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War On Terror: Sen. Barack Obama thinks troops should be sent into Pakistan. But he really wants to fight terrorism the same way liberals combat inner-city crime: with social programs financed by U.S. taxpayers. After foolishly promising as president to meet unconditionally with terrorist states, Obama, the Illinois Democrat, has gotten tough: He now wants U.S. forces to zero in on the mountains of northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may still be alive. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans," Obama told the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday. "If we...

Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama cast himself as the leader the US needed to stand up to and engage renegade nations such as North Korea. ’We need a president who’ll have the strength and courage to go toe-to-toe with the leaders of rogue nations, because that’s what it takes to protect our security,“ the Illinois senator told Democrats at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “That’s what I’ll do as your next commander in chief.� Obama and rival Hillary Clinton have had a running argument since clashing in last week’s debate over how far the US should be willing to...

 Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama told New Hampshire voters Friday that President Bush grossly misunderstands his role as commander in chief. "When President Bush says, 'I just want to give the commanders what they want, listen to the generals,' he doesn't understand how we work here in America. Civilians control the military and we are supposed to set the mission for the generals and then the generals should carry out the mission," Obama said at an outdoor town hall meeting.

Oprah Winfrey may be the celebrity steroid that catapults Democratic presidential hopeful Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to the nomination. It started in 2005 when Oprah gushed over Obama, trading stories on set about their odd names growing up (he was told become “Barack Smith” or “Joe Obama” while people told her name to change to “Suzie.”) His good looks, charming smile and idealistic language -- the stuff that empty-worded speeches ("What we've had is a shortage of hope…”) are made of -- have taken hold of some -- Oprah included. She showed her affection this week by announcing a $2,300...

CHICAGO (AP) - Standing before a church congregation that has witnessed inner-city violence firsthand, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Sunday that more must be done to end a social ill that is "sickening the soul of this nation." Obama told churchgoers at the Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's South Side that too many young lives are being claimed by violence and more must be done to combat the problem. "From South Central L.A. to Newark, New Jersey, there's an epidemic of violence that's sickening the soul of this nation," the Illinois senator told the crowd. "The...

For four decades, Joseph Torrenueva has cut the hair of Hollywood celebrities, including Marlon Brando and Bob Barker, so when a friend told him in 2003 that a presidential candidate needed grooming advice, he agreed to help. The Beverly Hills hairstylist, a Democrat, said he hit it off with then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) at a meeting in Los Angeles that brought several fashion experts together to advise the candidate on his appearance. Since then, Torrenueva has cut Edwards's hair at least 16 times. At first, the haircuts were free. But because Torrenueva often had to fly somewhere on the campaign...

Former South Dakota Senator Backs Obama For President Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama is getting support from former Senate Majority Leader and South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle. Daschle made stops throughout Iowa on Saturday, campaigning for Senator Obama. In Spencer and Algona, he officially opened Obama's campaign offices. Doors for the Spencer office opened at four o'clock Saturday afternoon. Daschle says Obama's ideas, age, and honesty are what he likes most. Daschle says "I'm backin' Obama because I believe strongly we need someone with real integrity and he's got it because I agree with him on the issues on Iraq,...

Obama Says Some Have `hijacked' Faith Jun 23 03:24 PM US/Eastern By STEPHEN SINGER Associated Press Writer HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Sen. Barack Obama told a church convention Saturday that some right- wing evangelical leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow division. "Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked," the Democratic presidential candidate said in remarks prepared for delivery before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ. "Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of...

WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Secret Service agents have tagged Sen. Barack Obama with the code name "Renegade." Obama, an Illinois Democrat and seeker of his party's 2008 presidential nomination, received the name in the time-honored tradition of giving "secret" code names to protected high-level dignitaries. Obama's presidential rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., retains the code name "Evergreen" -- given to her when her husband, and former president, Bill Clinton became a protectee and was named "Eagle." Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts was named "Minuteman" after winning the 2004 Democratic nomination, while former vice president Al Gore...

"Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., pretends to choke after drinking lemonade he bought from a stand before speaking at a potluck picnic, Saturday, June 16, 2007, in Webster City, Iowa."

D.C. Townhouse Where Barack Obama Lives Catches Fire Sunday , June 17, 2007 AP WASHINGTON — A Capitol Hill house where Sen. Barack Obama rents an apartment caught on fire Sunday, but a spokesman said the Democratic presidential contender was out of town to celebrate Father's Day. The fire appeared to be on the third floor of a townhouse in northeast Washington, and was likely caused by an old fan that had malfunctioned, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. Obama rents an apartment on the second floor, Gibbs said.

