Free Republic

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...

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...

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...

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...