An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times: has nabbed two leading wingnuts plotting to subvert the federal judiciary via Congressional fiat, chiefly by zeroing out funding for courts whose decisions they and their Constitution-hating supporters don’t like.

The two plotters are Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, and James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. They were caught on tape by a representative of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to take a black robe off the bench,” said Perkins, according to the Times. He also said that he had huddled with Republican congressional leaders recently to plot the the stripping funding from certain courts. “What they’re thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and re-creating them the next day but also defunding them,” Perkins said.

He said that instead of undertaking the long process of trying to impeach judges, Congress could use its appropriations authority to “just take away the bench, all of his staff, and he’s just sitting out there with nothing to do.”…

Dobson, who emerged last year as one of the evangelical movement’s most important political leaders, named one potential target: the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” Dobson said. “They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

Even poor SpongeBob Squarepants was dragged into the coup plotting:

As part of the discussion, Perkins and Dobson referred to remarks by Dobson earlier this year at a congressional dinner in which he singled out the use by one group of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants in a video that Dobson said promoted a homosexual agenda.

Dobson was ridiculed for his comments, which some critics interpreted to mean the evangelist had determined that the cartoon character was gay.

Dobson said the beating he took in the media, coming after his appearance on the cover of newsmagazines hailing his prominence in Bush’s reelection, proved that the press will only seek to tear him down.

“This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous,” he said.

From his lips to God’s ears.