... Mr. Mike Norman, a Marietta, Ga., bar owner who is selling t-shirts with "Obama '08" printed on the front -- along with a cartoon monkey eating a banana.

Norman says he printed and started selling the t-shirts because he thinks Obama looks like the character Curious George. But we all know the real reason, and he thinks he's being funny. Well of course, Mr. Obama Monkey T-Shirt Maker's attracted all kinds of negative attention to himself, and it's well deserved. ...

For the third time in three months, Republicans lost a special congressional election in a safe GOP district. The Mississippi loss came 10 days after the GOP lost a traditional seat in Louisiana.

In Mississippi and Louisiana, Republicans used Barack Obama's past ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. to try to scare up white votes. Instead, their strategy boosted black voter turnout. Now Congressional Republicans are scared the three straight losses foretell disaster in November.

While Wright didn't work any magic for the GOP in Mississippi, 52 percent of voters in West Virginia said Obama shares the views of Wright. The question is open-ended so it is not clear to which views they are referring. Obama has, after all, denounced and repudiated Wright.

Hillary Clinton easily won West Virginia, beating Barack Obama 67 percent to 26 percent. Clinton's trouncing of Obama did not change the game. Her pick-up of 20 delegates was offset by the 30 superdelegates who moved to Obama in the past week.

West Virginia matters because it highlights Obama's weakness with white working-class voters.
CNN exit polls show that white folks ain't feeling Obama. Indeed, 35 percent of Clinton voters said they would vote for John McCain if Obama is the nominee.

I purposely avoided the whole Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy because frankly I thought it was pile after pile of pure, smelly, smudge-on-the-concrete B.S.

After the Wright sound bites played over the air thousands of times and was embedded all over the blogosphere (and as far as I know could be the background of a new FreeCreditReport.com commercial) it became kind of clear that it had nothing to do with Barack Obama's presidential candidacy.

But even though my reaction to Wright himself is to just shrug my shoulders, I wonder what if Obama's reverend was someone really worth scrutinizing. So without further ado, I present to you the Rev. James L. White!!!

Damn, that Richard is funny!!!

(Richard Pryor's classic skit in his 1977 NBC special)

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It's another Tuesday and another primary. Unlike most of the other 48 contests, West Virginia isn't a cliff-hanger. In fact, Barack Obama has conceded the state to Hillary Clinton who is expected to win in a landslide.

Still, Clinton said West Virginia is a must-win state for a Democrat in the general election. On the campaign trail, she noted that since 1916, no Democrat has made it to the White House without winning West Virginia:

If West Virginia had voted for our Democratic nominee in 2000 and 2004, we wouldn't have had to put up with George Bush for the last seven and a half years. I am going to work as hard as I can between now and the time the polls close tomorrow, because I want to earn your support.

The whispers calls are getting louder for Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination. There's rightful concern that the ongoing fight is hurting Barack Obama's chances against John McCain. While Democrats wring their hands, there is a group of people who are sitting on theirs: the unpledged superdelegates.

With a show of hands, the roughly 250 or so uncommitted superdelegates can stop the fight. Instead, they're cowardly holding back as Obama and Clinton duke it out until the final round on June 3.

Hillary Clinton says she is in it "until there is a nominee." As Clinton tries to wrest the Democratic nomination away from Barack Obama, she has put her trump card on the table: race.

Clinton's comeback, such as it is, began in Pennsylvania. So it's fitting that she's channeling Frank Rizzo, the race-baiting mayor of Philadelphia. In 1978, Rizzo wanted to change the rules city charter so that he could run for a third consecutive term. He rallied support for the charter amendment by imploring his supporters to "Vote White."

As expected, Barack Obama won North Carolina. Hillary Clinton eked out a slim victory in Indiana. The outcomes were preordained by the demographics of the two states.

CNN exit polls show Democrats have not moved beyond race. In North Carolina, African Americans made up one-third of Democratic primary voters. Obama received 91 percent of the black vote to Clinton's seven percent. Sixty-one percent of white voters supported Clinton, 37 percent supported Obama.

In Indiana, Obama received 90 percent of the black vote to Clinton's 10 percent. Sixty percent of white voters supported Clinton, 40 percent backed Obama.

Barack Obama made a trip back to The Late Show with David Letterman, where he delivered surprising facts about himself from Indiana.

Straight up, his first Top Ten of campaign promises was funnier. I don't watch the show, but I'm glad to see Letterman's sort of old-school "ba-dump-dump" comedy still going strong.

Some people say candidates shouldn't do this stuff, these silly cameos. ...

Baseball great Satchel Paige famously said: "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." Barack Obama says he's moving forward, but Hillary Clinton is still gaining on him.

A new Pew Research Center poll found that Obama's lead over Clinton among Democratic voters has disappeared:

The tightening Democratic race reflects a modest but consistent decline in Obama's personal image rather than improved impressions of Clinton. Fewer Democrats ascribe positive qualities to Obama than did so a month ago, with white working-class Democrats, in particular, expressing more skeptical views of the Illinois senator.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright mess is getting messier. Earlier this week, Barack Obama disowned his former pastor. In a hastily called news conference, Obama said he was "outraged" and "saddened over the spectacle" that Rev. Wright made of himself before the National Press Club. Obama said that Rev. Wright "caricatured himself" and gave "comfort to those who prey on hate."

Thursday morning, Obama and his wife, Michelle, appeared on the "Today Show." In a joint interview with Meredith Vieira, they denounced Rev. Wright. Barack Obama said:

I think that the sequence of events was the right one, because this is somebody who had married Michelle and I; who had baptized our children. When those first snippets came out, I thought it was important to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I had wanted to be politically expedient, I would have distanced myself and denounced him right away. Right? That would have been the easy thing to do.

Want the Rev. Wright story to go away? It's pretty obvious that Sen. Barack Obama also wants his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright to cool it already!

Obama told reporters Tuesday that he was "saddened" by the spectacle of Wright's comments in recent days.

"The person I saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago. What particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing," Obama said at a campaign stop in North Carolina.

DANG B! "You're not the person I met 20 years ago?!?" That sounds like something a wife tells her husband before she leaves him for another man. ...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright told the Washington press Monday that criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church and calling him unpatriotic is nonsense.

"I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did (Vice President Dick) Cheney serve?"

"Have you heard the whole sermon? No? The whole sermon?" Wright said, firing back at the moderator. "That nullifies that question." Watch the video above and find the rest of the speech here.

Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is making headlines again. In recent days, he was interviewed by Bill Moyers and delivered a speech before the Detroit Branch of the NAACP.

In an appearance before the National Press Club, Rev. Wright said:

Why am I speaking out now? In our community, we have something called playing the dozens. If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition, and my grandma, you've got another thing coming.

Over the objection of John McCain, the North Carolina Republican Party will run a TV ad linking Barack Obama, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and two Democratic candidates for governor who have endorsed Obama.