"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has called on GOP Senate leader Bill Frist (R-TN) to condemn remarks by evangelical Rev. Pat Robertson, in which he said judges are a bigger threat than terrorists, RAW STORY has learned.
Robertson was a guest on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Asked asked if judges were a more serious threat than terrorists, Robertson responded, “It depends on how you look at culture. If they look over the course of 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings. And I think we have controlled Al Qaida. I think we'll get Osama bin Laden. We've won in Afghanistan. We won in Iraq. And we can contain that. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of oligarchy. If we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.”
In the letter, obtained by RAW STORY, Lautenberg says he was shocked at Robertson's remarks.
“It was shocking to hear your cavalier dismissal of the atrocious 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by describing them as “a few bearded terrorists who fly planes into buildings,” wrote Lautenberg in his letter to Reverend Robertson. Lautenberg went on to write, “To suggest that members of the federal judiciary are somehow in the same class as “a few bearded terrorists” is an assault on the men and women on the federal bench who safeguard our rights under the Constitution everyday.”
In a separate letter to Sen. Majority Leader Frist, Lautenberg asks Frist to condemn Robertson's comments.
“I hope you will join me in condemning such harmful and heated language and call on Reverend Robertson to publicly apologize to every family who has lost a loved one to terrorism. Your silence on this matter would send a resounding signal to the entire country that the radical right controls the leadership of the Republican Party,” Lautenberg wrote in his letter to Majority Leader Frist.