As Illinois voters prepare to select who will run to succeed retiring Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, MRC’s Ken Shepherd notes that this sort of primary-season speech would be seen as a chilling bit of church-state commingling if it came from religious conservatives:

“Mr. Jackson stood in front of a Chicago church choir, endorsed Barack Obama and recalled how Congress passed the landmark Voting Rights Act 39 years ago after civil rights marchers outside Selma, Ala., were met with dogs and police clubs. ‘We must never forget the blood of the cross or the blood on the bridge at Selma, Ala.,’ Mr. Jackson said.”