The American Spectator

1. According to this report by Byron York, Jeremiah Wright agreed not to publish an acccount of his “God damn America” sermon — or the 2008 presidential campaign controversy it caused — until after Barack Obama has faced the voters for the second time in 2012. The president’s former pastor initially made this disclosure to Ed Klein for the book The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House. York confirmed University of Chicago emeritus professor Martin Mary urged Wright to keep quiet. But when it comes to Wright’s notes about the firestorm, there is more:

When Klein asked more about the box, Wright revealed that in 2008 Eric Whitaker, a close friend of President Obama’s, offered him a substantial sum of money to stay quiet about his relationship with Obama until after the ‘08 election.

I’m skeptical that the Wright episode will have the same impact this year it could have had in 2008, when Obama was still not defined in the eyes of the American people. But this does suggest questions about Wright will not go away entirely.

2. The NAACP, one of the nation’s largest and oldest mainline civil rights organizations, endorsed same-sex marriage as a “civil right.” The NAACP board’s decision offers support to President Barack Obama on an issue where his (ostensibly new) position is unpopular within the black community ahead of the November election.

3. Marco Rubio sounded very much like a man looking for a major role in this year’s Republican presidential campaign — perhaps even as a vice presidential running mate — when he spoke at South Carolina GOP fundraiser this weekend. The Florida senator pressed the case against the president and called him a “divisive figure.” Said Rubio: “The president and his party’s view of America’s government and our lives is a failed one. It hasn’t worked. His ideas that sounded so good in the classrooms of Harvard and Yale haven’t really worked out well in the real world.”

4. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a rising Democratic star, called the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital “nauseating.” ​Salon ​called him the “surrogate from hell, but Booker’s Meet the Press appearance sounded like old-fashioned Clintonian triangulation. “Enough is enough,” Booker said. “Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”

5. So far the Bain attacks haven’t dented Romney’s rise in the polls.

6. Ron Paul’s latest money bomb — his first online fundraiser since announcing he wasn’t going to expend further resources in the primary states and quite possibly the last of his political career — has raised just under $785,000 at this writing. Paul supporters also won 12 of 13 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota this weekend, conceding the last slot to Michele Bachmann.