Governor Mike Huckabee has come to the defense of Senator Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

“As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say ‘That’s a terrible statement!’ … I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names…”

Read the rest on Ben Smith’s Blog at Politico . Thanks to Ghost in the Machine .

While we purposefully try to stay out of partisan tangles – this one seems potentially incendiary, and nearly entirely manufactured. The opinion of one Jewish man with more family in Israel than in the United States: Reverend Wright is welcome at our house any time, and this doesn’t remotely disqualify Senator Obama, in my view, as a presidential candidate.

We’d like a return to a discussion of the issues on their merits: tax policy, energy policy, Iraq, universal health care, and disaster preparedness. Which, as we keep trying to demonstrate, all overlap.