Right, yeah, a buffer. The Family had a lotta buffers.

—Willy Cicci in The Godfather, Part II

On Monday, on his television program The 700 Club, Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the democratically-elected president of Venezuela. On Wednesday’s edition of The 700 Club, he denied he’d said “assassination,” and said “I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.” Later on Wednesday, Robertson wrote on his website, “Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement.” Later on the same web page, he makes arguments to justify assassination, and closes by saying “the incredible publicity surrounding my remarks has focused our government’s attention on a growing problem which has been largely ignored.”

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Pat Robertson’s assassination tango wasn’t about Hugo Chavez or Venezuelan oil at all.

Since Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, Robertson has made a great show of his “prayer offensive” to open three more vacancies on the Supreme Court. Because the Constitution gives Supreme Court justices lifetime tenure, there are only three ways to create a vacancy: death, resignation or impeachment. On The 700 Club, Robertson said, “We ask for miracles on the Supreme Court.”

The 700 Club is seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers. I don’t know how many of them share Robertson’s extremist religious and political views. Right now, I believe Robertson is thinking he only needs one.

In the hard religious right, there are small but significant pockets of support for people who murder doctors and bomb clinics, and a handful of people willing to carry out such crimes. By advocating assassination, and by attempting to justify assassination even as he apologizes for mentioning it, it seems Pat Robertson is trying to get a message to some of those people. If any understand and take up his coded challenge, Robertson’s protected by a lotta buffers.