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DALLAS -- The Rev. Jeremiah Wright "has dared to unwrap the flag from around the cross" in his sermons -- not because of a lack of patriotism, but out of concern, a Dallas preacher said Saturday at a panel discussion at the State of the Black Church Summit. Wright, former pastor to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, has been criticized by some as racist and others as anti-American because of his statements about U.S. policies. "We don't love America uncritically; you don't just tell the good things," the Rev. Frederick Haynes III told about 100 scholars, clergy and students gathered...

Panelists discuss shock over Wright's comments at Black Church Summit In panel discussion, black churches not immune to criticism By LORI STAHL / The Dallas Morning News lstahl@dallasnews.com If television sound bites of Barack Obama's former pastor shocked mainstream audiences, perhaps it means that other black churches have strayed too far from raising similar social justice issues in their sermons, panelists at a church summit said Saturday. "Part of the reason the public is so shocked ... is that they have not heard the public voice of the liberated black church in a very long time," said the Rev. Raphael...

Author, Sean Wilentz is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus professor of history at Princeton University Quietly, the storm over the hateful views expressed by Sen. Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has blown away the most insidious myth of the Democratic primary campaign. Obama and his surrogates have charged that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has deliberately and cleverly played the race card in order to label Obama the "black" candidate. Having injected racial posturing into the contest, Obama's "post-racial" campaign finally seems to be all about race and sensational charges about white racism. But the mean-spirited strategy started even...

The Washington Post March 30, 2008 6:00 AM Amongst the moss-draped live oaks of Charleston Collegiate School's 33-acre campus in Johns Island, S.C. - where children of all ethnicities, religions and abilities work and play together - the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright seem alien and hostile. His sometimes hate-filled rhetoric is weirdly out of sync with this quiet corner of the Old South, where ancestors of the school's African-American students worked as slaves, perhaps upon these very fields. The differences between this microcosm of a near-utopian community and the world that informs Wright are as stark as the...

Wright's wrong The motto of the Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago is, "Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian." Its recently retired pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has violated both of those principles. In my church the pastor carries the title of teaching elder. The title is far more than honorific. It implies a solemn obligation to teach the Word of Christ, to be faithful to the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, and to interpret and apply Christ's precepts and principles to our life and to the life of our community and nation. I have no...

Barring some event of staggering significance, Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president. Many, though, believe Obama doesn't deserve it. His refusal to walk out of the Chicago church where his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., made many incendiary remarks, including that AIDS was a white plot against blacks, render Obama too duplicitous and morally deficient to inhabit our highest office. Obama was straight in his speech on race about being an imperfect candidate, not possessing the moral purity his fervid supporters have wished upon him. Hillary Clinton supporters, and many of the media's bloviators, say...

The most trusted leaders of the Democratic party, such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, ought to be ashamed of themselves for supporting Barack Obama. With use of the internet, a fifth grader could connect the dots to show a picture of a guy who was picked up in college and carried up the political ladder by a corrupt gang of influence peddlers. John McCain is just drooling waiting for Obama to become the nominee so that he can come out with the trail of dirt that the Democratic party is too afraid to reveal this late in the in...

More than two dozen well-known black preachers and scholars, in Dallas for a long-planned conference, offered unequivocal support Friday for one of their number who was not there. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, now world-famous as the former pastor and spiritual mentor of presidential candidate Barack Obama, was to be the guest of honor at the Black Church Summit held by Brite Divinity School. Amid the recent controversy about some of his sermons, Dr. Wright decided not to attend, but the summit started Friday as scheduled. Most of the event was not open to the media, but several of the scholars...

(AP) Religion is supposed to be Barack Obama's strength. Unlike many Democratic candidates before him, Obama speaks with ease about his faith. He attends Sunday worship and knows his Bible. His supporters believe he can pry some committed churchgoers away from the GOP. But the furor over comments by his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, broadcast again and again on TV and viewed by millions on YouTube, is tempering those hopes. "It certainly gives people pause," even in the Democratic Party, said Corwin Smidt, a Calvin College professor who studies religion and politics. All the top Democratic presidential contenders...

Barack Obama missed a valuable opportunity last week to acknowledge America's dramatic social changes and to soundly refute those who are content to wallow in bigotry of bygone days. More than a year ago, we raised questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's teachings at Chicago's now nationally known Trinity United Church of Christ. Last week, when national news outlets excerpted some of Wright's most vitriolic quotations and Americans saw firsthand the enthusiastic response of the Trinity church family, those same questions reappeared and became a national discussion topic. Segments of sermons showing Wright outrageously claiming the federal government developed the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's former pastor has not hurt Obama, a new poll found on Thursday, even as more potential trouble surfaced involving his church. A poll by the Pew Research Center said videos of sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama's subsequent speech on race in America last week have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. The March 19-22 survey of 1,503 American adults found that despite the flap, Illinois Sen. Obama had maintained a 49 percent to 39 percent advantage over New...

