You have to hand it to Alan Colmes. Even though I spend my days wallowing in right-wing insanity for this blog, I don’t know that I could tolerate the prospect of actually debating any of the people we write about, but Colmes does it day in and day out.
Case in point: his interview last night with Randall Terry about his “Pelosi and Reed Should Burn in Hell” contest. Terry insisted the contest was “somewhat tongue and cheek” but when the conversation turned toward the issue of covering reproductive health needs in heathcare reform, Colmes informed Terry that Focus on the Family provides its employees health insurance through Principal, an insurance company that covers “abortion services,” Terry was shocked by the news and said he’d be contacting James Dobson about it. So it looks like Focus on the Family ought to be expecting a visit from Terry and his theater troop in the near future.
Perhaps the most interesting exchange came when Colmes asked Terry is he had any sympathy for Scott Roeder, the man accused of killing Dr. George Tiller and Terry went silent, saying he’d never thought about it. Eventually, Terry suggested that his views on Roeder’s alleged actions depended on whether he acted in order to stop Tiller from carrying out more abortions and thereby saving babies or whether he acted in order to punish Tiller for his past abortion procedures. The latter, Terry seemed to suggest, was completely different from the former and Roeder’s actions should be judged accordingly.
But in the end, the one person for whom Terry has no sympathy at all was Tiller himself, whom Terry called “one of the most evil, damnable, demonic men on the planet, every bit as vile as the worst Nazis” and a “son of a bitch who deserved to rot in hell”:
