Free Republic

Old Friends Recount Memories Of The Presidential Hopeful Before His Political Success (AP) The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog's head. This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city's derelicts was to avoid them entirely. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the bum, who approached him menacingly. Until his skinny,...

Obama spent the six years between 1979 and 1985 in Los Angeles at Occidental College and then in New York at Columbia University and in the workplace. His memoir, "Dreams From My Father," talks about this time but not in great detail; Siddiqi, for example, is identified only as "Sadik" — "a short, well-built Pakistani" who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. Obama's campaign wouldn't identify "Sadik," but The Associated Press located him in Seattle, where he raises money for a community theater. Together, the recollections of Siddiqi and other friends and acquaintances from Obama's college years paint...