RENO, Nev. - Sen. Barack Obama vowed Thursday to restore environmental protections the Bush administration has rolled back through executive orders, especially at the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama said the EPA has been "demoralized. [Snip] Making his third appearance in Nevada, Obama said much of the Bush administration's weakening of environmental regulations has been accomplished through administrative orders without congressional action. "That means President Obama can reverse them by executive order," Obama told reporters after a speech to about 4,000 at a downtown Reno park on an island in the middle of the Truckee River. [Snip] The first-term senator also...

DARTMOUTH, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama said Monday that he expects his performance in next week's presidential debate to improve from his first head-to-head match-up with the other Democratic contenders last month in South Carolina. "I assume it will get better as time goes on," the Illinois Democrat answered after being asked whether he expects to receive better reviews at the New Hampshire Democratic presidential debate being held Sunday, June 3rd at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. The South Carolina Democratic presidential debate was the Illinois senator's first such event and his performance was rated by political analysts...

US Democratic presidential hope Barack Obama polished his national security credentials on Wednesday, introducing a Senate bill encouraging investors to cash out of projects which benefit Iran. Obama, who most national polls have in second place in the Democratic field behind Hillary Clinton, targeted Iran's lucrative oil and gas industry in a bill spurred by the US belief the Islamic Republic is building nuclear arms. The measure, also introduced in the House of Representatives by lawmakers Barney Frank and Tom Lantos, would help investors and state and local governments divest from instruments which benefit Iran. "The Iranian government uses the...

The religion of the left seems to be environmentalism, and the everyone knows what happens when religious figures on the right are exposed as hypocrites. Ted Haggard, Jim Baker and others have claimed to stand for one thing and privately lived a life that conflicted with their stated beliefs, and the media covered it non-stop. In contrast, the media ignore that the darling of the Democratic presidential candidates has again been nailed as an environmental hypocrite. Barack Obama was outed as an SUV driver in 2006, who said at the same time, "the blame for the world's higher temperature rests...

Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died. The death toll was 12. "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser. Obama mentioned the disaster in Greensburg, Kan., in saying he had been told by the office of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that the state's National Guard had been depleted by its...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Is MySpace always mine or can it belong to someone else? At the cost of losing 160,000 friends, Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign has taken over control of the MySpace page listed under his name on the popular social networking site. For the past two and a half years, the page has been run by an Obama supporter from Los Angeles named Joe Anthony. At first, that arrangement was fine with the Obama team, which worked with Anthony on the content and even had the password to make changes themselves. But as the site exploded in popularity...

Soon it will be time for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to face a moment of truth and decide whether he is going to lead the anti-war movement or cave in under administration pressure. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) move toward an accommodation with the White House over funding for the war in Iraq, they are also moving toward a civil war within their own party. If Pelosi and Reid agree to give Bush a new bill providing funding for the war without a deadline for troop withdrawal, they will redeem their party’s...

...Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. It had a deliberate New Frontier feel, including some Kennedy-era references ("we were Berliners") and even the Cold War-era notion that the United States is the "leader of the free world." No one speaks of the "free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it will...

Barack Hussein Obama stumbled during the first Democratic debate

Sen. Barack Obama emerged as the big winner at Thursday's first Democratic presidential debate. It's not so much that he scored a knockout punch, or that he was head and shoulders above any of the other candidates — in fact, it's the opposite. Obama held his own with the others, particularly vis-à-vis his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. He clearly showed that he belonged on the stage with his longer-serving rivals. In doing so, he helped vanquish his leading negative: inexperience. The polls indicate that experience is Hillary Clinton's leading virtue in the eyes of her supporters; her experience is clearly...

A study to be published in the upcoming June edition of the American Journal of Public Health has researchers alarmed about growing rates of syphilis among homosexual and bisexual men. The overall number of syphilis cases in the United States fell from 50,578 in 1990 to 7,177 in 2003. Nevertheless, homosexual men have seen their rates rise significantly in this decade. "The entire nation was caught unawares," said study lead author James Heffelfinger, M.D., a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study provides further evidence of the dangers involved with the homosexual lifestyle. LifeSiteNews.com reported...

Paul Tudor Jones, the wealthy hedge fund manager, has become the latest in a growing band from his profession to throw their weight behind Barack Obama, the US senator vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr Jones is said to be planning to host a 500-guest fundraiser for Mr Obama on May 19. The event will be held at Mr Jones’s seaside mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, a big US centre for hedge funds. “The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,” said one leading US businessman. Hedge fund managers, whose newly found wealth has made them attractive targets for presidential hopefuls,...

That was fast. The Sun-Times broke the story about Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record)'s relationship with Tony Rezko on Monday, but I think we may have already reached the point where Obama's reaction to the story is drawing more attention than the particulars of the story itself. Carol Marin, a reporter for NBC 5 and a columnist for the Sun-Times, puts the boot in today: Barack Obama tells us he is the messenger of a new kind of politics. Open. Transparent. Different. But put the pedal to the metal and ask Illinois' junior senator new and serious questions about...

