Free Republic

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...