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News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney. “Lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have won the dismissal of an IRS case against United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's denomination,” The American Lawyer’s Zach Lowe wrote on May 22, 2008.

The daughter of President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor was indicted on Wednesday on charges of money laundering and lying to federal authorities, a Justice Department spokeswoman said. Jeri L. Wright, 47, the daughter of Jeremiah Wright, was accused of participating in a fraud scheme led by a former suburban police chief and the chief's husband that involved a $1.25 million state grant, according to the Attorney's office for the Central District of Illinois in Springfield.

WASHINGTON — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the president's former pastor whose sermons touched off a firestorm in the 2008 political campaign, urged today that Barack Obama heed the words of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and transform the country into the world's "No. 1 purveyor of peace." **SNIP** Wright said he hasn't seen Obama in person since 2008. "I think that the media created a firestorm that caused him to distance himself from me," he said Monday.

We, of all people, ought to know better. "Progress" gave us modern medicine, liberal democracy, the internet. It also gave us the guillotine, the Gulag and the gas chambers. Western intelligentsia assumed in the 1920s that "history" was moving away from the muddle and mess of democracy towards the brave new world of Russian communism. Many in 1930s Germany regarded Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends as on the wrong side of history. The strong point of postmodernity is that the big stories have let us down. And the biggest of all was the modernist myth of "progress". What is more,...

A Riverside woman is facing misdemeanor charges following her arrest for speaking too long at a Riverside City Council meeting, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported Thursday. Karen Wright, whose arrest was videotaped and obtained by the paper, was cited for disrupting a public meeting Tuesday night. “The incident unfolded after Wright exceeded her allotted three minutes to speak at the lectern while commenting on a sludge hauling contract,” the paper reported. Wright, 60, was initially handcuffed by two officers while she was on her knees.

As a young single woman, Michelle Robinson was a fixture in the home of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who along with Rev. Jeremiah Wright “arranged” her marriage to Barack Obama, according to sources in Chicago who know the couple. Jackson’s daughter, Santita, is still one of Michelle’s best friends. “It all relates back to Trinity and to the Jesse Jackson orbit of blacks here in Chicago who gave Obama legitimacy and helped him establish his identity as a black man,” Robyn explained. “The political left wanted to push a black to the presidency, and the key operatives in the...

'Matchmaker' Rev. Jeremiah Wright 'provided cover for gays' After nearly four years in office, many Americans still express frustration that much about Barack Obama remains a mystery as establishment media remain incurious about the Democratic president, while seemingly ready to dispatch crack investigative teams at a moment’s notice to probe into the personal lives of Republican figures such as Sarah Palin. Largely ignored in 2008 was research by the Hillary Clinton campaign based on contacts developed with members of the church Obama attended for two decades, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. This is the first of a series...

Based on the transcript posted by the Chicago Sun Times, here are the 5 quotes from then Senator Obama’s 2007 speech at Hampton University that are most likely to raise eyebrows: Hurricane Katrina “was a powerful metaphor for what’s gone [in America] on for generations.� “It was also there — at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago — that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had.� On his run for the Illinois...

In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism. “The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.” The...

Curious if anyone else has noticed the similarities between Biden's erratic behavior of the last week and the erratic behavior evinced by Rev. Wright at the Press Club in 2008 just before Obama threw him under the bus ("This is not the Rev. Wright I knew")? Biden took 2 week-long breaks within a month this summer, and returns to the campaign trail to make 3 gaffes in 24 hours (in chains, Virginia, 20th century). Do you think this is just Joe being Joe, or are Obama and Biden working on an exit scenario for Joe (unstable, mental breakdown, agree to...

One of the fears that may instill the occasional bout of night terror among American pols is the possibility that “friendly” SuperPACs who don’t agree with the strategy, tactics, or message they ostensibly support will fall into a giant vat of unregulated cash and do something stupid and counter-productive. We may be about to see how effectively Republicans can keep that from happening, via a new Super-PAC created by the shady oppo researcher Stephen Marks that’s already released a web ad which is a small masterpiece of racism-posing-as-anti-racism. As ThinkProgress’ Josh Israel reports: FightBigotry.com, a new Super PAC registered with...

