Something tells me that we haven’t seen or heard the last of Reverend Wright:

“After 20 years of loving Barack like he was a member of his own family, for Jeremiah to see Barack saying over and over that he didn’t know about Jeremiah’s views during those years, that he wasn’t familiar with what Jeremiah had said, that he may have missed church on this day or that and didn’t hear what Jeremiah said, this is seen by Jeremiah as nonsense and betrayal,” said the source, who has deep roots in Wright’s Chicago community and is familiar with his thinking on the matter.

Up until now, the defense has been that these remarks of Wrights were atypical and taken out of context, and sufficiently rare that Obama never happened to have heard them, despite having been a church member for two decades and sitting regularly in the pews. Not that I’ve ever bought it, but that was the story.

Now Wright himself is saying (and made pretty clear on Monday) that these are not just sporadic and infrequent flights of fancy, but things that he fervently believes and is happy to tell anyone on any occasion, including Sunday sermons. And furthermore, he knows that his protege was well aware of his views (and may even have thought that he agreed with them, though that’s less clear).

I have a pretty low opinion of the pastor, for a lot of reasons, but I haven’t yet seen any evidence that he’s a liar. But either he is prevaricating, or Obama is. I know where I’d put my money at this point. This will be a ticking time bomb going into the fall. I hope that the Democrats continue to let it tick.

[Update at 2:45 PM EDT]

Ramesh Ponnuru defends Wright (err…sort of):

One theme I’ve seen in the commentary about Wright, especially the liberal commentary, is how terrible it is, how selfish, for Wright to get in the way of Obama’s presidential campaign. There are a lot of grounds for criticizing Wright–that he is an anti-American and racist buffoon, example–but I don’t see why he should keep quiet just to keep from inconveniencing a political candidate. He takes these. . . ideas of his very seriously, and he has the opportunity of a lifetime to disseminate them. Why wouldn’t he take it?

Beyond that, there seems to be this implicit assumption among the liberal media and Obama supporters (but I repeat myself) that Wright does (and should) want to see his congregant become president. Hence the anguished cries of “betrayal!, and “selfishness!”

But if Obama is elected president, doesn’t that knock the legs out from under his race- and class-war theories? Doesn’t it show that perhaps AmeKKKa isn’t the racist monster of his sermons?

On the other hand, if Obama loses, doesn’t it validate his (and Michelle’s) hatred of this racist country, as bad as (or worse than!) Al Qaeda? And then doesn’t he get to continue hawking his paranoia and lunacy to the chumps, and continue to get their adulation? And moolah from the DVD sales? Gotta keep up the payments on the mansion, you know.