a heated encounter between a Teamster and a teabagger at the Sacramento union rally Saturday:

The opposing rallies were divided by 10th Street, west of the State Capitol. All was peaceful, until members supporting unions crossed the street. An amateur videographer caught a shoving match on tape. The video showed a face to face argument right before Richard Andazola, 28, of Stockton, shoved a tea party activist. "He bum rushed across the street, came right at us, swung his bullhorn at me, hit me in the hand and then put his hand around my throat and started choking me," Rodney Stanhope of Placerville said. The video doesn't show the choking incident, but clearly shows the shoving. Because of it, Sacramento Police officers cited Andazola for battery. Andazola tells a different story though. "He was spitting on me, he's bigger than me, and I told him to get off of me," Andazola said. "I was backing up and he was staying on me 'til the point that he spit in my mouth."

I'm sure Mr. Stanhope has already been (or will shortly be) thoroughly examined by a personal injury lawyer, and will hold off on petitioning his congressman for tort reform until after he's had his payday.

But I'm so confused, because each of the persons involved tell such different stories, I feel like I'm seeing a remake of "Rashomon." (There I go, with the liberal elite cultural references!) Perhaps I am unduly suspicious of Mr. Stanhope's version of events, and if I'm wrong, I'm sorry.

But as my mother would say if she smacked one of us for something we insisted we didn't do, "That's for all the times I didn't catch you!"

In the meantime, Mr. Stanhope has my deepest sympathy for any actual injuries he may have suffered in the altercation.

Perhaps he has been so traumatized by the incident that he is no longer willing to water the tree of liberty with his own, or anyone else's, blood. That would be a good thing.

In closing, perhaps the next time Mr. Stanhope's fellow teabaggers smear all union members as "thugs", and oppose the right to collective bargaining for government workers, they might try to remember that government workers do some very important jobs.