Praying For Supreme Court Shake Up

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged his nationwide audience Monday to pray for God to remove three justices from the Supreme Court so they could be replaced by conservatives.

"We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club."

Robertson has launched a 21-day "prayer offensive" directed at the Supreme Court in the wake of its 6-3 June vote that decriminalized sodomy. Robertson said in a letter on the CBN Web site that the ruling "has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest."

The same letter targets three justices in particular: "One justice is 83-years-old, another has cancer and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire?"

Judging from the descriptions, Robertson was referring to Justice John Paul Stevens, who was born in 1920, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had colon cancer surgery in 1999. The identity of the third justice was unclear.

Just last week, Robertson got on the soapbox on another issue: the Bush administration's demand that Liberian President Charles Taylor resign from office.

"It's one thing to say, we will give you money if you step down and we will give you troops if you step down, but just to order him to step down? He doesn't work for us," the evangelist said last Monday, speaking on "The 700 Club."

Robertson said he believes the State Department has "mismanaged the situation in nation after nation after nation" in Africa.

"We're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country," said an outraged Robertson, a Bush supporter who has financial interests in Liberia. "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down.'"

On Sunday, Taylor accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria, but on condition that an international force is deployed in Liberia.

A U.N.-backed tribunal indicted Taylor on June 4 for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone.