Televangelist Pat Robertson has been one of the kookier figures of the right for decades now.  I've always been amazed by his ability to run sentences together nonstop seemingly without a breath or lack of words.  Considering this crazy style of constant speech, it's not surprising he's  had plenty of slips for his enemies to pounce on.

Now Pat Robertson has stepped in it with his comments on "The 700 Club"  about  Venezuela's  president Hugo Chavez. Chavez, a strong-arm leftist dictator,  has long accused the United States of trying to assassinate him.  "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it"   said Roberts on his program Monday.  Venezuela controls the largest oil reserve outside the middle east, yet it's economy is a typical socialist dictators wreck.  Robert's continued  "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop."  

Senator Norm Coleman opined "It was an incredibly stupid statement and has no reflection on reality.'' 

"His comments are inappropriate and, as we have said before, any allegations that we are planning to take hostile action against the Venezuelan government are completely baseless and without fact," said  Sean McCormack, a state department spokesman.

Okay, that much is obvious.  So an aging TV preacher who once made a run for presidential nomination made an undiplomatic comment.  Does this mean we will now start hearing "Aha! Gotcha!" about some of the kooks from the lefts presidential contenders? 

Of course in politics there are those who will make hay from whatever event they can, whether or not it represents any truth or consensus.

Venezuela's Vice President José Vicente Rangel said "It's huge hypocrisy to maintain this discourse against terrorism and at the same time, in the heart of that country, there are entirely terrorist statements like Robertson's"   "the ball is in the US court following this criminal statement." 

And we can't expect Jesse Jackson to pass this up

Jesse Jackson took the opportunity to limit free speech calling for an FCC investigation as when Janet Jackson's breast was exposed during the Superbowl telecast. "This is even more threatening to hemispheric stability than the flash of a breast on television during a ball game".   This is either a clever or a stupid ruse. Opinions about assassination do affect world stability more than an exposed breast.  But the  FCC rules in Janet  Jackson's investigation were not about political speech, but cultural sexual mores.  The comparison is invalid; but it does give Jesse a way to call for equal justice and appear righteous in the eyes of those who don't think it all through very clearly.

These and other gasps of outrage where strangely missing from the left when Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos suggested the idea of assassinating Sadaam Hussein in a Newsweek article. 

But that's politics as usual.