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Barrack Obama's pastor not only spews anti-American rhetoric from the pulpit but favors shaking down U.S. taxpayers for "reparations" for slavery. The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright was the keynote speaker (web site) at the 2007 annual conference of N'COBRA, which stands for the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.

Wright's talk, "A Call for Justice and Repair," followed a statement in which he declared that "The Biblical principle of true repentance is that the offended party is given compensation to make up for that which has been stolen from them, the losses that have been inflicted upon them and their families."

A reparations plan for blacks could extract several trillion dollars from American taxpayers' pockets.

But Wright isn't the only controversial member of Obama's church. Dr. Iva Carruthers, who describes herself as an active member of the church, is an outspoken advocate of reparations for blacks and was a participant in N'COBRA's 2004 conference.

Carruthers was identified, along with Wright, as a member of Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee. Wright has since been dropped from the group. But Carruthers is sometimes referred to as a spokesman for Wright and works with him closely.

Indeed, Carruthers may be even more controversial, especially on the issue of reparations. She wrote The Church and Reparations - An African American Perspective, which was reportedly "distributed by her denomination" at the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The conference was considered so extreme that the U.S. delegation, led by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, walked out.

Not only are members of his church involved in the reparations movement; Obama is said to have been politically close to former Chicago Alderman Dorothy Jean Wright Tillman, who led an effort by the Chicago City Council to demand reparations for slavery. "Chicago has become the de facto center of the slavery reparations movement," noted a journalist for the far-left In These Times.

The Obamas' just-released 2006 income tax return shows that they gave $22,500 to Trinity United Church of Christ, which they attended with such figures as Wright and Carruthers.

Despite going to the same church, however, Carruthers told me that she has no idea as to where Obama stands on the controversy. "I don't have any insight at all," she said, before saying that she had to leave for another engagement.

Carruthers is the General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, which includes Wright on its board and describes itself as a social justice organization. The (web site) of the group includes a statement that "Dr. Wright represents the best among us, one of the best in this tribe of prophetic preachers. He has made his church a place where one could express the centuries-old pain of being Black in America, while finding strength for a brighter day. An attack on this man of the God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation."

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