Federal charges are expected to be filed next week against the violent socialist who attacked Senator Rand Paul as he mowed his lawn last week, breaking six of his ribs and damaging his lungs.

According to Fox News and the Daily Caller, it signals a likely political motive for the attack.

Up until now, the media, quoting a creepy housing developer, has been spreading the story that the dispute was over lawn clippings, which Paul was supposedly rudely blowing into his neighbor's yard because he was a less than optimal neighbor.  That prompted Paul's neighbor, another physician, to do what any man would do: conduct a life-threatening assault – or so the narrative would have you believe.  The news reports claimed that the two men had known each other for years and the argument was long simmering.  And a city commission quoted wanted this dispute to be over and the two men to go back to being neighbors.  Yes, he really said that.

The implication from this lawn clippings dispute claim is that it was a minor scrap, not worthy of much notice.

...except that there were six broken ribs here and a pair of damaged lungs, which made such coverage downright bizarre.  The New York Times and the Washington Post bought right into it.

Given that Paul is a militant I-don't-bother-you-and-you-don't-bother-me libertarian, not a thing about this "narrative" rang true.  Paul himself said he had no idea what the attack was about, and he hadn't spoken in years to the neighbor who attacked him.  Meanwhile, later news reports quoting named neighbors said Paul in fact was an excellent, friendly, considerate neighbor, not a guy who'd blow lawn clippings into a neighbor's yard.

What we have here in this bizarre story is a willingness in the press to believe utter rubbish, or rather, fake news, and what is almost certainly a politically motivated attack very much in line with the vicious spray-shooting attack on a baseball game full of Republican congressmen that wounded several people, including Louisiana rep. Steve Scalise.

The news sources did at times question the strange logic pro-offered to them by the attacker's defenders and the lawn clippings stories, but not nearly enough.

With a political motive now evident to federal investigators, the people spreading the lawn clippings stories ought to be looked at by federal investigators, too, because there is no reason to defend a maniac who would attack his neighbor from behind as he mowed his lawn and crack six of his ribs.  It raises questions as to whether there were a group of people in on this, not just a pathetic maniac who threw away his medical career for the pleasure of assaulting a political opponent.  And the media should be willing to look at that instead of just stenographing a story even they knew was way out of the arena of the believable.