The Rev. Fred Phelps has announced he will picket Gov. Ted Strickland's inaugural Saturday. Apparently, the Road to Perdition has been rerouted through Columbus. Who says ODOT isn't making progress?

Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., preaches that America's troubles -- from Sept. 11, to Iraq, to the weather -- are the fault of homosexuals. As a result, Westboro's members have vowed to make their stand on the west lawn of the Statehouse, where they will doom Strickland to damnation because he reportedly appointed a gay person to his cabinet (but I suspect it's mostly because he's a Democrat).

W.W.J.D.N.T.

Rather than follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who advocated traditional marriage but saved his harshest condemnations for religious hypocrisy, Westboro's Bible-bots picket the funerals of gays and soldiers, employ children to desecrate American flags, and revel at the news of American combat deaths. Frequently, they falsely threaten pickets just to get people stirred up, as in the case of Marine Pvt. Heath Warner, a Cantonian killed in Iraq.

What would Jesus do? Not that.

Of Strickland, Phelps said: "God hates fags and fag-enablers. Ergo, God hates Gov.-elect Strickland, his sodomite cabinet officer appointee and the doomed state of Ohio ... Strickland has incurred the wrath of God. Ohio may expect God's irreversible curse."

[...]

Phelps hasn't spelled out what could happen as a result of Strickland's swearing-in. But a plague of locusts descending upon, say, Ashtabula in mid-January, would be dead before they hit the ground.

Strickland won, not because he offered a vastly superior plan. He won in part because, even as a clergyman, he refused to play the "Jesus" card.

For Ohioans sick of the culture wars and self-righteousness blunted by scandal, it was an offer they couldn't refuse.

You think maybe the "Patriot Pastors" - who failed to get Blackwell elected - called Phelps in? Never expected (or wanted) to meet Rev. Phelps but will update if he actually shows.