Obama's yelling uncle every time Wrights speaks!

It is hard to keep a demagogue down and apparently Rev. Wright, like Carter, is so full of himself he could not keep his mouth shut so this morning he gave the nation another ear full and, in the process, probably drove another nail into Obama's coffin.

Don't forget, Obama said Wright was his mentor. Obama's problem is that he has no way of monitoring his mentor.

What does the Democrat Party do about all of this?(See 1 and 2 below.)

IDF has enlisted the first robot soldier to track terrorists. (See 3 below.)

Barry Rubin writes a thoughtful piece arguing why moderation towards radical Islamists is not the route to travel. (See 4 below.)

Abbas' next diplomatic weapon of choice is a wet noodle. (See 5 below.)

More editorial commentary regarding Rev. Wright's speech at The National Press Club,today. Sen Obama refered to Rev.as an old uncle. Well Obama must be yelling uncle every time the Rev speaks. (See 6 below.)

1) For Obama, a Voice of Doom?
By Dana Milbank

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."

That significantly complicates Obama's job as he contemplates how to extinguish Wright's latest incendiary device. Now, he needs to do more than express disagreement with his former pastor's view; he needs to refute his former pastor's suggestion that Obama privately agrees with him.

Wright seemed aggrieved that his inflammatory quotations were out of the full "context" of his sermons -- yet he repeated many of the same accusations in the context of a half-hour Q&A session this morning.

His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"?

Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").

And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?"

Capisce, reverend. All too well.

2) The Moment of Truth for the Left has Arrived
By James Lewis

If you haven't listened to Jeremiah Wright's hate sermons at Hugh Hewitt's website, you must do so. Every American with open eyes and ears has to listen to the voice of racial hatred, coming not from the Klan but from a clergyman of the Christian Left. Reading his words isn't enough, because you won't hear the unmistakable meaning of his vocal intonations. If you are a person of good will you will feel upset. But it's of the utmost importance to understand this moment of truth.

Because Jeremiah Wright -- the respectful word "Reverend" seems grotesquely out of place now -- is shouting out the slander catechism of the Left. His sermons say exactly what other Leftists say in calm voices, over and over again. Mr. Wright just does it with real, raw hatred, and every new slam is cheered on by his jubilant congregation. His is not a lone voice. He just sings the music to fit the words.

We have been nursing a viper in our national bosom. Seven years after September 11, 2001, this is the moment of truth, when the Left must finally decide what side it's on. Wright's sermons may signal the end of the Obama campaign, and they may mean the breakup of the Democratic Party as we know it. I don't see how any centrist Democrat can still belong to this party if Obama is its nominee. Jeremiah Wright may mean the historical end of the Civil Rights Era, because fifty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Left's presumption of Victimhood and innocence is now gone.

The Rev is only the visible bulge of this lethal political tumor. This is Saul Alinsky's sociopathic teachings on display, and this is what Hillary Clinton learned back at Wellesley College. It is the voice of feminists who hate all men, and of radicalized blacks who hate all whites.

Hate mongers collect injustices. If you and I did that, we could collect an endless laundry list about all the bad things somebody did to us. Maybe we have been hurt by men, or by women. Maybe we have been hurt by rich people, or by the angry poor. Maybe we have been hurt by Jews or blacks or whites, and we can put all our built-up rage on their heads. It's been done many times in the human past; that's exactly the psychology we see at work in Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and various Muslim nations (among others), when explosive massacres take place. Mob psychology has been manipulated by demagogues throughout history. This is simply the another version of the Kluxers and Jim Crow lynch mobs. Today I see that psychology clearly enough on the Left, but outside of the ranting rooms of verifiable paranoids I don't see it many other places in this country.

Selectively collected injustices can keep us on the boil for a lifetime, because we ruminate on and on in all our waking hours about all the terrible things people have done to us. That is what the Left feeds itself in an endless stream; it is not a healthy thing to do. But it's what Jeremiah Wright has done to himself and to his congregation -- and who knows to how many thousands of other people? -- for almost all of his adult life. This is the Grand Inquisitor's view of America, the enraged prosecution case, without even imagining the possibility of innocence. This is what demagogues and witch hunters have always done, but I had never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.

Most of us take a more balanced view on our lives; we've had undeserved good fortune some of the time, and we've suffered undeserved pain at other times. That's life. If you look at the facts of Jeremiah Wright's life, he has been a child of good fortune -- excellent schooling well into graduate school, privilege and money, the support of a community of believers, vast political clout in Chicago. But hate mongers don't think that way. They just collect more and more injustices as they go through life, and load it all onto some enemy. They are constantly reading the minds of the enemy -- whites and especially Jews, in the case of Mr. Wright -- and all they see there is malevolence. Evil is what evil sees.

