Barack Obama has dedicated his life to public service as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, and leader in the Illinois state Senate.Obama now continues his fight for working families following his recent election to the United States Senate. Sworn into office January 4, 2005, Senator Obama is focused on promoting economic growth and bringing good paying jobs to Illinois.Obama serves on the important Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees legislation and funding for the environment and public works projects throughout the country, including the national transportation bill.Barack Obama also serves on the Veterans ’ Affairs Committee where he is focused on investigating the disability pay discrepancies that have left thousands of Illinois veterans without the benefits they earned.Senator Obama also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.During his seven years in the Illinois state Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state./div
United States Senator. Born August 4, 1961 in Hawaii, the son of Barack Obama, Sr., a member of Kenya's Luo tribe, and Ann Dunham. At the age of six, Obama moved with his family to Djakarta, Indonesia, after his mother remarried. Four years later, he returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend the esteemed Punahou Academy. Obama graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer in some of city’s toughest neighborhoods. In 1991, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama taught for many years at the University of Chicago Law School and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton’s election. He spent seven years in the Illinois state Senate, always putting working families at the top of his agenda. In 2004, he made a successful bid for the United States Senate, becoming only the third African-American elected to the Senate in more than a century."In a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success, In a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential " -Barack ObamaHomeland Security-- Senator Obama believes that greater attention needs to be paid to the nation’s homeland security. To that end, he has supported efforts to distribute more funds to cities like Chicago most at risk of a terrorist attack. He has also introduced legislation to strengthen chemical plant and drinking water security and to enhance disaster preparedness.Only two years ago, Barack Obama, at the time a little-known candidate for the US Senate, gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, leaving an ever-lasting impression on millions. Currently, there is an increasing wave of support throughout the country for Obama to run for the presidency in 2008. Many believe this will be the best time for Obama to run, considering the strong desire among Americans for widespread change and honest leadership. We believe Obama is the best candidate, on either side, because his candidacy would transcend partisan divisions and embolden those who are thirsting for a leader who truly represents the American people. After winning the Illinois Senate race and being sworn into office on January 4, 2005, Senator Obama quickly proved to be a Real Voice in Congress. Obama serves on the important Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees legislation and funding for the environment and public works projects throughout the country, including the national transportation bill. He also serves on the Veterans ’ Affairs Committee where he is focused on investigating the disability pay discrepancies that have left thousands of Illinois veterans without the benefits they earned. Senator Obama also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. During his seven years in the Illinois state Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. Obama also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama enlisted the support of law enforcement officials to draft legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. Obama is especially proud of being a husband and father of two daughters, Malia, 8 and Sasha, 4. Obama and his wife, Michelle, married in 1992 and live on Chicago ’s South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ. Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.After winning the Illinois Senate race and being sworn into office on January 4, 2005, Senator Obama quickly proved to be a Real Voice in Congress. Obama serves on the important Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees legislation and funding for the environment and public works projects throughout the country, including the national transportation bill. He also serves on the Veterans ’ Affairs Committee where he is focused on investigating the disability pay discrepancies that have left thousands of Illinois veterans without the benefits they earned. Senator Obama also serves on the Foreign Relations Committee. During his seven years in the Illinois state Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. Obama also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama enlisted the support of law enforcement officials to draft legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. Obama is especially proud of being a husband and father of two daughters, Malia, 8 and Sasha, 4. Obama and his wife, Michelle, married in 1992 and live on Chicago ’s South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ. Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.
