by John McCormick and Manya A. Brachear

Sen. Barack Obama is leaving Trinity United Church of Christ, his longtime religious home in Chicago and a place that has triggered repeated controversies during his presidential bid.

"This is not a decision that I come to lightly, and frankly it's one that I made with some sadness," Obama told reporters in Aberdeen, S.D. "Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We have many friends among the 8,000 congregants."

Obama said he felt he had no choice but to leave the church.

"It's clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles," he said.

In a statement released this evening, the church said: "Trinity United Church of Christ was informed today that Senator Barack Obama and his family will no longer be members of our church. Though we are saddened by the news, we understand that it is a personal decision. We will continue to lift them in prayer and wish them the best as former members of our Trinity community."

The latest controversy involving the South Side church erupted this past week when an Internet video emerged from an appearance there last weekend by the Rev. Michael Pfleger.

Pfleger, who has had numerous run-ins with Chicago's Roman Catholic archdiocese for his political activism, mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton from the pulpit during a guest appearance at the church. The priest also suggested the former first lady is a white elitist who felt entitled to the Democratic nomination.

Obama has not attended the church since it first entered the national spotlight in mid-March, following the appearance of Internet videos featuring Obama's longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, who joined Trinity 12 years ago, expressed shock and regret about the senator's decision.

"I thought he would stay because of the good works of the church," Hopkins said, noting Obama's frequent affirmations about the Trinity community. "He had a baptism and marriage connection. I guess the Pfleger thing took it over the top. Maybe Sen. Obama thought the church should not have provided that platform."

Hopkins predicted the congregation would initially react to the news with confusion and anger. But he pointed out that Oprah Winfrey's departure did not have lasting impact on members and predicted that Obama's resignation would not either.

"They didn't come there because of Obama," Hopkins said. "They came there because of the House that Wright that built. And it's still standing."

Wright officially retires Sunday.

by Christi Parsons

The DNC rules panel has voted to fully seat delegates from Michian and Florida but give each delegate only half a vote.

Hillary Clinton's chief ally left open the door to an appeal, which, if she pursues the option, could happen over the summer with the credentials committee or, according to the rules, at the Democratic convention itself.

"Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee," board member Harold Ickes said after the final vote.

Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, said that isn't a "promise," it just means that she wants to reserve the right.

"Sen. Clinton feels strongly about the principle that every vote should be counted," Wolfson said. "In the coming days and weeks, she will want to confer with her supporters in Michigan and elsewhere."

by Jill Zuckman

An unrepentant and defiant Sen. Carl Levin had no apologies today for putting the Democratic Party in the mess it finds itself in.

Levin called the primary process an "irrational system" as he spoke to the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee this afternoon. But it was Levin's irrational hatred of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary status that led to Michigan jumping ahead of the DNC's calendar schedule for primaries and caucuses.

"No state should have the right to go first and second every election, no state," Levin heatedly said, criticizing New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner in particular.

Here's the rub: If Michigan had stayed where it was, it might have had a greater impact on the long-running battle between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination this year.

What follows is a transcript of Levin's remarks:

by Aamer Madhani

The month of May is on track to be the least deadly month for troops serving in Iraq since February 2004.

As of late Friday, the Pentagon reported that 21 coalition troops--19 Americans and two Georgians--died in Iraq this month. Four of the American deaths were categorized as "non-hostile" incidents by the U.S. military.

There also appears to be a marked reduction in violence against Iraqi civilians. The Associated Press reports that 516 Iraqis were killed violently this month, the lowest monthly figure since December 2005 when 375 civilians were killed.

Speaking to reporters in Baghdad earlier this week, Admiral Patrick Driscoll, a Multi-National Force Iraq spokesman, said that security incidents decreased to a level not seen since March of 2004. Overall, the number of attacks has decreased by 70 percent since the last of "surge" troops arrived in June of 2007, Driscoll said.

U.S. commanders are giving much of the credit to the improved Iraqi security forces but a truce between anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iraqi government hammered out earlier this month is likely a more significant factor in the drop in violence.

Since the truce, thousands of Iraqi troops are patrolling the sprawling slums of Sadr City, the Baghdad enclave of more than 2 million Shiites that is the base of Sadr's popular support

For the moment, the cleric's Mahdi Army loyalists are holding their fire, but the situation remains tenuous.

On Friday, thousands of followers of Sadr protested in Shiite enclaves across Iraq against plans for a long-term security pact that would allow for an extended U.S. military presence in the country.

Sadr wants any security pact between the Americans and Iraqi government subject to a referrendum.

by Mark Silva

By any measure, Scott McClellan has done an extraordinary thing.

A man who served the sitting president for more than five years in the White House and helped him get there from Texas -- and who defended the president's most controversial stances at war and at home along the way - has stepped down, stepped back and now stepped out to accuse President Bush of running "a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people'' and of "shading the truth.''

"When Bush was making up his mind to pursue regime change in Iraq, it is clear that his national security team did little to slow him down, to help him fully understand the tinderbox he was opening and the potential risks in doing so,'' writes McClellan, author of What Happened, Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

"I know the president pretty well,'' writes the Texan who went to work for the governor of Texas in January 1999 with an eye on an inspiring presidential campaign. "I believe that, if he had been given a crystal ball in which he could have foreseen the costs of war - more than 4,000 American troops killed, 30,000 injured and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens dead - he would have never made the decision to invade, despite what he might say or feel he has to say publicly today...

"An even more fundamental problem was the way his advisers decided to pursue a political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people,'' he writes. "It goes to an important question that critics have raised about the president. Is Bush intellectually curious or, as some assert, actually stupid?... Bush is plenty smart enough to be president. But as I've noted, his leadership style is based more on instinct than deep intellectual debate. His intellectual curiosity tends to be centered on knowing what he needs in order to effectively articulate, advocate and defend his policies.''

Now McClellan's motivation for all of this is another story. Clearly this was the political equivalent of a lover spurned - a onetime admirer of Bush and the promise that he held for the White House who says he still respects the man yet who clearly suffers from the pain of the deception he was required to deliver from the podium of the West Wing press briefing room. Karl Rove told him he wasn't involved in the Valerie Plame CIA identity leak, so McClellan said so at the podium. Andy Card, the president's then-chief of staff, told McClellan to assert the same thing about Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, the vice president's chief of staff who later was convicted of obstruction of justice.

And, in light of the president's adamant assertions that anyone who had taken part in such a leak of classified information had "no place'' in the White House, the former spokesman professes further pain in the revelation that Bush himself secretly authorized a release of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate - "yeah, I did,'' Bush told him aboard Air Force One in April 2006 - to be used against critics. This was part of a campaign to "discredit'' Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, who publicly accused the White House of manipulating pre-war intelligence, McClellan writes -- "In June 2003, the campaign to undermine Joe Wilson's credibility as a critic of the White House... was beginning.''

Regardless of the motivation or veracity of a former senior aide and confidant to the president who tells us now that he was misleading us then - and some have suggested that his motivation lies in the cover price of this tell-all - the mere telling of this tale by a former insider who effectively is corroborating all of the harshest criticism of the administration that outsiders, chiefly Democrats, have been making for a few years now will become a permanent and not minor footnote in the historic record of this presidency.

The fact that the White House had an obligatory look at the text before publication - required reading for the National Security Council in assuring that one who had a high security clearance has not divulged something improper - and that the Bush team present and past had time to make a case against this book, and that the best they could come up with is, "This is not the Scott we knew,'' also speaks volumes.

The sitting press secretary, Dana Perino, who was hired by McClellan to work inside the White House, simply says that the major premise of the book is not true: Bush pursued the invasion of Iraq in honest concern for the perceived danger that Saddam Hussein posed. Rove says that McClellan has not proven his own case.

Perhaps nothing is refutable when one writes of motivation and intent. Yet, like the closing arguments before a jury, McClellan's will long remain in the minds of those casting judgment on the intentions, successes and failures of this administration for years to come. And for an erstwhile insider, casting a critical eye on an administration that lacks no critics on the outside, that is an extraordinary accomplishment.

by Mark Silva

"Congress has failed to act.''

That's President Bush's assessment across a broad array of issues awaiting the return of the Congress from recess next week.

Be it war funding, or the Colombia Free Trade Agreement or a GI Bill that he will sign, the president says the Congress has failed to step up with the action that people expect of it -- "even in an election year.''

Of course, if there is one group that the public holds in lower esteem than the president today, it is the Congress, which is run by Democrats. So Bush is turning to a convenient foil in the unfolding election year.

"The American people deserve better from their elected leaders,'' Bush says in his radio address today. "Congress needs to show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can compete for votes and cooperate for results at the same time.

"You sent your representatives to Washington to do the people's business, and you have a right to expect them to do it - even in an election year.''

See the rest of the address here:

by Christi Parsons

The last thing Barack Obama's campaign wanted at this morning's Democratic Party showdown over the Michigan and Florida delegates was a big clash outside between their supporters and those of Hillary Clinton.

And as of 9:30 a.m., they seem to have achieved their goal. Hundreds of demonstrators are gathered outside waving signs, but there were no obvious Obama backers among the protesting crowd.

Many are wearing Clinton t-shirts and buttons, including Beatriz Ocampo, a paralegal who drove down from Hoboken, N.J. to join the rally.

Her beef is mostly with the Democratic National Committee and its Rules and Bylaws panel, which is meeting inside, because of the party's decision to strip Michigan and Florida of its delegates to the summer nominating convention. The states are being punished for holding early primaries in violation of DNC rules.

But like several others interviewed, Ocampo is also concerned about the fallout for the Clinton campaign. She thinks it would be easier to argue to superdelegates that Clinton should be the nominee if the Michigan and Florida delegations were seated.

"It's resented by her supporters that party leaders are trying to throw her under the bus," said Ocampo.

Nearby, one Obama supporter stood quietly, wearing her candidate's button.

In her bag were voter registration materials, for anybody who wanted to take them and go out and work on Obama's behalf signing up voters.

If Obama supporters show up, she says she'll encourage them to direct their efforts elsewhere.

"If they have extra time and energy," said Pat Hynes, of Reston, Va., "we have several voter registration drives going on. There's something productive they can do."

There's still some question among the demonstrators whether the Rules committee, which just convened its meeting minutes ago, wlil do something productive. The Clinton supporters want to see the full seating of the "Florigan" delegates, and anything short of that seems unlikely to change the dynamic of the race in which Obama has a strong lead.

by Christi Parsons

Barack Obama is urging donors to avoid independent groups and send money directly to his campaign, the candidate's chief strategist tells the Huffington Post.

"I think that our interest is in controlling the message of our own campaign and in not allowing others to develop a message for us," strategist David Axelrod says. "So to the extent possible we would like people to give their donations to us, so that we can use the money to deliver a message that is constant with Obama's desires."

Reports the Post:

How Obama structures and taps into his massive fundraising apparatus will likely go a long way in determining the success of his White House run. In addition to centralizing contributions, reports have surfaced recently suggesting that the Senator was considering a voluntary restriction on his campaign donations -- a tip of the hat to political ethics but also a recognition that he won't opt into public financing in the general election. Asked about that rumor, Axelrod kept his cards close to the vest.

"We've got a little business to transact here. We will discuss how to approach that shortly after," he said. "There are a lot of ideas that have been floated but we won't discuss them here."

Axelrod also defends himself against a recent Newsweek piece that says he lobbied Chicago officials on behalf of his communications firm's clients, in a story you can read here.

by Naftali Bendavid

Could it be?

Could this long, sometimes nasty, always bruising, drawn-out, tortured, exhausting primary season finally be just days away from ending?

Most Democratic leaders and strategists think so. If you ask them, the party will have a presumptive nominee within a week, and perhaps sooner. And that's a reasonable bet.

by Jim Tankersley

At the end of a rally in Oregon last month, during a question-and-answer session with the candidate, a woman asked Barack Obama about his campaign's battle with Hillary Clinton's over how to count delegates from two disputed states. Couldn't you just give them Florida? she asked.

Several audience members laughed. Obama's winding answer included no promises to "give them Florida" or Michigan, the two states whose delegate fate is set to be decided by leaders of the Democratic National Committee today.

