Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, in a Monday broadcast decrying “activist” judges, compared the black-robed U.S. Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan.

The guest on Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio show was Mark Levin, author of the bestseller book Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying <America.

Near the end of the interview, Dobson quoted Justice Antonin Scalia as referring to his colleagues on the high court as “black-robed masters.”

“Isn’t that incredible?” Dobson asked.

“You know it is incredible,” Levin replied. “I’m starting to think just to knock them down a notch, Dr. Dobson, that they should be required to wear again those white powdered wigs.”

Dobson then took the analogy a step further.

“I heard a minister the other day talking about the great injustice and evil of the men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan, that roamed the country in the South, and they did great wrong to civil rights and to morality,” he said. “And now we have black-robed men, and that’s what you’re talking about.”

Commentator Rush Limbaugh wrote the introduction to Levin’s book, which is currently No. 7 on the New York Times bestseller list. Dobson said he interviewed Levin at the suggestion of Fox News Channel commentator Sean Hannity.

Levin calls for imposing 12-year term limits on federal judges and granting Congress the power to overrule the Supreme Court with a two-thirds majority, similar to overriding a veto by the president.

“I’ve never understood the moral authority we’ve conferred to this institution,” Levin said. “The idea that a handful of lawyers should be setting policy for this nation … is crazy.”

Dobson said from his perspective “that all of the issues I care about–from the sanctity of marriage and the importance of the family and the preservation of the family and the unborn child and embryonic stem-cell research and cloning and all of the great moral issues–are all dependent upon the whims of the Supreme Court, and then because of them the lower courts. And we simply have to get a handle on that. And in order to do that we have to get a handle on our senators primarily.”

Dobson predicted that when it comes time to replace one of the current Supreme Court members it will be “World War III” in Washington. “There’s going to be a battle royal when Justice Rehnquist or another justice steps down,” he said.

Media Matters for America reported Dobson’s KKK comment Monday evening. The full broadcast is archived at the Focus on the Family Web site.

Bob Allen is managing editor of EthicsDaily.com.

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