Back when he was first running for mayor, Ed Koch used to tell of the time he told some senior citizens about a judge he knew who’d been mugged.
The judge, said Koch, told a group that “this mugging will not influence any of my decisions from the bench” — whereupon a woman yelled, “Mug him again!”
The story came to mind following news that US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and his wife were robbed of $1,000 in cash by a masked robber wielding a machete at their West Indies vacation home.
Neither the jurist nor his wife were hurt.
But we can’t help wondering whether Breyer — a reliably liberal Bill Clinton appointee — will also refuse to let this incident figure into his judicial rulings.
Not to make light of his ordeal, but if Justice Breyer — like the judge in Mayor Koch’s story — remains unmoved, all we can say is, “Mug him again.”