What’s that you say, Mr. Robertson?

Please Mr. Robertson, I beg of you. Please stop talking. Smile at the camera. Hug people. Say a silent prayer. Direct your empire. Bounce your grandchildren on your knee. But stop moving your lips when a microphone is in the same zip code.

Pat, what where you thinking as you flippantly called for the assassination of a foreign leader whose policies are distinctly un-American? On what Scripture, what teaching of the church, what Christian principle did you base your call for the elimination of a political leader?
In case you missed it, Robertson said on The 700 Club:

``We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'' Robertson said yesterday on the television program. “ [Robertson said] Killing Chavez, who is visiting Cuba, would be cheaper than starting a war.

The U.S. can't allow Venezuela to become a ``launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism,'' Robertson said, according to AP.

This is probably the first pronouncement of this sort by a Christian leader since some Pope in the middle ages, and it is a total embarrassment to the American evangelical community.

I agree with The Conservative Voice that Robertson is free to say what he wants in a free country. I just pray that he won’t, and I’m disappointed by the Voice’s weak response to this outrage.

Redstate.org’s opinion is closer to mine, wondering if Robertson is insane.

The last public pronouncement by Robertson should be a series of apologies. One to the fellow Christians, whose witness he has serverely diminished. And to the President. The State Department. Oh, Mr. Chavez, too.

Then, go silent. Please.

--James Jewell