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Memo to all national political journalists, columnists, pundits, etc.: Please, get a clue. Perhaps because I live in and cover the politics of a state which has elected two African-American U.S. senators, a black mayor of our largest city and a black secretary of state who four years ago carried all 102 counties, I find your coverage of the ''race issue'' in the presidential contest to be utterly devoid of insight and context. I'll try to fill you in. First, just because a prominent African-American leader endorses Hillary Clinton, that doesn't mean Barack Obama's campaign has suffered a mortal wound....

South Carolina is a key primary state, and Democratic White House front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton competed to hire the same influential African-American consultant -- a state senator who is pastor of a 10,000-member megachurch. Clinton's campaign made a deal, worth at least $10,000 a month, with state Sen. Darrell Jackson's firm, Sunrise Enterprises. The contract surfaced when Jackson earlier this week endorsed Clinton for president without mentioning his company would be working for her. But e-mail exchanges obtained by this column show how the Obama campaign tried to woo Jackson, who was also negotiating with former Sen....

A UCC-produced, feature-length documentary about a transgender seminarian’s struggle with faith, love and gender identity was among the top-attended films at two recent international film festivals. Call Me Malcolm — described as a "labor of love" by its creators and producers — debuted at the Riverside (Calif.) International Film Festival on Feb. 26 and the Cleveland International Film Festival, March 14-15.

Barack Obama announced his bid for president Saturday, a black man evoking Abraham Lincoln's ability to unite a nation and a Democrat portraying himself as a fresh face capable of leading a new generation. "Let us transform this nation," he told thousands shivering in the cold at the campaign's kickoff. Obama, 45, is the youngest candidate in the Democrats' 2008 primary field dominated by front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and filled with more experienced lawmakers. In an address from the state capital where he began his elective career 10 years ago, the first-term U.S. senator sought to distinguish himself as...

She not only is a lifelong Republican, but an anti-big government conservative Republican who campaigned for Robert Dole in 1996. Oh, and one other thing. The mere thought of Hillary Clinton becoming president makes her stomach churn. As her husband, Robert Stross - also a conservative Republican - puts it, "We don't believe anything Hillary says, and we think she'll do whatever it takes to get elected." All of which makes the Madison couple's recent decision all the more intriguing: They've joined the Wisconsin chapter of DraftObama.org, a grassroots movement to help the progressive Democratic senator from Illinois win the...

Fran Eaton's Jan 14 column "Pastor's teachings shouldn't widen racial divide" not only speaks to her hypocrisy but also exposes a less than exemplary attitude toward and understanding of the African-American community. Pastor Jeremiah Wright is recognized as one of the most respected, inspirational and knowledgeable ministers in the nation and in many countries throughout the world. The unique "Afrocentric" approach he brings to his ministry is one that applies the context of biblical teachings to accentuate black history, black pride and our connection to the transatlantic black community. His teachings are not unlike the teachings one may hear in...

If you are an African-American who is, dare I say it, well-spoken, you have a good idea what a white person means when he or she calls you "articulate." It's a code word and the inference often is this: "Wow, you're black and can speak Standard English, and skillfully? Omigosh!" "Articulate" is our generation's euphemistic equivalent to "Aren't you the little credit to your race." Sen. Joe Biden, Democrat from Delaware, announced his presidential aspirations last week and then stumbled in his well-publicized description of his potential rival, our own Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to a reporter from the New...

News Headline: "Biden launches presidential bid -- then walks into race row over Obama 'slur.' " Wait a minute. Whoa. This is what Democratic candidate Joe Biden is quoted as saying regarding Democratic candidate Barack Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy . . ." But woops. Wait. The print press forgot something. It forgot a comma: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy . . ." The video shows Biden spoke with...

January 25, 2007 To Fran Eaton: Optimistically, perhaps we can simply agree to disagree. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had a dream. He dreamed about what should be, as opposed to what was reality. I agree that racial division should not be one of the challenges facing America in the next decade. That is the dream but the reality has not caught up with the dream. Yes, some laws have changed; however the aftereffects of more than 200 years of socially engineered slavery and racial discrimination by European-Americans are not so easy to address, redress and rectify. That is what...

Before the serious stuff -- an analysis of Hillary Rodham Clinton's impressive ''shock and awe'' White House launch and Barack Obama's aggressive pushback to religious smear attacks -- this revelation: I discovered the secret location of Obama's 2008 presidential exploratory campaign office in Washington. When Obama jumped into the 2008 contest a week ago, I asked a routine question. Just where in Washington is the exploratory campaign based, since the legal papers used the address of his Washington lawyer. Obama's team declined to say. The only clue Obama's team yielded was the name of a street in downtown Washington. That's...

Today's quiz, dear readers, asks you to provide the middle names of these United States presidents: 1. Franklin Roosevelt 2. Richard Nixon 3. Woodrow Wilson 4. Abraham Lincoln 5. Alexander Hamilton The answers, of course, are: 1. Delano; 2. Milhous; 3. Woodrow; 4. I don't know; and 5. Wait a minute, that's a trick question. As far as I can tell, Lincoln -- also known as "the guy on the $5 bill" -- didn't have a middle name. But that didn't stop him from being one of our truly great presidents and an inspirational figure for the entire world. Alexander...

