Radical Cleric Issues Fatwa to Kill the President

This is not a made up headline. You would expect this story to be played non-stop on the cable news stations, especially Fox News. Why is this story not receiving any news media coverage?

Well, you see the Radical Cleric is Pat Robertson, the head of the American Taliban. The President he is urging to have assassinated is Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. Of course, the news media refuses to cover the extremism of the Radical Religious Right.

Media Matters for America has posted a video from a broadcast of the Christian Broadcast Network’s The 700 club from today where the Radical Cleric Robertson proclaims:

There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

I hope this will spawn discussions about the extremism of the Radical Religious Right by the news media and members of the Democratic Party.