Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Nancy Pelosi Invokes Religious Litmus Test In House Vote

Unbelievable!

Last night, House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke in opposition to a bill that would trim $40 billion out of the Federal budget over the next five years. According to news reports Pelosi decared that those who voted for the bill would, in essence, be voting against what the Bible teaches and would be slapping God himself in the face. She then explicitly urged the U.S. House of Representatives to join her in worshipping God on the House floor.

Her actual words are as follows,
As the Bible teaches us, to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship, to ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us . . . Let us vote no on this budget as an act of worship and for America's children.
I doubt that such incendiary words of a partisan religious nature have been uttered on the floor of the U.S. Congress for over 100 years. In passing judgment on the religious integrity of those voting differently than herself, Pelosi has, without any doubt, uttered the single most arrogant, blasphemous, outrageous, impolitic, rude, insulting, inappropriate, insensitive, divisive, offensive and intolerant statement I have ever heard spoken by an elected representative holding such a high political leadership position.

The Democratic Party should demand that she issue an apology and/or resign as the House Minority Leader immeditely.

I shiver to imagine what would become of the U.S. Congress should everyone begin talking like this. The floor of the House of Representatives would begin to sound like a bitterly divided religious convention instead of a body politic.

Is Pelosi now a self-appointed arbiter of whether a fellow Representative's positions are religiously acceptable? If Pat Robertson or James Dobson had uttered these words they would have been excoriated by people like Pelosi even if they had uttered them from inside a church. What hypocracy!

I am so appalled that I honestly do not know how to express my feelings. I do not know whether to rant or rage or weep or simply sit quietly in stunned numbness.

If a Republican Representative had spoken these same words I would feel the same as I do towards Pelosi. There is no excuse, no justification for such a thing.

If you think Pelosi simply spoke off-the-cuff without thinking the matter through and should be excused for a slip of the tongue, consider that she has said much of this before...word for word.
Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!