Obama's Sleight of Hand

Like a magician waving his wand, Barack Obama hopes his sleight of hand maneuver in resigning from his church will result in a bad case of amnesia on the part of the electorate.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for President resigned from his church in Chicago on Saturday after an embarrassing display by guest preacher Michael 'Snuffy' Pfleger, the Catholic priest in Illinois who stated that gun shop owners should be 'snuffed out.'

Obama hopes that his resignation will cause people to forget his lifelong personal associations with characters of ill repute, such as Pfleger, who orchestrated multi-thousands of dollars going into Obama's campaign coffers, to which Obama responded by orchestrating a $200,000 grant for Pfleger's church, compliments of the Illinois taxpayers.

The issue is not Obama's membership in the church but the people with whom he did business as a politician--people who were connected with the church in some way.

It wasn't that Louis Farrakhan spoke at Obama's church, but that Obama publicly supported Farrakhan. It wasn't that Pfleger preached a fiery sermon at Obama's church during which he mocked Hillary Clinton, but that Obama has had a long-term cozy relationship with the priest which resulted in monetary gain on the part of both.

And let's not forget that Obama has repeatedly referred to the church's Pastor Emeritus, Jeremiah Wright, as his 'mentor and spiritual guide.' This relationship goes back 20 years at least, and all the while the Reverend Wright was engaging in questionable, extremist behavior and public pronouncements which Obama heartily endorsed.

Obama cannot, with one swoop of the magician's wand, cause all of this to go away by merely resigning from his church.

Whether he is a member of that church or not, he has much explaining to do concerning his financial dealings with Pfleger, as well as all of the other examples of corruption that characterize his personal associations through the years.