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said Tuesday that America needs to ask Israel to help change the status quo in its conflict with the Palestinians, the only candidate at a National Jewish Democratic Council conference to suggest that there is any onus on the Jewish state when it comes to making peace with its neighbors."The United States government and an Obama presidency cannot ask Israel to take risks with respect to its security," he told the crowd of Democratic activists and campaign contributors. "But it can ask Israel to say that it is still possible for us to allow more...

CHICAGO - Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) said Monday that President Bush has fallen short in his role as leader of the free world, and the 2008 election is a chance to change that. "This president may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it is time to fill that role once more," Obama said in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The Illinois senator was in his hometown to deliver a foreign policy address that was...

NEW YORK (AP) - Wooing black voters while tackling questions about his experience, Democrat Barack Obama said Saturday that his years as a community organizer and accomplishments in the Illinois state Senate have prepared him well for the presidency. Addressing the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Obama touted his successes as an Illinois lawmaker in providing health insurance to children and reducing the price of prescription drugs for senior citizens. He also told of passing legislation to monitor racial profiling and to require that police interrogations of suspects in capital cases be videotaped....

A woman's tearful plea to Barack Obama to end the Iraq war momentarily caught the Democratic Presidential candidate off guard during a public appearance in Nashua yesterday. "I can't breathe," said the woman......more at link

DURHAM, N.H. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Friday issued a call to save future generations from global catastrophe as he offered an energy proposal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. "We've been talking about climate change in Washington for years and energy independence and efficiency for years," Obama said. "But no matter how many scientists testified about greenhouse gases, no matter how much evidence that they're threatening our coasts and endangering our weather patterns, nothing happened with global warming until now." The Illinois senator stood in front of University of New Hampshire campus buses that...

....a speech that Barack Obama made in Milwaukee just hours after the massacre. It must be heard to be believed. After deploring and expressing grief about the shootings, he continues (my transcription): "I hope that it causes us to reflect a little bit more broadly on the degree to which we do accept violence in various forms. . . . There's also another kind of violence . . . it's not necessarily physical violence." What kinds does he have in mind? First, "Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women [of Rutgers]. . . . For them...

Hours after the Virginia Tech massacre, Barack Obama spoke at a campaign stop in Milwaukee. Obama could have shown compassion unalloyed with politics, what one hopes to find in a leader when disaster strikes. But he didn't. In the grand tradition of leftist orators, Obama repackaged the awful news of the day to "reflect" on his own political themes. "I hope," the candidate said about the massacre, "that it causes us to reflect a little more broadly on the degree to which we do accept violence in various forms all the time in our society: we glorify it, we encourage...

Should sexual orientation be part of a sex-ed curriculum? Thursday morning on Good Morning America millions of viewers saw a story about a new, controversial sex-ed curriculum now being tested in a handful of middle and high schools in Montgomery County, Maryland. The news reporter presented the question, are schools going too far in health class by discussing homosexuality? Click here to watch the report. What the ABC reporter failed to mention is that not only is the topic controversial, much of the actual curriculum is medically misleading or inaccurate. For example, teachers are required to say "sexual orientation is...

Fred Thompson 44% Hitlary 43% Fred Thompson 37% Hussein Obama 49% Poll based on 800 likely voters over March 21-22..

US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama can now count himself as one of the millions of Americans with Irish heritage. Research by the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk reveals that Mr Obama's great great great grandfather was born in Ireland, although it is not yet known where. Falmouth Kearney sailed from Ireland to New York in 1850 at the age of 19 on the S.S. Marmion arriving on the 20th of March. AdvertisementHe initially settled in Ohio, got married, had eight children, and later moved to Indiana, right next door to the state Obama currently represents in the US Senate. Mr Keaney was...

The issue of Sen. Barack Obama’s Muslim past has surfaced again as his campaign steps back from its flat denial that he ever belonged to the Islamic faith. Earlier this year several media outlets reported that Obama had attended a radical madrasa, or Islamic school, when he lived in Indonesia. At the time, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declared: “To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago.” The report about the radical madrasa turned out to be false. Now, in...

The Obama drama and the law of unintended consequences are definitely in sync. Just ask Chicago journalists and pols. My phone has been chiming off the hook and the e-mail box is stuffed with missives from radio stations, TV shows and newspapers craving the authenticity of a Chicago perspective on an international phenomenon -- Sen. Barack Obama. Chicago exists! For the first time, the national media establishment is looking to Chicago for answers. I've lived in a fly-over city for so long, I have developed a chronic stiff neck. The national media are reaching out for Obama stories from Japan,...