For Jeremiah Wright, the enemy comes with a white skin. He has taken historical injustices and turned them into a lifelong call for vengeance. This is the official doctrine of Black Liberation Theology, and it is freely supported by powerful institutions on the religious Left. BLT's founder, Dr. Jim Cone, is a professor of systematic theology at the Union Theological Seminary. It's utterly bizarre but true.

So it's not just Senator Obama who is stuck with Mr. Wright today. We are all stuck with a rageful Left, which really wants to destroy rather than to build. They mentally rehearse perceived injustices over and over again, and they blame this country for all the evil in the world, including AIDS in the black community. They never look at another side. Many have no honest conception of other countries, other cultures, or other points of view. They are not balanced people.

So the entire American body politic has a festering sore on its hands. This will not go away by itself. It will not be bought off by more money. It must be repudiated by the sensible Left, if it is still there. Just as William F. Buckley denounced the anti-Semites on the right, and sensible Americans rejected segregation and the Klan, just as American unions expelled Stalinist unions from the AFL-CIO, the time has come for the decent Left to draw a bright line in the sand, and keep the hate mongers out.




3) Four wheels and an electronic brain: Meet IDF's newest soldier


Israel's newest soldier can see at night, never nods off on sentry duty and can carry 300 kilograms (660 pounds) without complaining.

The Guardium, an unmanned ground vehicle commissioned by the Israel Defense Forces is essentially a robotic soldier, among the first in the world to be operational. It can replace human soldiers in dangerous roles, cutting casualty rates.

Like the pilot-less drones that have become a mainstay of air forces in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere, the four-wheeled Guardium is operated from a command room that can be far from the front line. It can be mounted with cameras, night-vision equipment and sensors, as well as more lethal tools like machine guns.

Following pre-programmed routes, it can navigate alone through cities - the vehicle knows how to deal with intersections, traffic and road markings. It can patrol borders, its cameras scanning 360 degrees at all times, and alert operators if it spots anything suspicious.

The Guardium never mentally wanders or falls asleep, as soldiers have been known to do during mind-numbing guard or patrol missions. And it doesn't have a family that will miss it when it's away on reserve duty.

"Representatives of armies with troops who are taking high casualties in asymmetric warfare, from threats like roadside bombs, get excited about this product," said Erez Peled, director general of G-Nius Unmanned Ground Systems, the company that developed the robot.

The control panel includes two large screens and a joystick. If the operator wants to take control, he can do so from a steering wheel and gas and brake pedals that lend the console the look of a video arcade game.

"Any kid who grew up with a PlayStation will be able to come in here and learn this in seconds," Peled said.

A vehicle alone costs approximately $600,000 (385,000 euros). With the operating system, the price runs to several million dollars, depending on what equipment is installed on the robot.

The Israeli military said the Guardium has yet to enter operational service, and would provide no further comment.

John Pike, director of the Virginia-based military think tank Global security.org, said there is only one other similar vehicle operational - a South Korean robot used to patrol the demilitarized zone with North Korea. With the details of the Korean vehicle classified, Pike could not say which was more advanced.

"Robots like this are potentially the future of ground warfare," Pike said.

"A robot does what it's told, and you'll be able to get them to advance in ways it's hard to get human soldiers to do. They don't have fear, and they kill without compunction."

"But more importantly," he added, "A robot means you don't have to write a condolence letter."

4) The Region: Stuck in the Middle Ages, Islam targets moderation
By BARRY RUBIN


If history works out in the end, the high price paid in blood and suffering can at least be justified as having produced some good. But what happens when it doesn't?

Clearly, radical Islamism and the region's current political troubles have parallels with the European history of Christianity and Judaism. Yet often the nearest equivalents date not from a few decades back but rather from the 1500s and 1600s. That calendar gap shows why the region's task is so monumental and lengthy.

In the 1500s and 1600s, Europe and its two main religions struggled with the impact of modernization, rationalism and scientific thinking; the challenge of new ideas; and revitalized interest in ancient pagan Greece and Rome. Despite much bloodshed and repression, a way was found to manage these contradictions.

Islam and the Arabic-speaking world, not to mention Iran, have still not done so on a large scale. Before there can be democracy, rapid development, social progress, equal rights for women and other such changes, this job has to be done. And the work has barely begun.