Should he? Is the best way to wrap up the nomination next week to agree to Clinton's every demand on both states?

That's the argument M.S. Bellows Jr. makes in the Huffington Post this week in a piece titled "The Trap: Clinton's "Briarpatch" Strategy For The DNC Rules Committee Meeting."

"Barack Obama and Howard Dean are about to walk into Harold Ickes' trap tomorrow,: he writes, "and they aren't likely to even realize their mistake until Hillary Clinton cries "foul!" next week and announces that "justice" and "voters' rights" are forcing her to carry her campaign all the way to the Democratic Convention next August.

"By leaning toward implementing a compromise "split the baby" decision tomorrow on how to allocate the Michigan and Florida delegates -- a compromise that nearly all observers see as a setback for Clinton -- the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee ("RBC"), the Obama campaign and other well-meaning Democrats will actually be throwing Brer Clinton into the briar patch -- giving her exactly the excuse she wants to continue her Quixotic campaign."

Bellows makes an intriguing case, but is he underplaying two key factors: money and momentum?

by Christi Parsons

Sen. Barack Obama headed for South Dakota and Sen. Hillary Clinton left for Puerto Rico, but today's main event on the campaign trail was set to take place at the meeting of an obscure partisan committee in a Washington hotel.

The room will be filled with lawyers arguing over the question that will shape the endgame of the Obama-Clinton race: whether the party delegates from Michigan and Florida get to attend the Democratic National Convention this summer and cast their votes for the presidential nominee.

Outside the hotel, hundreds of demonstrators plan to weigh in on the question, most of them arguing for full representation of the states lately known in Democratic circles as "Florigan."

But while the panel of the Democratic National Committee seems inclined to restore at least some of the two states' voting rights, perhaps half--a move that would probably cost front-runner Obama a few votes--it is not likely to dramatically alter the dynamics of the nomination process.

by Manya A. Brachear and John McCormick

CHICAGO -- Father Michael Pfleger's face is well known in these parts, one of the many iconoclastic characters who inhabit a city with a long history of racial division and political activism.

Pfleger, a white priest who has had numerous run-ins with Chicago's Catholic archdiocese involving his political activism, mocked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ last weekend.

As a guest speaker at Sen. Barack Obama's church, the priest suggested that the former first lady is a white elitist who felt entitled to the Democratic presidential nomination.

In doing so, the priest reignited a debate about Obama's church that had nearly quieted down after controversial remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. surfaced this spring.

Pfleger's maverick style has set him apart from Chicago's Catholic clergy dating to his seminary days, when he protested the Vietnam War and befriended Black Panthers.

But it also helped the priest turn a dwindling South Side congregation at St. Sabina into a thriving, predominantly African American parish.

Read the full story in today's Tribune.

by Mark Silva

Karl Rove, the "architect'' of President Bush's elections, comes in for some post-Modernist criticism in Scott McClellan's hot new book, What Happened. The former press secretary writes of a political genius who pursued political art like a science and pressed the craft of politicking to the legal limits.

"Within the Bush administration, Rove's controlling personality and substantial influence over policy, strategy, political communications and message expanded unchecked,'' McClellan writes. "Rove likes to have his hands in just about everything, relishing policy shaping as much as political strategizing... He occupied a key seat at the center of both in Bush's White House.

"Karl also has a reputation as a ruthtless, perhaps unscrupulous operator, and has always struck me as the kind of person who would be willing, in the heat of battle, to push the envelope to the limit of what is permissible ethically or legally,'' writes McClellan, who served as White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006 and has now published a book about the Bush administration's purported deception of the public in the selling of the war in Iraq and in the defense of it when a tough war-critic emerged.

The "political propaganda machine'' of the White House was relentless in "shading the truth'' about intelligence supporting the U.S.-led invasion, McClellan writes, and Rove misled him personally about his own involvement in any talks with reporters about the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame after her husband, Joe Wilson, publicly criticized the White House for manipulating intelligence.

Yet Rove "was specifically excluded from National Security Council war meetings,'' he writes. And so was McClellan, in a White House which he describes as "compartmental'' and secretive, even with some of its own highest-level people.

