Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
Ross, Ezra, and Glenn are debating the terms over how to adjudicate Rev. Jeremiah Wright's comments.
Obama is going to give a speech soon, on race relations, according to Andrew.
That's a risky gambit. If the debate is increasingly divorced from the text of what was said, if even bloggers cannot agree where to disagree, more talk from the principals could be fuel to the fire. What's more, McCain will enter the debate (and possibly Clinton), following an Obama speech (he's likely to avoid it beforehand).
Anyway, it's an uphill battle on some points. Having won on "the issue" over Ward Churchill, those egging for a replay are willing to throw under the bus everyone who ever heard the same and didn't 'walk out'. The Left really hasn't moved to arguments based on broader notions of 'counter-insurgency', yet, in a way that resonates with the electorate, so the counterarguments that do exist seem inert.
The question for Ross appears to be, if he insists that Obama is compromised, would he have given federal dollars to the Trinity Church, under faith-based initiatives? There is no 'pulpit test' for federal dollars, is there? I would think that handing out your tax dollars makes one pretty involved on rightwing calculus, yes?
Last, it turns out that Obama was hardly well known:
I sat on a volunteer committee of black PR professionals summoned soon after Illinois State Senator Obama announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Our mission: To help raise his name recognition in Chicago's black community. (Yes, black folks outside of his district not only had no clue that Barack Obama had been such a superlative state legislator. Have mercy, they didn't even know that the man had been in the state legislature!)
So much for Obama's supposed cynical ploy to exploit his church.