Fred Barnes calls him "the hottest figure in American politics." Peter LaBarbera says he is getting "Kennedy-esque treatment." He was invited by Pastor Rick Warren to attend a conference against AIDS, where he was dubbed the "Elvis" of Washington, D.C. There is no doubt that Senator Barack Hussein Obama, a black Democrat from Illinois, is being supported in an unprecedented way by media from Chicago to Washington, D.C. to New York, who want him to become the first black president of the United States. But if our media would take the time to analyze what he says, rather than roll...

If he runs, he just might win. Really, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has a good chance of becoming the first nonwhite male to win the presidency. Despite his lack of experience, it is his moment. But more than that, there are plenty of politically engaged baby boomers who are tired of waiting to see the American Dream realized. Yes, we've made some progress on bridging the racial gap. But it hasn't been enough. In many urban areas, the public schools have been re-segregated, neighborhoods are starkly divided by ethnicity and race, and the impoverished are hidden from view. Besides being...

For all those historians and political naysayers, Sen. Barack Obama's allies like to point out that Abraham Lincoln served just two years in the House before becoming president.It's a comparison certain to be repeated as Obama, with slightly more than two years in the Senate, continues to align himself with the Civil War president. The senator's expected campaign kickoff is scheduled for Feb. 10 in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Ill. - where both men served in the state legislature. Obama filed paperwork for a presidential exploratory committee Tuesday, which allows him to raise money and organize a campaign structure before...

Marc Sandalow: Obama is for Real It is too early and too wide open to brand any candidate a frontrunner. But as Barak Obama enters the 2008 presidential campaign, no one has a stronger chance of becoming the next president. The 45-year-old Senator from Illinois voices a liberal vision of America with more clarity and passion than any Democrat since Mario Cuomo more than two decades ago. His story is compelling: his father was a goatherd in Kenya who went on to earn a Ph.D at Harvard; his mother was from Kansas (from whom, he likes to say, "I got...

In an announcement weighted with history and moment, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who less than three years ago was serving in the Illinois Senate, declared today his intention to run for president. "As many of you know, over the last few months I have been thinking hard about my plans for 2008," Obama said in a statement on his presidential exploratory committee Web site. "Running for the presidency is a profound decision—a decision no one should make on the basis of media hype or personal ambition alone—and so before I committed myself and my family to this race, I wanted...

Supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are being told this morning there will be an 11 a.m. Chicago time conference call. Expected to be discussed is Obama filing papers to officially launch his 2008 White House run. Obama is expected to hit the road to travel to early primary states in the coming days. The call is being organized by Nate Tamarin, who was the political director for Obama's Washington D.C. based political action committee the Hope Fund. He now works with Pete Giangreco, the founder of the Strategy Group in Evanston, expected to handle Obama's direct mail in the...

Sen. Barack Obama told reporters in Washington that a paparazzi photo from his recent Hawaii vacation is "embarrassing." The Illinois Democrat was photographed barechested and wearing board shorts on a Hawaiian beach, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The photo, featured in People magazine alongside photos of Hugh Jackman, Penelope Cruz and Catherine Zeta-Jones, was titled "Beach Babes." Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank had two copies of People with him Monday at a news conference on Senate ethics that included Obama and 10 other senators, the Sun-Times said. "You know, I really appreciate you toting that around," Obama told Milbank. "It's embarrassing

WASHINGTON — The recent publicity around Sen. Barack Obama has pushed his name up the list of presidential front-runners, but his memoir of 11 years ago, in which Obama admits to using marijuana and cocaine, could push Americans to rethink what's acceptable in a presidential candidate. A top Democratic prospect for the 2008 White House, Obama wrote about himself in "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. ... I got high [to] push questions of who I was out of...

Look beyond Obama's two years in the Senate and you'll see that he's well prepared to run for president. SO WHY not Barack Obama? On his swing through New Hampshire last weekend, Obama drew rapturous crowds. But many pundits continue to assume that he'll be just a flash in the pan, sharing the fate of Howard Dean, the one-time Democratic hottie who flamed out before the campaign season ended. Sure, say his detractors, Obama is a symbol of hope to Americans desperate for politics that transcend barriers of race, class and ethnicity. But charisma isn't everything — it can't make...

Sen. Barack Obama is concerned about his personal security --telling the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board Thursday that he and his wife fear there is a potential for violence -- even if he does not run for president. "Being shot, obviously, that is the least-attractive option,'' Obama said. The Illinois Democrat told the Sun-Times he has concluded a 2008 White House bid "would be viable" and he would have "a pretty good chance of winning the nomination.'' For the first time, Obama talked about the downside of his swelling popularity, before his expected presidential announcement in January, after a vacation in...