Christy Almighty What a Bunch of Sickos

As discussed above, the rights of gun owners trump the rights of everyone else. So do the rights of the Christian lunatic fringe and they don't get much loonier -- or sicker -- than the church run by the Reverend Fred Phelps (photo), who asserts that the Amish community bears responsibility for the Nickel Mines Slaughter.

Said Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, on Mike Gallagher's nationally syndicated call-in show:

"The Lord your God is ramping up the issues, is smiting this nation. What he did with one stroke on that day, sending a pervert in — because America is a nation of perverts — it’s appropriate he sent a pervert in to shoot those children. The Amish people were laid to an open shame because they are a false religion.”

Now I don't know about you, but nothing pisses me off more than some Bible thumper telling me that only their God is worthy and only their religion is the true one. So Phelps and his church already were at the top of my already crowded Shit List.

Gallagher, bless his heart, turned over 55 minutes of his program on Thursday to the Phelps coven in exchange for a written promise that its members would not picket the funerals of the five Amish girls killed on Monday by a gunman inside their Pennsylvania schoolhouse.

There was an ulterior motive behind the threat. Of course.

The church was seeking to draw attention to its dispute with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who signed legislation this year barring pickets near funerals in a response to the Phelps church’s attempts to protest near the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The church claims that those deaths were a result of God’s disappointment with “the sins of America.”