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends. The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s...

The meaning of "racism" has changed for the worse. There was a time when the adjective "racist" was properly applied to those who based their judgments, words and deeds on race. People and organizations are now characterized as "racist," or not, with little regard to what they think, say or do. "Racist" is now rarely applied to those who rely on, and actively seek to foster, racial hatred and to seek political and financial gain by doing so; perhaps that is because most who do it (and it has become quite fashionable) are in the Librul camp. They apply the...

President Barack Obama’s former spiritual adviser spoke just a few miles from the White House on Sunday, and politics and controversy weren’t far from what Rev. Jeremiah Wright had to say. “As we celebrate the foundations of our future, this is not a time to romanticize because we have the first African-descended president in the White House,” Wright said in a fiery sermon that lasted close to an hour. “You see what the tea party is trying to do.” Speaking at Washington’s Florida Avenue Baptist Church, which marks its 100th anniversary this week, Wright urged parishioners to teach their children...

Speaking at the 100th anniversary of a Washington, D.C. church, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright knocked President Barack Obama and accused America’s elite academic institutions of instilling racism. Wright opened up his sermon at the Florida Avenue Baptist Church Sunday by reading from the Book of Isaiah and speaking of the importance of foundational stones. Using that as a metaphor, Wright proceeded to list dozens of names that he suggested were foundational stones for the black community, from Nat Turner to Emmett Till to W.E.B Du Bois. He then seemingly took a shot at his former parishioner, President Obama. “They are...

I figured Jake Tapper was our only hope of big media taking an interest in a story about a giant bribe allegedly being made on behalf of a now-sitting president to his uber-controversial former pastor. And sure enough, he has:

Rev. Wright on Obamas: ‘Church Is Not Their Thing’ By Fred Lucas May 29, 2012 (CNSNews.com) – In speaking about Barack and Michelle Obama, their longtime pastor, the Rev. Jermiah Wright said, “Church is not their thing. It never was their thing.” President Obama and the first lady were married by Rev. Wright, and their two daughters, Sasha and Malia, were baptized by the controversial pastor. As head of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Ill., Wright sometimes delivered sermons critical of U.S. foreign policy and asked whether God should bless or damn America. (Rev. Wright is now...

In the 1967 comedy “A Guide for the Married Man,” Joey Bishop’s wife catches him in bed with another woman. As his wife stands at the bedroom door screaming at the sight, Bishop and the mistress calmly get up, make the bed and get dressed. The mistress leaves. Bishop nonchalantly sits down in the living room, lights up a pipe, picks up the newspaper and casually leafs through it. “What bed? What girl?” Bishop says. The wife begins to doubt her own eyes, even her sanity. Finally, she turns to Bishop and meekly asks what he wants for dinner. The...

In a 1200 word feature piece titled "Race Issues Return with Rev. Wright," written by Jonathan Martin and James Hohamann, MSNBC's unofficial web-partners at Politico go into excruciating detail charting the return of Obama's former pastor and 20-year mentor. Naturally, the article is all about race-race-race and racism-racism-racism, and how by some unholy act of MSM witchcraft Wright is a bigger problem for Romney than for the man who spent two decades at his knee. What Politico glaringly chose to leave out of its in-depth and oh-so detailed reporting, though, is the primary reason Reverend Wright is back in the...

The resurfacing of the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, particular with the release of Edward Klein’s new book, “The Amateur,” has raised questions if Wright will be fair game in the upcoming presidential election. On his Friday show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh blamed the media for not giving more scrutiny to issues like Rev. Wright, which the Obama campaign has declared off limits. “His college transcripts, the relationship he had with Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi, Frank Marshall Davis, his ties to ACORN, what his role was in the ‘million-man march,’ scholarships,...

Since The New York Times decided to put Reverend Jeremiah Wright back on the nation's agenda, it's important to note that some voters (especially the youngest new voters) may not understand what happened in the last cycle. The most important part for them is this: Barack Obama said in a widely hailed speech on March 18, 2008 that "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He then disowned him on April 29, and finally cut ties to the church entirely on May 31. None of his craven (if very delayed) moves were forced by...

