Listen carefully (around 0:15) and you will hear that this prayer group prayed for Sen. Robert Byrd to die so that the current tepid health insurance reform wouldn't pass a procedural vote in the Senate. The caller explicitly states that they got the message from wingnut Sen. Tom Coburn to hold their prayer vigil:
The degree to which Mr. Byrd’s condition looms over the proceedings was underscored Monday when Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, outraged Democrats in a floor speech by declaring that "what the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote."He didn't explicitly call on Byrd to die. He left that for wingnut bloggers - and eager Christianists. Is the Christianity of forgiveness and mercy passé?
Second thoughts (5:32 p.m.): I was out finishing my Christmas shopping, which I always delay to the last minute because I'm a serious procrastinator, not because of my lack of faith. Somewhere in the ebbing commercial frenzy of excess, I came upon enough hope in my normally justified pessimism about political Christians to rethink this a little.
Surely this call was spoofing the American Taliban. Surely the bar for what can be called Christian is not so low. Surely the weeping over the invented, supposed death of James Inhofe was a tip-off that this couldn't be real.
Even so, both Sen. John Barrasso and the C-SPAN news host didn't respond at all to the claimed death prayers. Trust me when I tell you that a Democrat in that position would be pilloried for weeks.
