Yesterday, a serious and deeply learned judicial scholar named Samuel Alito had to cancel a speaking engagement at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ judicial conference.

A spokeswoman for Alito, who also happens to be the author of a leaked draft of a long-overdue Supreme Court opinion that says two landmark abortion cases, Roe and Casey, “must be overruled,” gave no reason for the cancellation.

But it doesn’t take a genius. Nor does it take a genius to figure out why the Supreme Court itself is now under lockdown, with eight-foot fencing around the building, all entry points blocked to vehicles, and more officers positioned on patrol: security concerns. Pro-abortion activists had even published a map of the Washington metropolitan area with the home addresses of the Supreme Court justices. Indeed, security concerns.

Of course, “security concerns” is simply a polite euphemism for “leftist mob violence.”

Here we might make a distinction between a leftist mob and a rightist mob: The former is all too common and has its roots with Robespierre and the guillotines of the French Revolution, while the latter is rare and has its roots with the Minutemen and the Boston Tea Party of the American Revolution. (Democrats don’t like it when we point this out, but facts are stubborn things.) As Ann Coulter writes in Demonic, her prescient book on liberal mobs:

A mob is an irrational, childlike, and often violent organism that derives its energy from the group. Intoxicated by messianic goals, the promise of instant gratification, and adrenaline-pumping exhortations, mobs create mayhem, chaos, and destruction, leaving behind a smoldering heap of wreckage.

Coulter published Demonic more than a decade ago, but she certainly seems to have sussed out antifa and Black Lives Matter. This latest group of leftist mobsters calls itself “Ruth Sent Us” — which is a deeply ironic name, given that its namesake, former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, believed Roe to have been poorly decided. Coulter continues: “The Democratic Party is the party of the mob, irrespective of what the mob represents. Democrats activate mobs, depend on mobs, coddle mobs, publicize and celebrate mobs — they are the mob.”

Yeah, yeah, we know: January 6. But all that sorry episode proves is that every group has its breaking point — such as when it believes a presidential election has been stolen. Democrats, on the other hand, get the mob together when one of them gets shorted on an order of fries.

But since we’re on the subject of mobs, and of January 6, which the Left likes to call “an insurrection,” what might we call this newest effort to use threats of violence to disrupt the lawful proceedings of one of our three branches of government? Where’s the FBI? Where are its entrappers, its agents provocateur? Where are those updated “Most Wanted” posters?

Let’s consider, for just a moment, how we got here — to a point where we think decent societies can tolerate mob intimidation of its Supreme Court. It was just over two years ago when then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer debased his office in a way that few other elected officials ever have. Speaking to a mob of pro-abortion Democrats on the steps of the Supreme Court, he said this:

I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price! … You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!

His remarks, which were a naked attempt to intimidate — and perhaps even threaten with violence — two sitting Supreme Court justices, brought a rare rebuke from mild-mannered Chief Justice John Roberts. “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory,” Roberts said, “but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Schumer, had he any decency, would’ve resigned in disgrace. Instead, here we are.

This Sunday, which happens to be Mother’s Day, the same mob that doxxed the Supreme Court’s six Republican-appointed justices is calling on its mobsters to descend on local Catholic churches. This, according to the group’s tweet, is because “six extremist Catholics set out to overturn Roe.”

Perhaps, as our Mark Alexander suggests, this pro-abortion mob’s time would be better spent repenting of the racist origins of our nation’s leading killer of unborn babies, Planned Parenthood, instead of the black-robed jurists who appear poised to strike down the judicial abomination known as Roe v. Wade.