Mitt Romney tied one arm behind his back today when he repudiated efforts to make an issue of the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his connection to a former member of his congregation, Barack Obama. Running a campaign much like that of failed 2008 Republican nominee, John McCain, Romney has taken an important issue off the table this election cycle. It is an issue that goes to the deep roots of Obama's character. Wright is arguably most famous for saying, “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God...

President Barack Obama’s supporters are raising a claim of racism to quash a proposed $10 million ad-campaign that highlights the president’s personal ties to his one-time spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright. The pushback helps the campaign minimize Obama’s association with the controversial pastor, but it also keeps the public’s focus away from the stalled economy’s high unemployment, deficit and debt. The information campaign must be rejected by an act of “moral leadership,” the campaign claimed in a 1:35 p.m. tweet from Obama’s official Twitter account. Campaign manager Jim Messina also hinted that the proposed ad campaign — outlined today by the...

An aide to the billionaire whom political advisers say wanted to fund TV ads about President Barack Obama's former pastor says the $10 million proposal will not go forward. The New York Times reported Thursday that a group tied to TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts was considering an ad campaign featuring Jeremiah Wright's incendiary sermons. But an aide to Ricketts issued a statement later in the day saying the proposal would not be implemented.

Here’s a fun exercise for Hot Air readers. Go to the New York Times website and do a 12-month search for “Romney Mormon,” and see how many hits come back. I’ll end the suspense — “about 12,000 results,” according to the search I conducted earlier today. Now, do a search on “Obama Jeremiah” in the same time frame, and you’ll get 4,190 hits, which is more than I expected but only about a third of the Romney-Mormon search results. Actually, the same search only turns up 4,330 hits since 1851, which means that before mid-2011 the Times only had less...

Ouch. Barack Obama’s former pastor and mentor Jeremiah Wright told author Ed Klein of The Amateur that Barack Obama has done nothing for the black community. Wright also said Obama was selected. Klein played the audio today on the Sean Hannity radio show.

Obama’s aides freak over possible Rev. Wright-themed attack ads By Neil Munro - The Daily Caller 9:28 AM 05/17/2012 Top Democratic strategists have reacted quickly to stop a proposed $10 million advertising campaign that would highlight the relationship between President Barack Obama and his old Chicago pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Plans for the potential ad campaign were revealed this morning by the New York Times. “Stunning! Will Mitt stand up, as [Sen.] John McCain did? Or allow the purveyors of slime to operate on his behalf?” claimed a 5.42 a.m. tweet from David Axelrod, the senior strategic at Obama’s campaign...

Ed Klein's interview with Sean Hannity. Link to YouTube audio below.

“At this secret meeting with him, Obama practically begged him not to go on and speak any further,” Klein says. “This was after one of Obama’s best friends had sent an email to a member of the church saying that he was prepared to give the Rev. Wright $150,000 if he would shut up. The Rev. Wright told me that he has saved that email.” In the recorded interview, Wright says he basically could not afford to shut up for $150,000, Klein says. “Wright explained he had expenses that he had to pay,” Klein says. “He had a child and...

In a shocking interview yesterday on the Sean Hannity Radio Show, author Ed Klein said Barack Obama’s former pastor helped Obama accept Christianity without having to renounce Islam. The Daily Caller reported: Klein also said Wright told him he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity without having renounce his “Islamic background,” which Klein said he has on tape. -snip- Klein spoke more on this in a separate interview with NewsMax: Klein says Obama originally sought out Wright to discuss community activism. “Quickly the conversations turned from picking up garbage on the street and getting streetlights put up on...

Documents obtained by The Daily Caller show that President Barack Obama’s close friend Eric Whitaker, who runs the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Urban Health Initiative, spoke at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Chicago-area church in 2006. Whitaker was a speaker at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ during a Sept. 17, 2006 “Health Care Justice Forum,” according to a church bulletin TheDC obtained. The bulletin is no longer on the church’s website. Whitaker made headline news Monday when New York Times bestselling author Edward Klein alleged during a radio interview with Sean Hannity that Whitaker offered Wright $150,000 to stay silent...

