Hey! Look over there!! An angry black man!

“‘He would not have been my pastor,’ Clinton said. ‘You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.” With Snipergate currently gaining traction in the media and footage and transcripts now showing that Clinton had repeated this lie several times, the Senator herself (along with a member of her finance committee) tries to change the story back to Jeremiah Wright. A valiant attempt by Senator Clinton, I suppose, although as noted the other day, her choice in pastors is rather questionable too. His repellent views on AIDS aside, I’ll take Jeremiah Wright’s commitment to social justice any day of the week and twice on Sunday over the virulent right-wing nutjobs of Clinton’s so-called “Family” (which, contrary to what she says above, she did in fact choose.)

But, anyway, back to the main story today: Clinton’s first response to Snipergate: “I have written about it in my book and talked about it on many other occasions and last week, you know, for the first time in 12 or so years, I misspoke.” After it came out this wasn’t a one-time exaggeration, her response then became: ““So I made a mistake. That happens. It shows I’m human, which for some people is a revelation.” (Note the use of that old standby, the victim card.) Either way, a mistake — like a misstatement — happens once, Senator. If it keeps happening, it’s called a lie.

Update: Clinton brings up Wright again, this time reading from prepared remarks. I’m with TPM on this one: “You can always tell when a scandal story has peaked and is ebbing, almost down to the minute: when your political opponents start to raise it explicitly against you.“

Huckabee: Be Cool.

“As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement!’ … I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told ‘you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant…And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.” Jeremiah Wright is defended by a brother from across the pew, Mike Huckabee. Gotta say, I don’t agree with basically any of Huckabee’s policy positions, but, he can be a seriously likable guy at times (even if he did fold a defense of Falwell into his remarks.)

Clinton’s Family Ties.

“Clinton fell in with the Family in 1993, when she joined a Bible study group composed of wives of conservative leaders like Jack Kemp and James Baker. When she ascended to the senate, she was promoted to what Sharlet calls the Family’s ‘most elite cell,’ the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast, which included, until his downfall, Virginia’s notoriously racist Senator George Allen.” From the gander to the goose, Barbara Ehrenreich looks at Clinton’s own questionable religious ties with an ultrasecret conservative bible study group, The Family, about which a book is due in May. “This has not been a casual connection for Clinton. She has written of Doug Coe, the Family’s publicity-averse leader, that he is ‘a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.’”

Wright Wrong. Let’s Move On.

“Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.“

In response to the burgeoning controversy over remarks by his pastor, Sen. Obama discusses his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright at , and repudiates the recent remarks that have caused so much consternation. I can’t say I found myself personally offended by Rev. Wright’s remarks, even if I do strongly disagree with them. But, yes, this sort of express air-clearing and establishing of distance by Sen. Obama is assuredly for the best, even if John McCain has his own intemperate clergymen to contend with.

Update: “‘I think there was recognition that he’s obviously on the verge of retirement, [that] he’s taking a sabbatatical and that it was important for him to step out of the spotlight in this situation,’ Obama said.” Wright is officially out. With all the bodies dropping in both campaigns now, I’m reminded of D’Angelo’s chess lesson in The Wire: “Pawns, man, in the game, they get capped quick, and be out the game early.” (Although I guess, in this case, Obama lost a bishop.)

Update 2: Sen. Obama also addresses the Wright issue on a new Youtube video going around.

Sir Charles: Conservatives are not in my 5.

“I don’t like what the Republicans have done to our country.” Obama supporter, former Republican, and 2014 Alabama gubernatorial candidate Charles Barkley is mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. “Every time I hear the word ‘conservative’ it make me sick to my stomach, cause they’re really just fake Christians, as I call them. That’s all they are…They want to be judge and jury…These Christians are not supposed to judge other people, but they’re the most hypocritical judges of people we have in this country. And It bugs the hell out of me. They act like they’re Christians and they’re not forgiving at all.“

The Great Need of the Hour.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays – on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others – all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face – war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts…

The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country’s ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.

And that is what is at stake in the great political debate we are having today. The changes that are needed are not just a matter of tinkering at the edges, and they will not come if politicians simply tell us what we want to hear. All of us will be called upon to make some sacrifice. None of us will be exempt from responsibility. We will have to fight to fix our schools, but we will also have to challenge ourselves to be better parents. We will have to confront the biases in our criminal justice system, but we will also have to acknowledge the deep-seated violence that still resides in our own communities and marshal the will to break its grip.