How did the West move from a medieval world view into the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and then on into the modern age? That's a complex question, but basically the answer includes:

# the confidence that increasing knowledge, even if seemingly contradicting religious dogma, was a way to understand the deity's true plan for the world. The church sometimes acted against science or technology, but not very often;

# accepting pluralism of belief, with Protestantism playing a key role in establishing a range of alternative interpretations;

# incorporating a pragmatic view in which success was the ultimate test, and practice trumped ideology;

# adopting reason as the ultimate tool for living in this world;

# a growing separation between religion and state, and room for secularism in the public sphere.

WHAT DOES this all have to do with the contemporary Middle East? Quite a lot. Not only do regional Muslim-majority states not accept these principles but Islamists, with real success, are trying to turn back the clock even further. Moreover, there's an additional problem: Islamists and even mainstream Muslim clergy know how the story turned out in the West, bringing about a vast decline of religion.

Thus Saudi cleric Muhammad al-Munajid, and many others, sound like Spanish Inquisition zealots determined to stamp out anything new, different, original, or individual.

Another parallel with Western history is the use of the Jew as the demon of modernization, conspiring to subvert traditional society and change as a way of gaining power.

Those who think the problem stems from a need to make Western policy more palatable, showing enough empathy or appeasement, have no idea of the historical processes in play. Consider an interview by Munajid on Al-Majd television on March 30.

Focusing on the threat within Islam, Munajid warns (translation by MEMRI) that advocates of change are heretics engaged in "a very dangerous conspiracy." Why? Because rather than depending on clerics, they claim the right to interpret Islam, are reopening the gates of ijtihad - closed among Muslims for almost 1,000 years - and applying reason to religious doctrine. "This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people... fools or heretics."

Of course, Islamists as well as liberal reformers threaten the mainstream (conservative) clerics' monopoly over Islam. Many Islamists are not qualified theologians.

But moderates are more dangerous, in the mainstream view, since they may loosen religion's hold altogether. Thus, mainstream clerics are more sympathetic to radical Islamists - a key factor in the reformers' weakness and the Islamists' strength. To paraphrase an old Cold War slogan, they say: "Better green than dead."

Islamists and mainstream clerics carry this idea even into Europe itself, trying either to keep the Enlightenment out of their own communities, or even roll back European history. Sometimes they are helped by befuddled "native" elites who have lost confidence in their own civilization.

IN CONTRAST, among Jews and Christians, despite reactionary tendencies, new interpretations were permitted to keep up with the times. This came gradually to be considered the best way for these faiths to survive and flourish. Many of their reformers were themselves highly qualified clerics.

Early Protestants were burned at the stake; others won their rights only in combat. But Europe changed.

Reformers could call for support on nationalism (Czechs and Dutch revolting against foreign rulers); on aristocratic rulers seeking their own interests (Henry the Eighth's divorce, nobles seeking to loot monasteries' wealth); and on peasants' class resentment. These factors play little or no such role in the Middle East today. On the contrary, instead of a way to win more freedom or power, reform is seen as a destabilizing tool used against Islam by foreign powers and culture.

Moreover, Munajid and others know something past Europeans didn't: how far secularism can go. As a result, Muslims are extraordinarily insecure. Munajid warns that reformers "want to open up everything for debate," so that "anyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants... If you want to become an apostate - go ahead. You like Buddhism? Leave Islam, and join Buddhism. No problem...."

Today, new interpretations; tomorrow, rampant alcoholism, short skirts, empty houses of worship, and punk rock. It begins with freedom of thought, it continues with freedom of speech, and it ends up with freedom of belief.

In England, even when William Shakespeare was young, British universities highlighted teaching about ancient pagan cultures. The first modernist biography of Christianity's founder was published by 1830. Their equivalents are impossible in the Arab world in 2008.

Most clerics and their supporters simply don't believe they can win a fair fight in the battle of ideas. Therefore, only repression will do. Conflict is far "safer" than peace.

This is the real, underlying critique of the West and Israel: that these places are bad role models, against whom windows and doors must be barred. They must be made to seem so horrible as to close the eyes and ears of the faithful to the temptations they offer. An iron curtain must be lowered, behind which the isolated enthusiastically embrace their isolation.

One sees this process at work even in "liberated" Iraq and Afghanistan. The radicals want to roll back the West and destroy Israel, which, they argue, wants to subordinate the Middle East politically and transform it culturally. Most of the relative moderates - regimes and mainstream clerics - want, at a minimum, to hold Israel at bay and avoid a formal peace with it.

