A group of nuns have been traveling the Midwest, condemning Republican Congressman and proclaimed Catholic Paul Ryan for proposing a budget that would hurt the poor, the sick, the elderly, children, and all of the populations that Catholic doctrine implores its followers to protect.

To one radio show host in Iowa, that’s simply too much. He thinks those nuns should be beaten.

Via Raw Story:

“There’s a bus full of nuns headed towards Washington to lobby against the Ryan plan,” radio host Jan Mickelson told Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) last week. “Do you guys, do you have any power to pull the nuns on the bus over and pistol whip them?”

“They say he is evil, they say he is a fake Catholic,” he added. “They’re the ones that threw the first punch.”

Rob Zerban, who is running against Wisconsin’s Ryan, called on Ryan and Latham both to condemn the talk show host’s remarks, saying via statement:

“I condemn the threat of violence against the “Nuns on the Bus”, supported by Congressman Paul Ryan’s Republican colleague Congressman Tom Latham (IA-4). This type of behavior is an outrage and does nothing to move our country forward.

“I publicly call on Congressman Paul Ryan to join me in denouncing this abusive behavior toward  these women, as well as call on Congressman Ryan to demand a public apology from his colleague Congressman Tom Latham.”

But this isn’t a surprising remark from Iowa’s most notorious talk show host. Mickelson’s program is described as having a “rightward tilt: Christianity, small government, free markets and sealed borders are good. Islam, teachers unions, the welfare state and the gay-rights movement are bad.”

Mickelson makes his anti-gay sentiments no secret. At an Iowa Family Council event in 2010, he went on a seven-minute screed about the evils of gay marriage, saying:

“Personally, I think two guys pretending to be sexual mates are making a mistake. More than that, they are violating the design of their bodies. More than that, they are sinning against their maker. More than that, they are likely to shorten their lives in this world and impair their destinies in the next.”

He’s no less blatant in his “Christmas letter,” where he bemoans a country that is refusing to use the Bible as its rule of law.

“[W]we have a country which cannot define war or peace…can’t define what a family is, won’t adhere to the clear language of the Bible or the Constitution, won’t define our borders, and can’t maintain an economy or a currency. [I]s there any part of our government, self or civil, which actually rests “upon His shoulders”? On the national level I can think of only a few examples of self-aware members of the political class giving any more than lip service to the Savior of mankind. In fact, the last two presidents of the USA went out of their way to assert “…there are many paths to God”. It is now illegal for a government institution to acknowledge the sovereignty of God and to do so could be considered a hate crime.  Think of it. To teach about the eternal love of God could now be a prosecutable hate crime!”

As much as Mickelson loves to wrap himself in the pages of the Bible, it’s no wonder that he would consider using it as a blunt weapon, too. The only thing shocking perhaps is that he would consider wielding it against nuns.