Rove, for his part, maintains that McClellan lacks the real inside track and the insight to support his "sweeping assertions'' about the administration's propaganda machine.

"The biggest thing about this book that troubles me is that he makes these wide sweeping assertions and then provides no evidence,'' Rove told Bill O'Reilly on FOX News' The O'Reilly Report. This includes "the most important one, which is the assertion that the president went into Iraq by misleading the American people with a propaganda effort with deception, you know, shading the truth.''

by Mark Silva

Heading into what well might be the homestretch of the Democratic Party's presidential nomination contest - a party rules-fight Saturday over disputed delegates from Florida and Michigan, the remaining primaries Tuesday and the final dance of the decisive superdelegates - it's worth taking a measure of where everyone stands:

-- Barack Obama, Democrat, in a dead-heat with John McCain (R).

-- Hillary Clinton, Democrat, in a dead-heat with McCain.

-- Obama comfortably favored over Clinton among Democrats.

The Republicans already know who they're running: McCain. By Tuesday, or within a few days afterward, the Democrats should know their nominee as well.

There are plenty of polls on the question of who is more electable - and not only national polls, but also surveys in several battleground states on which the contest will likely turn. And of course Clinton is arguing these dynamics in her final bid to stop Obama. But for the sake of consistency, and looking at one survey that has been running on a rolling, daily basis for some time now, with three-day averages, here's what Gallup says near the close of the primary campaigns:

Obama is favored over Clinton by a solid 10 percentage points among Democrats surveyed. This is after months of a largely tied contest.

Clinton holds a 2 percentage point advantage, nationally, over McCain among all voters. Obama holds a 1-point edge over McCain.

"Clinton and Obama are now both statistically tied with McCain in the preferences of registered voters,'' Gallup reports.

Consider that: Five months from Election Day on Nov. 4, either one of the Democrats ready to claim their party's mantle stands toe-to-toe with the Republican candidate. If the last five months have made for high political drama, the next five promise an epic.

"Meanwhile, the Democratic nomination fight between Clinton and Obama goes on,'' Gallup notes -- though not for long. In Gallup Poll daily tracking from May 27-29, Obama has a 10-point advantage over Clinton in national Democratic preferences, 52 vs. 42 percent. "This... represents the continuation of a two-and-a-half week stretch during which Obama has nearly continuously held a significant lead.''

Gallup has interviewed at least 1,000 adults during 2008. The Democratic results come from surveys taken May 27-29. The survey of 1,240 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. The general election results come from surveys May 24-25 and 27-29. The survey of 4,368 registered voters carries a two-point error margin.

For more, see the Gallup Poll.

by Jim Tankersley

A leading evangelical Christian group is telling supporters that a "cultural earthquake" rocked California earlier this month, which threatens "to permanently alter marriage and families in America."

Focus on the Family Action, the political offshoot of Dr. James Dobson's Colorado-based Focus on the Family, is ramping up its coast-to-coast "battle to save marriage," its senior vice president for government and public policy explained in a fundraising e-mail this week. The effort is a response to a California court ruling that legalized gay marriage in that state, and which Focus on the Family Action says "will be felt in every state that does not already have a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman" because California does not require residency for marriage.

"Homosexual activists across the nation will be emboldened to push their anti-family agenda (it's happening this very moment in Colorado)," senior vice president Tom Minnery writes in the Focus letter. "The only recourse is for Californians to pass a state marriage-protection amendment on the ballot this November."

Later, he adds: "The California homosexual marriage 'earthquake' could forever change the cultural landscape of our nation -- unless pro-family citizens like you and me take a stand."

A series of state initiatives banning gay marriage drew big attention in 2004. Republicans credited them for bolstering evangelical turnout at the polls and helping to push President Bush to re-election victory, particularly in battleground Ohio. Analysts wondered in the aftermath of the California ruling if the issue could once again factor heavily this year.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama oppose gay marriage, and, unlike Bush, both oppose a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Obama supports civil unions for gay couples.
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A large crane lies in this intersection on Manhattan's Upper East Side after it collapsed Friday, May 30, 2008 in New York City just before first responders arrived. (AP Photo/Seth Holladay)

by Fr