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.

[1]High Court to Hear Exxon Appeal

Company argues $2.5B punitive award for 1989 oil spill off Alaska violates federal maritime law.

link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102900779.html?nav=rss_email/components

[1] <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/29/AR2007102900779.html?nav=rss_email/components>

He married in 1992 and has two daughters. 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. He flew his wife and two daughters from Chicago to join him in a visit to his father's birthplace, a village near Kisumu in rural western Kenya. President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step toward immigration reform. S. 2611 passed the Senate in May 2006, but failed to gain majority support in the U.S. House of Representatives. The protection was not in response to any specific threat, but the campaign had received "hate mail, calls and other 'threatening materials'" in the past, and officials felt that the large crowds and increased campaign activity warranted the order. In a June 2006 podcast, Obama expressed support for telecommunications legislation to protect network neutrality on the Internet, saying: "It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. 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. We've got it all. But I've got news for them too.

"He was an early opponent of Bush administration policies on Iraq. He was overwhelmingly reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998 and 2002, officially resigning in November 2004, following his election to the U.S. Senate. Obama said, "The time has come for universal health care in America Z...Z I am absolutely determined that by the end of the first term of the next president, we should have universal health care in this country. He hired former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle's ex-chief of staff for the same position, and Karen Kornbluh, an economist who was deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, as his policy adviser. He was also criticized by a rival pro-choice candidate in the Democratic primary and by his Republican pro-life opponent in the general election for having voted either "present" or "no" on anti-abortion legislation. In September 2006, he was the featured speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, an event traditionally attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus. The Rasmussen polling organization reported in May 2007 that 49% of Americans consider it "somewhat likely" or "very likely" that Obama will be elected. Lugar and Obama inspected a Nunn-Lugar program-supported nuclear warhead destruction facility at Saratov, in southern European Russia. " He describes his Kenyan father as "raised a Muslim," but a "confirmed atheist" by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian step-father as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia.

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. In it he recalls his childhood in Honolulu and Jakarta, college years in Los Angeles and New York City, and his employment as a community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s. Obama sponsored 152 bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and cosponsored another 427.