Barack Obama

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (born in Nyanza Province, Kenya) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.

Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Since announcing his candidacy in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War and implementing universal health care as campaign themes.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation, and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. His father went to Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies, then returned to Kenya, where he died in an auto accident when the younger Obama was twenty-one years old.

Freebirth Movement

washingtonpost.com Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:00:00 EDT

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/07/27/DI2007072701583.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
--
To unsubscribe from this feed, click here
To manage other subscriptions, click here
~
Powered by RssFwd, a service of Blue Sky Factory, Inc

On the first day of the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress, in a column published in the Washington Post, Obama called for an end to "any and all practices that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a public servant has become indebted to a lobbyist. Obama received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival. However, Hull's popularity declined following allegations of domestic abuse. Among his major accomplishments as a state legislator, Obama's U.S. Senate web site lists: "creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit"; "an expansion of early childhood education"; and "legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. The donations came from 104,000 individual donors, with US$6.9 million raised through the Internet from 50,000 of the donors. In her January 2007 Salon article asserting that Obama "isn't black," columnist Debra Dickerson writes: "lumping us all together Zwith ObamaZ erases the significance of slavery and continuing racism while giving the appearance of progress. In the same week, Zogby International reported that Obama leads all prospective Republican opponents in polling for the 2008 general election. " Speaking before the National Press Club in April 2005, Obama defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, associating Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security with Social Darwinism. If elected, Obama would become the first non-white U.S. president. He served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, launching his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2003. " In December 2006, Obama joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren.

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, while still serving as a state legislator. "I've never been a heavy smoker," Obama told the Chicago Tribune.

Obama, who defines himself in The Audacity of Hope as "a Democrat, after all," has been criticized for his political actions by self-described progressive commentator David Sirota, and complimented for his "Can't we all just get along?" manner by conservative columnist George Will. In 2003, Obama began his run for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Peter Fitzgerald.