Obama calls it quits

ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) - Barack Obama has resigned his 20 year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had resigned from the church "over the last few days."

Campaign aides said they weren't immediately certain how the resignation took place, whether by letter or in some other fashion, and were trying to find out.

Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

The development came as Obama campaigned in South Dakota.

Obama said he disagreed with Wright but initially portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.

But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced those Wright comments as "divisive and destructive."

Comments by Wright inflamed racial tensions and posed an unwanted problem for Obama, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he seeks to wrap up the nomination.

More recently, racially charged remarks from the same pulpit by another pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, kept the controversy alive and proved the latest thorn in the side of Obama. Pfleger mocked Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as a guest speaker at Obama's church.

Although Obama condemned comments by both Wright and Pfleger, the controversy has persisted.

For months, Obama has been hamstrung by the rhetoric of Wright, whose sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and calls of "God damn America" for its racism became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks.

Initially, Obama said he disagreed with Wright but portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.

But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.

On Thursday, Obama was again forced to reject another man of the cloth, this time Pfleger, who made racially charged comments mocking Clinton in a guest sermon at Obama's church.

Obama made it clear he wasn't happy with the comments - in which Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" - and said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."

Pfleger, too, issued an apology, saying he was sorry if his comments offended Clinton or anyone else.

The timing of Obama's decision was clearly planned with an eye toward Washington and the calendar. The news broke late on a Saturday and while most of the political attention was focused on the Democratic National Committee's struggle to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.

I almost feel sorry for Hussein. He did try to meet his loony-tune church half way but every time he would attempt to walk the tightrope of praising their "good works" but disavowing their more hateful rhetoric they would up the ante on him.

Many people think that Jeremiah Wright was indulging in a bit of payback when he said that Obama was just being a typical politician but I think it goes much deeper.

If Obama actually makes it to the White House that pretty much proves that Wright and the new pastor Otis Moss and this Pfleger nutcase are all a pack of dinosaurs living fifty years in the past. From their perspective they have a lot more to gain by Obama's failure than they do by his success.

P.S. How could Hillary Clinton have possibly been so thin skinned that she took offense at being called a white supremacist by a raving lunatic in a clerical collar?