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.

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 seems that the controversy swirling around Barack Obama's former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright just won't end.

In the May 12th issue of 'Newsweek' magazine, the focus has turned from the Democratic presidential candidate to talk show Queen Oprah Winfrey. It would appear that while Winfrey has parlayed her gift of gab into a lucrative empire, she didn't appreciate the inflammatory tone of Rev. Wright's speech while she attended his church.

Winfrey, a transplant to Chicago like Obama, was most likely drawn to the sense of community at the Trinity United Church of Christ when she began attending in 1984. It was the house of worship's assistance to the poor and its down home southern values that probably gave her a sense of connectedness to her new city .

But it only took Winfrey two years to pull up stakes, only attending services there infrequently until the mid 1990's.

So what cooled her warm and fuzzy feeling? According to the article, written by Allison Samuel, it was Wright and organized religion that made Winfrey weary.

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.