Senator Obama has been able to develop innovative approaches to challenge the status quo and get results. Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success.STRENGTHENING AMERICA OVERSEAS- As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Obama has fought to strengthen America's position in the world. Reaching across the aisle, Obama has tackled problems such as preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and stopping the genocide in Darfur.PLAN TO END THE IRAQ WAR Before the war in Iraq ever started, Senator Obama said that it was wrong in its conception. In 2002, then Illinois State Senator Obama said Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States and that invasion would lead to an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. Since then, Senator Obama has laid out a plan on the way forward in Iraq that was largely been affirmed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton.CLEANING UP WASHINGTON'S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION- Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has been a leader in fighting for open and honest government. As a U.S. Senator, he has spearheaded the effort to clean up Washington in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. In a politically charged election year, Obama acknowledged that corruption was a problem that plagued both political parties. He subsequently enlisted the help of Republican allies to limit lobbyist influence, shine sunlight into the earmarks process and promote open government.MEETING AMERICA'S ENERGY NEEDS- Senator Obama has been a leader in the Senate in pushing for a comprehensive national energy policy and has introduced a number of bills to get us closer to the goal of energy independence. By putting aside partisan battles, he has found common ground on CAFE, renewable fuels, and clean coal.HONORING OUR VETERANS As a member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, Senator Obama is committed to helping the heroes who defend our nation today and the veterans who fought in years past. A grandson of a World War II veteran who went to college on the G.I. Bill, Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans and Democrats in order to honor our commitment to America's veterans.IMPROVING OUR SCHOOLS We are failing too many of our children in public schools. Right now, six million middle and high school students read at levels significantly below their grade level. Unfortunately, the debate in Washington has been narrowed: either we need to pour more money into the system, or we need to reform it with more tests and standards. Senator Obama has worked on bills that cut through this false choice and recognize that good schools will require both structural reform and resources.CREATING A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM THAT WORKS- The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet more than 46 million Americans have no health insurance. Too many hard-working Americans cannot afford their medical bills, and health-related issues are the number one cause for personal bankruptcy. Promoting affordable, accessible, and high-quality health care is a priority for Senator Obama.PROTECTING OUR HOMELAND- Five years after 9/11, our country is still unprepared for a terrorist attack. From improving security for our transit systems and chemical plants, to increasing cargo screening in our airports and seaports, the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission have been underfunded and ignored. The 9/11 Commission gave the government five F's and 12 D's on the implementation of its recommendations. Senator Obama has supported efforts to base homeland security spending on risk rather than pork-barrel politics. He has also introduced legislation to strength chemical plant and drinking water security and to enhance disaster preparedness.STRENGTHENING FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES- Strong families raise successful children and keep communities together. While Senator Obama does not believe that we can simply legislate healthy families, good parenting skills or economic success, he does believe we can eliminate roadblocks that parents face and provide tools to help them succeed. A husband and father of two, Senator Obama has promoted strong families in the Senate.PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO VOTE- There is no more fundamental American right than the right to vote. Before the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes and property requirements disenfranchised many Americans, especially minorities. More than 40 years later, there are still numerous obstacles to ensuring that every citizen has the ability to vote. Reconciling Faith and Politics In June of 2006, Senator Obama delivered what was called the most important speech on religion and politics in 40 years. Speaking before an evangelical audience, Senator Obama candidly discussed his own religious conversion and doubts, and the need for a deeper, more substantive discussion about the role of faith in American life.