Hollywood is a very bitchy place, but usually the barbs are aimed privately and mainly at others’ backs. Tonight, however, as the Oscar public relations circus unfolds, the backstage buzz will likely be as much about politics as about movies. And the barbs that are being buzzed about are very, very public ones, and aimed directly at the front of one Hillary Rodham Clinton.Last Wednesday the movie mogul David Geffen decided to unload to The New York Times’s Maureen Dowd on the prospect of another Clinton presidency. Here’s what he said of the Democratic field: “Whoever is the nominee is...

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., puts on a cowboy hat handed to him as the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination leaves a rally in Austin, Texas, Friday, Feb. 23, 2006. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

The Associated Press reports that Barack Obama, Illinois's African-American junior senator, has established a presidential exploratory committee in preparation for a possible run next year. Meanwhile, London's Sunday Times reports that there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm among so-called civil rights leaders: At a meeting of activists in New York last week, the Rev Jesse Jackson, the first black candidate to run for president, declined to endorse Obama. "Our focus right now is not on who's running, because there are a number of allies running," Jackson said. The Rev Al Sharpton, the fiery New York preacher who joined the...

Ted Kennedy Introducing "Osama Obama" CONCORD, NH --Democrat Sen. Barack Hussein Obama plans to open offices in New Hampshire and visit the first-in-the-nation primary state within the next month, a key supporter said Tuesday. Demers said the exploratory committee is a formality. "All indications are that he is going to be a full-fledged candidate very soon," he said. New Hampshire Democrat Party spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said Tuesday's announcement could loosen a pack of would-be volunteers for the first-term senator, who has turned his lack of experience in national politics into an asset.Strand said. "Now that it's official, you're going to...

Barack Hussein Obama is the closest Democrats can come to electing a foreign Muslim President of the United States without actually violating the constitutional requirement that American Presidents be native-born. Obama’s nomination would follow in the footsteps of 2004 Democrat presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry, whose French-language Swiss boarding school education made him the closest thing to a European socialist able to run for President of the US without violating the constitution. Not only does Obama’s name sound like some kind of sick Islamist joke on America—a candidate whose moniker invokes both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden—but he would be...

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" . . .

Like a dutiful dancing partner, Senator Barack Obama has begun courting the evangelical right, and some are already waltzing along in perfect time. With his attendance at Rick Warren‘s church, Saddleback Valley Community, a mega-church in California for a large conference about AIDS, Obama has begun to align himself with an important base of voters to gain what conservatives lost this last year. Already lauded by some prominent evangelical publications for his outstanding "Christian faith" and a person Rick Warren called a "good friend" and a someone he'd like to work with on important issues, Obama is in perfect position,...

...Even his aides wonder if he can meet lofty expectations, which have elevated him beyond a politician’s normal realm, thanks to his celebrity, ambition and biography. While a presidential campaign would highlight Mr. Obama’s strengths as a lyrical communicator and personable campaigner, it also could expose the shortcomings of a 45-year-old politician not fully developed, and one who will not enjoy the luxury of learning in obscurity. The next phase of his political development will inevitably draw intense and less flattering scrutiny, particularly if he goes head to head with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination; he...

George Clooney can't stop gushing about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. And while the Academy Award winning actor seems to resist making a formal endorsement, he's offered nothing but praise for the first-term political wunderkind. In an interview with "Good Morning America Weekend" co-anchor Kate Snow, Clooney explained, "I think [Obama would] be a good president in 2010, 2012 and 2014. I think he's the most charismatic person I've been in a room with in a long time." Settling in for an hour-long chat with PBS' Charlie Rose, the megastar elaborated. "I think he's the best candidate I've ever seen, I...

The possible presidential candidacy of the biracial senator has sparked an illuminating debate on race. WE KNOW this: Barack Obama is a rising star. He's a powerful speaker and a gifted writer. He is the only African American serving in the U.S. Senate. But is he black? That's what New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch asked last month, and his answer was decidedly "no." No, Crouch wasn't just employing the old "blacker than thou" canard. Nor was he concerned with the fact that Obama was raised by his white mother. Rather, he was treating blackness not just as a...

RUSH: Here we go with Barack Obama. As you know, he was up in New Hampshire -- do you know, by the way, TV ads for Barack Obama are going to start airing this weekend? Presidential ads for Barack Obama in New Hampshire start airing this weekend. Hillary, I think, is starting to get panicked because she's called up all of Bubba's old buddies, Carville and Begala and Joe Lockhart, she had them over to dinner to discuss what to do about this. Her team wasn't there. They're all one team, of course, but publicly Carville and Begala have said,...

If anyone else is watching Monday Night Football, you all know what I am talking about. Such cheap hype with this guy! I can't believe ESPN is now singing his praises...yeesh. Just scary.

The FOX report just did a piece about Barack Obama, and he was asked whether Americans were ready to have an African-American as president. Well, he answered to the effect that there were a few/some Americans who would not vote for him based on his race, but then again, those were probably the same people who didn't share his politics!