Remember, Sayyid Qutb of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood was driven to extremism by his horror at life in 1950s' small-town Kansas. What effect must 21st-century Western life, with its far greater excesses, have?

Today the advocates of "medievalism" in the Middle East have mass communications, modern organizational techniques - and, soon, even nuclear weapons.


5) PA introduces new boycott

Dignitaries who attend Israel's Independence Day festivities to be shunned by Palestinians

Presidents, prime ministers and other dignitaries who attend Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations next month will be shunned by Palestinian leaders if they visit the West Bank.



Palestinian officials said the decision by Palestinian resident Mahmoud Abbas and his government in the West Bank to temporarily boycott world leaders who visit the West Bank during Israeli festivities amounted to a symbolic protest.


It was not clear if any did plan to go there.


"Whoever participates in such (Israeli) events will be persona non grata," said one Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.


"We will be marking the Nakba. They (visiting leaders) have to be a bit more sensitive about the feelings of the Palestinian people," said a second Palestinian official.


Bush-Abbas meeting to go ahead

Israel is expected to host at least six current heads of state, including US President George W. Bush, for the 60th anniversary celebrations.


Palestinian officials said leaders who attended those festivities and went to the West Bank would not be banned for life and could meet Palestinian leaders in the West Bank at a later date.



Bush plans to meet Abbas in Egypt after visiting Israel, and Palestinian officials said those talks would go ahead as planned.



6) Wright Defends Church and Blasts Media
By Kate Phillips



In three major appearances in the last four days, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. offered a full-throated historical defense of black church traditions. But his re-emergence on the national stage has certainly served to provide more sound-bites that already have begun to haunt Senator Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

With Senator John McCain’s new criticisms of Mr. Wright and Republicans painting him and Mr. Obama as extremist in commercials using snippets of sermons, Mr. Wright, longtime pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, defiantly and passionately argued that such criticisms were attacks on the black church and its faith traditions, not attacks on him.

In an appearance this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, Mr. Wright mixed biblical passages and scholarly works with sarcasm and humor in his efforts to address the nearly two months’ long barrage of questions that have dogged his church and Mr. Obama since excerpts of his sermons first began looping around on television and the Internet.

Asked why he chose to speak out now, Mr. Wright said: “On November the 5th and on January 21st, I’ll still be a pastor. As I’ve said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. This is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African- American religious tradition.”

Mr. Obama, a parishioner at Mr. Wright’s church for about 20 years, tried to tamp down the controversy in Philadelphia more than a month ago, with a major speech on race relations. In that address and since then, Mr. Obama said he disagreed with some of Mr. Wright’s remarks but would not denounce him because he had become like family.

In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he had not talked with the reverend about his decision to embark on a public defense of his reputation. Asked to respond to Mr. Wright’s contention that he has been the victim of a smear campaign, Mr. Obama said: “No. I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past. The fact that he is my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue. So I understand that.”

But he also said that media coverage of Mr. Wright had simplified his service in the church, and turned him into a caricature.

Our colleague Jeff Zeleny tells us that associates of Mr. Obama said privately that his campaign was furious at Mr. Wright’s decision to step forward so publicly, but that they were unable to do anything to control this. They added, however, that the pastor’s actions prove that he and Mr. Obama are not that close, otherwise why would Mr. Wright do this now?

The timing may be critical, though, for Mr. Obama, who has struggled to regain his footing (and retooled his message) after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton trounced him in Pennsylvania where his remarks about small-town Americans may have influenced a swath of white voters to support her.

Despite Mr. Wright’s efforts to school the public and the media on theology and the black church, some of his responses this week bring the issue of race and the church’s association with divisive figures like the Rev. Louis Farrakhan into sharp relief. Senator Clinton has already said Mr. Wright would not be her pastor, and she has pounded home the issue of Mr. Obama’s electability — given such vulnerabilities that the Republicans would seize upon in the general election.

During his remarks today, Mr. Wright chided the media for distorting his sermons and for their ignorance of biblical history and black worship traditions, joked that he had served six years in the Marines while Vice President Dick Cheney had not, and lectured his audience repeatedly about the need for reconciliation among faiths and races.

Reprising themes from the speech he gave to the NAACP in Detroit this weekend, Mr. Wright offered:

“The prophetic theology of the black church in our day is preached to set African-Americans and all other Americans free from the misconceived notion that different means deficient. Being different does not mean one is deficient. It simply means one is different, like snowflakes, like the diversity that God loves. Black music is different from European and European music. It is not deficient. It is just different. Black worship is different from European and European-American worship. It is not deficient. It is just different. Black preaching is different from European and European-American preaching. It is not deficient. It is just different. It is not bombastic. It is not controversial. It’s different.”