Special Report cut into programming... Live Presidential News Conference

<p>I was just watching Ebert & Roeper and would like to report to my fellow homeschoolers that the guest host taking Roger Ebert's place tonight, Robert Wilonsky, made a very disrespectful and rude comment in relation to homeschoolers...</p> <p>While reviewing the upcoming movie "Nancy Drew" Ebert made a comment that Nancy was a 1950's girl in relation to what she thought constituted a birthday party. When Ebert said that this would be a good movie that would be liked by 12-year-old girls, Wilonsky replied, "Maybe Homeschooled 12-year-olds"...</p>

BREAKING NEWS: School Shooting West of Madison Newsradio 620 WTMJ has learned that the principal of a high school in Cazenovia, WI has been shot at the school. The Weston Schools in Cazenovia are on lockdown right now. Stay with Newsradio 620 WTMJ for the latest.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped a senior official of Iraq's oil ministry after he left work in Baghdad on Thursday, police and ministry sources said on Friday, highlighting the lawlessness still afflicting the vital sector. The incident happened the same day U.S. troops killed Iraq's al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose demise the Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said would help improve the country's oil production, particularly in the north. The sources said Muthana al-Badri, Director General of Iraq's State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP), was on his way home in the Sunni district of Adhamiya when gunmen in...

OPERATION HERO ALERT: Funeral Services for Army Major Gerald M. Bloomfield, IICounter-Protest of WBCFriday, 11/11/2005*Stemm-Lawson-Peterson Funeral Home - Elkhart, IN OPERATION HERO is spreading word of a planned picket by Westboro Baptist Church during the visitation for Army Major Gerald M. Bloomfield II. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing during the visitation for Major Bloomfield on Friday, November 11 in Elkhart, IN. This anti-Troops/anti-war "liberal" hate group will be protesting at 12:45pm - 1:30 pm* outside the Stemm-Lawson-Peterson Funeral Home, located at 1531 Cobblestone Blvd. *Please note there are conflicting times posted at the WBC website....

OPERATION HERO ALERT: Funeral Services for Army Pfc. Tyler MacKenzieCounter-Protest of WBCFriday, 11/11/2005Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - Greeley, CO OPERATION HERO is spreading word of a planned picket by Westboro Baptist Church during the funeral services for Army Pfc. Tyler MacKenzie. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing during the funeral service for Pfc. MacKenzie on Friday, November 11 in Greeley, CO. This anti-Troops/anti-war "liberal" hate group will be protesting from 11:30am - 12:00pm outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, located at 501 49th Avenue, in Greeley. MacKenzie's funeral service...

OPERATION HERO ALERT: Funeral Services for Army Spc. Benjamin A. SmithCounter-Protest of WBCFriday, 11/11/2005*Bethel Luthern Church - Hudson, WI OPERATION HERO is spreading word of a planned picket by Westboro Baptist Church during the funeral services for Army Spc. Benjamin A. Smith. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing during the funeral service for Army Spc. Smith on Friday, November 11 in Hudson, WI. This anti-Troops/anti-war "liberal" hate group will be protesting at 10 am outside the church, located at 920 3rd Street. Please show your support for this hero! Info about Army Spc. Benjamin A. SmithHudson...

NORMAN - Two men charged in Cleveland County with breaking into a University of Oklahoma room marked "biohazard" were involved in a "stupid prank" and not something more sinister, an attorney for one of the men said. Christopher Thomas Boyce, 24, of Norman and James Kent Eldridge, 21, are both charged with felony counts of second-degree burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary. Eldridge is an OU junior from Oklahoma City studying in the College of Arts and Sciences, according to the OU Web site. Boyce was not listed as being enrolled at OU. On Oct. 20, a woman told OU...

PARIS (AP) -- France will impose curfews "wherever it is necessary" and call up 1,500 police reservists to stop rioting, the prime minister said Monday, as civil unrest erupted for a 12th night with youths setting fire to an empty bus and attacking police in Toulouse. The announcement came as similar violence was reported in neighboring Belgium and Germany and the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence in its tough suburbs. Governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France. A 61-year-old man also died Monday of wounds sustained in an attack as...