As Expected

As I had suggested previously, Senator Frist's videotaped comments for the radical "Justice Sunday" [much better termed "Just Us Sunday"] telecast this evening didn't really make much news. According to reports, Frist made the same bland arguments he's been making for months, repeating the same tired (and untrue) canards about this being the first time ever judges haven't gotten an up-or-down vote in the Senate, and so on. What Frist said tonight has never been my concern. It's where he said it. I wouldn't have minded at all if he'd made the same statements on "This Week" or "Late Edition" ... but to appear, even by video, in a telecast whose sponsors have suggested that those who oppose the nuclear option are "against people of faith," is outrageous and unbecoming of the leader of a national political party.

ABC News reports that Family Research Council president Tony Perkins opened the broadcast by holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other, saying "As American citizens we should not have to choose between believing and living what is in this book and by serving the public."According to WKYT in Lexington, KY, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that "Putting more evangelicals on the court[s] will mean rulings more in tune with the religious convictions of churchgoers." Mohler: "We are not asking for persons merely to be moral. We want them to be believers in the Lord Jesus Christ."

I'm sorry, but this is not mainstream rhetoric - this is calls for theocracy, and the association of our Senate Majority Leader with it is something no Republican should tolerate.

[Update: Here are links to some of Monday's paper coverage of this event: New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today. - 25 April, 7:20 a.m.]