Free Republic

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), citing the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, pledged on Saturday to bridge the partisan gridlock in Washington, end the war in Iraq and transform American politics as the first black U.S. president. Launching his 2008 White House campaign outside the building in where Lincoln began his fight against slavery with a famous 1858 speech that declared "a house divided against itself cannot stand," Obama said it was time to "turn the page" to a new politics. "Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation,"...

After only being a U.S. Senator for a couple of years, Barak Hussein Obama, Democrat Senator from Chicago, has managed to catapult himself to the status of a messiah in the Democrat Party. The result is that, ever since, he's been walking on water toward the White House. Obama says after his visit with friends and family in Hawaii during the 2006 year-end holidays, he'll announce if he's going to run for president in 2008. Bets are that he will. Who is Obama and what has he done? Independent columnist, Andy Martin (Out2.com) says he believes Obama is a political...

In 1994, two sociologists went to Red Hook, Brooklyn, to solve a mystery. Red Hook abutted the East River, and along the waterfront sat shipping companies and warehouses — all in need of low-skilled labor. Next door sat a housing project teeming with exactly that. But the locals — primarily African Americans — didn't get hired. Instead, the jobs went to workers from outside the neighborhood, often Caribbean immigrants. Employers, wrote The New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell in summarizing the sociologists' findings, "had developed an elaborate mechanism for distinguishing between those who they felt were 'good' blacks and those they felt...

Even if you are not a Muslim, calling someone a Muslim in America is a common political technique to destroy a candidate’s chances for election. Barack Obama is best known as an overnight political success story. Only a few years ago, he was just a local legislator in the Illinois State Senate. Two years ago, we was slated for the US Senate and won. Today, he is seen as a potential candidate for president of the United States. And, he is African American. And, his middle name is Hussein, and his father was, in Obama’s own words, an African “goat...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Every American should have health care coverage within six years, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday as he set an ambitious goal soon after jumping into the 2008 presidential race. "The time has come for universal health care in America," Obama said at a conference of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. "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," the Illinois senator said. Obama was previewing what is shaping up to be a theme of the 2008 Democratic...

“Swift boating” is a term that came into use during the 2004 presidential election to reflect Senator John Kerry’s flaccid response to attacks on his wartime record in Viet-Nam. The term, a noun, adjective and verb, has entered the political lexicon and is usually invoked when liberals and Democrats are stung trying to defend themselves against unpleasantly truthful accusations hurled by conservatives. Well, “swift boating” is obviously a two-way street in politics. Democrats are equally adept at hurling painful accusations at Republicans and conservatives. I have no problem with people bringing the truth to light, digging up unpleasant facts and...

One of the most entertaining opportunities that will emerge in 2007 will be using Barack Obama to fight Islamofascism. He is the product of a black Moslem from Kenya, Barrack Hussein Obama, and a white atheist from Kansas, Shirley Ann Dunham, who met at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. That is why his middle name is the same as Saddam’s: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. His first name is taken from the Islamic term in Arabic for “blessed,” baraka, used in the Koran. His father deserted the family when Barack Jr. was two and returned to Kenya. His mother then...

NEW YORK -- CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?" A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted. The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday. CNN called it a "bad typographical error" . . .

If Senator Barack Obama becomes President of the U. S., then the nation has the Illinois Republican Party to blame for it. Many voters who do not live in Illinois understand little about how Barack Obama became a U. S. Senator in the first place. Nor do they know of his record as a state senator or of his liberal voting record in the U. S. Senate over the last two years. Many just know Senator Obama, to quote John Podhoretz, as "an uncommonly opaque rock-star politician." Besides being a creation of the media, Senator Obama is also the creation...