On an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Monday, “The Amateur” author Edward Klein revealed the name of a close ally of President Barack Obama that his book alleges offered a $150,000 bribe to Rev. Jeremiah Wright to be quiet until after the 2008 election. “Well, what happened is that after ABC’s Brian Ross broadcast the video tapes of the Rev. Wright ‘God damning America’ and slamming whites and slamming Jews and America, he was contacted by one of Obama’s closest personal friends — a guy who travels on Obama’s plane, who plays basketball with him, who goes on...

<p>When sermons of Obama’s Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced during the Iowa primaries, it threatened to derail Obama’s campaign. ABC aired one where Wright screamed, “Goddamn America!” Edward Klein interviewed Wright, who told him Obama’s team tried to buy his silence.</p>

COMING OUT: Obama’s sudden support of gay marriage, after publicly opposing it throughout his entire political career, may be prompted by a desperate attempt to prevent impending damage from an ongoing criminal investigation which has already produced explosive evidence about his fraudulent identity. Now, based on his bizarre flip-flop, it is probable that irrefutable evidence has been discovered by the investigation…about his own homosexual past.

Barack Obama has a long record of open association with racists like Jeremiah Wright, racists and anti-Semites like Al Sharpton, hatemongers like Michael Pfleger, and hate organizations like MoveOn.org. "Association" goes far beyond merely being in the same room with the person, as in "guilt by association." It means making public appearances with him, accepting endorsements and testimonials from him, and so on. As shown by the attached screen shots from Barackobama.com, Obama accepted and posted on his website endorsements from Wright and Pfleger until he had to throw the two men under the bus. (We have added to the...

One of the five self-described anarchists arrested last week for attempting to blow up a local bridge signed the lease for a West Side warehouse where about a dozen members of the Occupy Cleveland group live. In a one-hour recording of a Friday evening general assembly meeting of the group posted on its website, occupy leaders expressed concern about Anthony Hayne's name being on the lease, which strengthens his link to the group.... "If this gets into the media, it would be a disaster."

It just never ends. First, National Public Radio had a feature this morning on the race riots in Tulsa around 1921. The people involved in that incident were completely wrong and everyone knows it. No further discussion needed. However, why bring this up in the middle of severe racial tension in the nation? Is NPR trying to bring about a peaceful, with-justice resolution to the national wound? No way. It's all about politics and race now, values have nothing to do with it. The reporter in talking about that event, said, "....Oklahoma, where not a single county voted for Barak...

Obama campaign: Romney 'looks out for people just like him'By Cameron Joseph - 04/09/12 04:05 PM ET Mitt Romney is only looking out for millionaires like himself with his economic plan, President Obama's campaign manager charged in a Monday afternoon conference call. “Romney’s plan looks out for people just like him,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. “He’s trying to obscure how much he would benefit by hiding his own tax records.” The line is part of the Obama campaign strategy to try to paint Romney as out of touch due to his wealth. Romney's team has made a similar...

Land Day turned violent Friday when Arabs began hurling Molotov cocktails and stones at soldiers near the Kalandia checkpoint north of Jerusalem. The riots began after Friday afternoon Muslim prayers – often a starting point for violence – when dozens of masked Arab youths began rioting at the checkpoint. Soldiers responded with teargas and deployed the "Skunk" – a vehicle loaded with canons spraying a noxious-smelling liquid. A machine that transmits high frequency sound waves was also employed. Israel Radio reported several protesters were lightly injured in the clashes and taken to the hosptial. Hamas parliament member Ahmed Atoun was...

President Barack Obama’s longtime pastor at Trinity United Church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has announced his support for the anti-Semitic “March to Jerusalem” at the end of March. The White House has refused comment. The “March to Jerusalem” is a massive campaign designed to send anti-Israel partisans across Israel’s borders and into Jerusalem. The National Conference on Jewish Affairs reports Iran's government is involved in the organization of the event and plans to send thousands of participants in caravans, whose schedules have been published by the Quds News agency.