That is how we will bring about the change we seek. That is how Dr. King led this country through the wilderness. He did it with words – words that he spoke not just to the children of slaves, but the children of slave owners. Words that inspired not just black but also white; not just the Christian but the Jew; not just the Southerner but also the Northerner.

He led with words, but he also led with deeds. He also led by example. He led by marching and going to jail and suffering threats and being away from his family. He led by taking a stand against a war, knowing full well that it would diminish his popularity. He led by challenging our economic structures, understanding that it would cause discomfort. Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination.

That is the unity – the hard-earned unity – that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope – the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before.

Excerpted from Sen. Barack Obama’s speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church yesterday. Worth reading in its entirety. Update: Or watch it here.

Update: John Nichols of The Nation gushes: “This is the speech Obama has needed to deliver. This is the speech America has been waiting for since that awful and glorious spring of 1968. Barack Obama has found the language for a politics that transforms rather than merely transitions. He should not retreat from the mountaintop. He should hold the rhetorical ground he has finally captured, and call us to join him upon it.” Hear, hear.

Preaching to the (Re)Converted.

“The two faiths have struggled with each other for years…In fact, probably no other organization in the nation has played a bigger role in perpetuating the idea that Mormonism is a cult than the Southern Baptist Convention.” In light of the Huckabee-Romney race to be seen as Christian-in-Chief (subliminal ads and all), friend and colleague Neil J. Young of Little Bit Left ruminates on the enduring Mormon-Baptist divide for Slate. And, in related news, DoL Robert Novak argues that Huckabee may suffer from lingering internecine disputes within the SBC — Apparently, for some of his co-religionists, he hasn’t been conservative enough. (Finally, while on the subject of Republican candidates, religion, and history, I was heartened to see Ron Paul knows his Sinclair Lewis.)

Mitt’s Muskie Moment.

“I can remember when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from — I think it was law school, but I was driving home — going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio and I pulled over and literally wept.” Regarding the thorny question of the Mormon church and race (discussed earlier here), Mitt Romney, to his credit, addressed the issue about as well as can be expected this morning during the Russert treatment on Meet the Press, even going so far as to tear up a little (Video). My, we’ve come a long way from the days of Ed Muskie. Update: Must be catching…Now Clinton’s crying too. Update 2: And Romney again.

Hey Mitt: Racism is a Latter-Day Sin.

“It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership…It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization.” Slate‘s Chris Hitchens explains why Mitt Romney needs to start being more forthright about his Mormonism. I’m inclined to agree — if nothing else, he needs to clear the air as Kennedy did in his 1960 address to Southern Baptists (a strategy Romney avoided in his run against JFK’s little brother in 1994.)

A self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, Governor Romney has recently been publicly tsk-tsking Barack Obama’s candor about his drug use. But I doubt I’m the only American who’d feel more sanguine about my child experimenting with marijuana than he or she espousing some of the notions that the Mormon Church declared holy writ within my lifetime. “[I]n antebellum Missouri and preaching against abolition, Smith…announced that there had been a third group in heaven during the battle between God and Lucifer. This group had made the mistake of trying to remain neutral but, following Lucifer’s defeat, had been forced into the world and compelled to ‘take bodies in the accursed lineage of Canaan; and hence the negro or African race.’ Until 1978, no black American was permitted to hold even the lowly position of deacon in the Mormon Church, and nor were any (not that there were many applicants) admitted to the sacred rites of the temple.” As Hitchens aptly points out, “Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.” Update: Facing a surprising (to him) Huckabee surge among Christian conservatives, Mitt Romney announces he’ll discuss his faith in a major speech next Thursday, akin to Kennedy’s 1960 address. I presume he won’t be delving into this former aspect of his faith, but you never know.

The Line has Failed.

“‘I hear you’re looking for me,’ he said. ‘You wanna go mano a mano right here?’” In excerpts from his new book, Fall of the House of Bush, published in Salon, Craig Unger examines the ideological divide between Bush father and son and tells the true story of Dubya’s coming to Jesus. “One way of examining the growing crisis could be found in the prism of the elder Bush’s relationship with his son, a relationship fraught with ancient conflicts, ideological differences, and their profound failure to communicate with each other…According to the Bushes’ conservative biographers, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, family members could see [Bush 41’s] torment. When his sister, Nancy Ellis, asked him what he thought about his son’s plan for the war, Bush 41 replied, ‘But do they have an exit strategy?’” This goes a long way toward explaining the elder Bush’s recent spate of (really depressing and hard to watch) public crying jags. (See also Joan Walsh.)