Pat Robertson

UNNOTICED BY much of the public and unchallenged by much of the press, a remarkably effective bait-and -switch campaign is now remarking American politics.The campaign's perpetrator is Pat Robertson, president of the Christian Coalition, the far-right political organization that rose from the ashes of his 1988 presidential bid to become the most conspicuous king-maker within the ascendant GOP.Have you seen Pat Robertson on a network talk show since the election? Not likely. And that's where the bait-and-switch comes in. Now that real power is within its grasp, the Christian Coalition is fronted in public almost exclusively by its ubiquitous "executive director," Ralph Reed.

After a fire devastated Universal Studios last year, Pat Robertson, the preacher-politician guru of televangelism, used his Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club" as a bully pulpit: "God is going to judge the entertainment industry in Hollywood," he warned. "It's interesting that Universal -- they produced 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' which many of us thought was blasphemous in the extreme -- finds this kind of activity taking place."But Preacher Pat, who has built his career claiming that there is but one position a "good Christian" can take on just about every political issue, fell strangely silent when a fire destroyed his radio station in Silver Spring, WNTR -- not only causing $1 million in damage, but also silencing his talk show for nearly a week.

Pat Robertson, erstwhile TV preacher and presidential candidate, went to Wichita this week to give absolution to law-breaking. Robertson encouraged anti-abortion protesters, some of whom were involved in a violent attack Sunday against a female employee of a medical clinic, to continue defiance of a federal court order banning them from blocking clinic entrances. He likened the demonstrators to the Moscow citizens who stood up to the tanks in last week's coup attempt, to abolitionists who battled slavery and Germans who opposed Hitler's genocide.

Effort to open center for kids earns embrace I was both disturbed and disappointed to read how some residents of Baltimore have received a group of young people who are trying to do the right thing by opening a youth center ("Dreams of opening center - as well as people's hearts," Aug. 21). It is often said that children are our future. When did adults in Baltimore become so hostile toward that future? Some of the concerns expressed by area residents are legitimate. The Midway and Coldstream communities have some of the city's higher juvenile arrests rates, and from 2002 to 2003, the number of reported incidents of dirty streets and alleys in those communities tripled.

To hear some tell it, God has had his hands full these past few months. Just ask the Rev. Pat Robertson. Or Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt. Or New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. The embattled chief executive of the storm-ravaged city became the latest leader to see the divine hand in earthly disaster this week when he said it was the wrath of God that sent "hurricane after hurricane after hurricane" to the Gulf Coast. "Surely, God is mad at America," Nagin said Monday during festivities to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses.

I am a confused and angry American. Today I open my browser and see the devastation in Haiti. My heart breaks for those people and I have collected clothes from each closet to send, wishing I could do more. Next is Pat Robertson saying this was brought on by their ancestors because they sold themselves to the devil to drive out the French back in 1791. This is the same as the mean and untrue things he said about 9/11. It happened because the country was filled with feminists, abortionists, ACLU members, and gays and lesbians.

IF YOU don't believe that television evangelists are kidding about stopping the Equal Rights Amendment from being passed, then you haven't received your fund-raising letter from the Rev. Pat Robertson.The good reverend pulls no punches when it comes to warning his believers what the feminists are up to.He says in his plea that ERA is not about equal rights for women but is an anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Chicago. -- In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy's followers resented having his attack on elusive Communists in government called a witch hunt. When Arthur Miller wrote his play ''The Crucible,'' equating Eisenhower's America and 17th-century Salem, McCarthyites felt wronged. They were not conducting a witch hunt, they claimed.But when modern evangelicals attack feminists, they are not anxious to dispel the witch-hunt claim. That, in literal fact, is what they are pursuing. Most of them are not ashamed to say so.Even the vice president's wife told us, in her Houston speech, that feminists are trying to deny ''the essential nature of women.

SOME strong advocates of the death penalty for first-degree murderers are having second thoughts in the case of a Texas woman convicted of the ax murders of two Houston people in 1983. Karla Faye Tucker, 38, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Feb. 3.Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson is one of those who has come to Tucker's defense. Mr. Robertson believes that Texas officials should spare her life because she says she has been born again.The Rev. John Boyles of El Paso, Texas, agrees.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- John McCain is taking an extrordinary political gamble with his blunt attack on Pat Robertson and the religious right. It is a strategic stroke that might give him the Republican presidential nomination but leave the party itself in a shambles. What the Arizona senator has done is say out loud what many Republican leaders have been saying privately -- that they resent the influence of the Christian fundamentalists in shaping both policy and national tickets. On the one hand, this willingness to confront Mr. Robertson and others on the extreme right may help Mr. McCain turn out more Republicans who share his views in primaries next week here in New York and five New England states in which the fundamentalists are not a major political force.