In one sermon, which Wright published in 1995 in a collection entitled Africans Who Shaped Our Faith: A Study of 10 Biblical Personalities, Wright referred specifically to Bell's protest against Harvard--the same protest that Obama supported in a video released by Breitbart.com last week. The sermon repeats the main doctrine of Bell's Critical Race Theory--that the United States was founded on racism, and that America remains irredeemably racist. Wright also attacked "Jewish lawyers," comparing the Jews of Jesus's time to "Klansmen" and describing Jesus as a racial provocateur: Jesus is a perfect model for the best type of faith. Jesus...

Breaking footage shows a young Barack Obama leading a protest at Harvard Law School on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, a radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright. We will be releasing significant information in the coming hours.

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America." The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism." In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial." He said Rev. Wright "is like an old uncle who says things I...

David Axelrod, chief political strategist for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign and former White House political adviser, defended Jeremiah Wright on Tuesday evening in a speech in Thousand Oaks, CA. Axelrod described the initial news reports in 2008 on Obama’s long-time family pastor and mentor as “ninety seconds of vitriol plucked from thirty years of sermons by some enterprising opposition researcher.” The claim that Wright’s sermons were selectively edited by Obama’s political opponents contradicts what is known about Wright’s preaching and the radical, racialist creed of the Trinity United Church of Christ, to which Obama belonged for two decades and...

50th Anniversary: Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th St., Chicago, is celebrating its 50th anniversary Sunday. The church at that time named The New Congregation Church was founded on Chicago’s South Side during the Civil Rights Movement and had its first service at Kipling School. Later, services were at John Shedd School, 99th Street and Indiana Avenue. In 1978, the congregation moved to its first edifice at 532 W. 95th Street. Trinity United was one of the first churches to protest Apartheid in South Africa and was one of the first American churches to provide a proactive HIV/AIDS...

Never Before Seen Video Shows Obama Revealing The Real Origin Of His Book Title Zeke Miller Nov. 29, 2011, 8:32 AM The Daily Caller's Nicholas Ballasy has obtained this video of then-Sen. Barack Obama revealing in 2006 the true origin of his book title "The Audacity Of Hope."”But I tell you what: I’m confessing to all of you here today — it’s a big crowd, 2,000 people — I’m confessing in front of the TV cameras: I actually stole this line from my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.” Wright, of course, is the controversial pastor Obama had to distance...

Video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller shows Illinois Senator Barack Obama, then campaigning for Democrats before the 2006 midterm elections, praising Reverend Jeremiah Wright and telling an audience that he “stole” the title of his book “The Audacity of Hope” from Wright’s sermon of the same name, which he “loved.” Obama also referred to Wright as “my pastor.” “I’m not plugging the book, but the title of it, ‘The Audacity of Hope.’ Some people have noticed that I actually used that line in the speech that I gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention,” Obama said on November 4, 2006...

Reverend Wright has faded into the background of the political process. Despite coming into quite a lot of prominence in the 2008 race, his role as being Barack Obama's spiritual mentor was conveniently withdrawn by the media. Now, in the aftermath of the election, it appears that Obama's association with the racist minister may have not even existed. Instead, the evidence of Wright's explosive past are no longer readily available on cable news. But Reverend Wright is offended by the lack of attention. Not by the media. Not that the coverage isn't positive. He's rather offended by the fact that...

Energy Dept. weatherization programs rife with waste, fraud, inspector general audits showThe Daily Caller – Wed, Sep 21, 2011 **SNIP** “I guess I don’t understand, when the state of Illinois literally cannot pay its bills and is going bankrupt, is this really the best use of money?” Duffy added. “I don’t care if its state or federal. Why are we spending millions of dollars with absolutely no credibility of how the spend that money?” The story of Illinois’ weatherization program, however, doesn’t stop there. The state-run program is being promoted by four separate public relations firms. Two of those firms...

Delegates at the most recent national meeting of the United Church of Christ (UCC) agreed overwhelmingly July 4 to strike the term “heavenly Father” from the denomination’s constitutional definition of the local church. By a vote of 613 to 161, the delegates voted to change language in Article V of the church’s bylaws (see page 3) from describing a local church as composed of persons who believe in “God as heavenly Father” to those who believe in “the triune God” — thereby relieving UCC members of the responsibility of acknowledging God as masculine. Explaining the change, which reflects a trend...