Before we break off some bullet points to his responses, here’s a transcript of his full address today so that readers can appreciate the full defense Mr. Wright tried to offer.

In the question-and-answer session this morning, Mr. Wright was asked about some of the statements he’s made that were deemed incendiary and about his church’s associations with Mr. Farrakhan.
Here are a few bullet points:

Farrakhan: Mr. Wright praised Mr. Farrakhan’s ability to get 1 million people to march on the Washington Mall. Then, he added:

“He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that’s what I think about him. I said, as I said on Bill Moyers, when Louis Farrakhan speaks it’s like E.F. Hutton speaks. All black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.

Now, I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan any more than Mandela will put down Fidel Castro. You remember that Ted Koppel show where Ted wanted Mandela to put down Castro because Castro is our enemy, and he said, “You don’t tell me who my enemies are; you don’t tell me who my friends are.”

Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn’t make me this color.

The 9/11 Remarks:

On the excerpt of his sermon after the Sept. 11 attacks when he remarked that the “chickens were coming home to roost,” Mr. Wright first chided the questioner for not having listened to the entire sermon.

“Well, let me try to respond in a non-bombastic way.
If you heard the whole sermon, first of all, you heard that I was
quoting the ambassador from Iraq. That’s No. 1. But No. 2, to quote the Bible, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever you sow that you also shall” — (he held his hand to his ear and the audience shouted “Reap!”)

Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles.

The Remarks About America:

The government of leaders, those — as I said to Barack Obama, my member — I’m a pastor; he’s a member. I’m not a “spiritual mentor” — hoodoo. I’m his pastor. And I said to Barack
Obama last year, “If you get elected, November the 5th I’m coming
after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.” All right? It’s about policy, not the American people.

And if you saw the Bill Moyers show, I was talking about, although it got edited, I was — do you know, that’s biblical? God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something. And D-E-M-N, demn, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices.

And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not
the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not
like America, or unpatriotic. So when Jesus says, not only you brood of vipers, now he’s playing the dozens because he’s talking about their mamas. To say brood means your mother is an asp, A-S-P. (Laughter.) Should we put Jesus out of the congregation?

When Jesus says, you will be brought down to hell, that’s not —
that’s bombastic device of speech. Maybe we ought to take Jesus out of this Christian faith. No.

What I said about and what I think about and what — again until
I can’t — until racism and slavery are confessed and asked for — we asked the Japanese to forgive us. We have never as a country — in fact, Clinton almost got in trouble because he almost apologized at Goree Island.

We have never apologized as a country. Britain has apologized to
Africans. But this country’s leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I’m not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I’m still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capice?

On His Patriotism:

I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me. They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites, and that which is looped over and over again on certain channels.

I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?

Now, Mr. Wright dismissed the idea that it was God’s will that Mr. Obama become president. And he joked about running for vice president. Of former President Bill Clinton’s comments that many African-Americans found offensive during the South Carolina primary, Mr. Wright said: “I don’t think anything about them. I came here to talk about the prophetic theology of the black church. I’m not talking about candidates or their positions or their feelings or what they have to say to get elected.”

We have yet to hear today from Mr. Obama on Mr. Wright’s remarks. But David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist, was questioned closely this morning on MSNBC about whether the pastor’s very public speeches will harm the candidate. “How many times,” Mr. Axelrod asked, “how many times can you say, ‘I don’t agree with him, some of the things he says are outrageous, and he doesn’t speak for me?’ ”

He was also asked by Pat Buchanan, the conservative commentator, whether Mr. Wright’s decision to speak at the National Press Club, a high-profile platform, wasn’t exploitative of his relationship with Mr. Obama?

“And does that not put sort of a burden on Barack Obama, who is trying to be a unifying figure, to have to cut this guy loose in a way that he was unable to do or would not do in Philadelphia?” Mr. Buchanan asked.

“Well, he — first of all, Pat, Barack Obama is a unifying figure, always has been in our politics here in Illinois and in everything that he’s ever done. And I think people will judge him on that basis,” Mr. Axelrod said. “I’m not going to comment on Reverend Wright’s motivations or, you know, the sort of political implications of what he’s doing. We’re going to go out — I mean, the one thing that I’m going to make clear and that we’ll continue to make clear is that he does not speak for us.”