A conservative radio host says that the Catholic nuns who have embarked on a nine-state bus tour to protest the injustice of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed budget deserve to be beaten with a handgun because they “threw the first punch.”

“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?”

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

A Vatican report also recently criticized the nuns for focusing too much on the Catholic Church’s message about social and economic justice instead of spending time opposing abortion and marriage equality.

“When we got named [by the Vatican], there was like an explosion of support,” Simone Campbell told Al Jazeera English last week. “So when we had all of this opportunity, all of this exposure, all of this attention — nuns aren’t used to having a lot of attention on themselves — so, it was like, oh my gosh, we need to use this for the sake of people at the margin.”

The non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that nearly two-thirds of the cuts proposed in Ryan’s budget would be to programs serving low-income Americans, while the his tax cuts would largely benefit millionaires. People making more than $1 million a year would see a 12.5 percent increase in after-tax income but those making less than $20,000 would see an decrease of 0.2 percent or less.

Listen to this audio from WHO’s Mickelson in the Morning, broadcast June 22, 2012.

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Photo: Shutterstock.com

(h/t: Addicting Info)