"There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.-Barack Obama"Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (born in Alego, a village in Nyanza Province, Kenya,) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). His parents met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. When Obama was two years old, his parents separated and later divorced; his father went to Harvard to pursue PhD studies, eventually returning to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian foreign student, and they had one daughter. The family moved to Jakarta when Obama was six years old. Four years later, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a large, private college preparatory school in Honolulu, which he attended through 12th grade, graduating in 1979. His father died in a car accident in Kenya when Obama was 21 years old. Obama's mother died of cancer a few months after the publication of his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. In Dreams from My Father, Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's white American middle class family. His knowledge about his absent black Kenyan father came mainly through family stories and photographs. Of his early childhood, Obama wrote: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me—that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—barely registered in my mind." As a young adult, he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. Obama writes about smoking marijuana and trying cocaine during his teenage years to "push questions of who I was out of my mind." After high school, Obama studied for two years at Occidental College in California and then transferred to Columbia College in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. After receiving his Bachelors of Arts degree in 1983, Obama worked for one year at Business International Corporation. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to direct a non-profit project assisting local churches to organize job training programs for residents of poor neighborhoods. Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he gained national recognition for becoming the first African American to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review. He obtained his Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. On returning to Chicago, Obama directed a voter registration drive, then worked for the civil rights law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.Seniors-- As we transition to an increasingly global economy, many Americans are at risk of being left behind through no fault of their own. Among those most affected by these changes are senior citizens, many of whom are on fixed incomes. We need to modernize our social safety net to help senior citizens meet these new challenges, but we also must preserve those elements, such as Social Security and Medicare, that have enabled us to fulfill our moral commitment to our parents and grandparents.Racial Profiling-- In 2000, to remedy the problem of racial profiling in Illinois, the ACLU is endorsing a proposal, Senate Bill 1324 filed last week by state Senator Barack Obama (D-Chicago), requiring all law enforcement agencies in the state to gather and report data about the race and ethnicity of all motorists they stop for traffic violations - whether police issue a citation or warning. The information about traffic stops would be collected at the county level and reported to the Illinois Secretary of State, whose office will analyze the data for trends and make a report about evidence of racial profiling to the General Assembly. "There is no longer be any debate about the existence of racial profiling in Illinois and across the nation," said Edwin C. Yohnka, spokesperson for the ACLU. "This proposal simply establishes a measure of accountability within the state's law enforcement agencies. All any officer is asked to do is gather one more piece of information - the race of a motorist - each time they make a traffic stop." In announcing organizational support for S.B. 1324, the ACLU noted that a number of states already have initiated procedures for collecting data on the race or ethnicity of motorists stopped and searched by police.Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American resident of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for seven years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama's life – growing up in different places with people who had differing ideas – that have animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose – a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars are spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.As a member of the Veterans Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America's addiction to oil, he's working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.Whether it's the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 8, and Sasha, 5, live on Chicago's South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.
2008 CAMPAGIN - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION Obama's keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention sparked expectations that he would eventually run for U.S. President. Speculation on a 2008 presidential run intensified after Obama's decisive U.S. Senate election win in November 2004, prompting him to tell reporters: "I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years." But in an October 2006 interview on the television program Meet the Press, Obama appeared to open the possibility of a 2008 presidential bid. Following Obama's statement, opinion polling organizations added his name to surveyed lists of Democratic candidates. The first such poll ranked Obama in second place with 17% support among Democrats after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who placed first with 28% of the responses. The most recent Rasmussen poll places Clinton and Obama in a "virtual tie" for support among likely Democratic primary voters. In a December 2006 cover story headlined "The Race is On", Newsweek magazine columnist Jonathan Alter asked: "Is America Ready for Hillary or Obama?" Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Illinois State Comptroller Daniel Hynes were early advocates for a 2008 Obama presidential run. Celebrity television show host Oprah Winfrey and film actor George Clooney have also expressed readiness to campaign for an Obama presidency. Commentators have suggested that Obama's chances to be elected president would be better in 2008 than in 2012 or later. In an October 2006 editorial published in the Chicago Tribune, Newton Minow compared prospects for a 2008 Obama presidential bid to John F. Kennedy's successful 1960 presidential campaign. A December 2006 op-ed by conservative columnist George Will detailed four reasons why he thinks now is a good time for Obama to run for president. In September 2006, Obama was the featured speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, a political event traditionally attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus. In December 2006, Obama spoke at a New Hampshire event celebrating Democratic Party midterm election victories in the first-in-the-nation U.S. presidential primary state, drawing 1,500 people. On January 14, 2007, the Chicago Tribune reported that Obama has begun assembling his team for a 2008 presidential campaign to be headquartered in Chicago. On January 16, 2007, Obama announced that he would be filing paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to establish a Presidential Exploratory Committee and that he expected to make a decision by February 10. CNN reported that sources "who work for Senator Obama" told reporters that Obama could make his first campaign visit to Iowa on the weekend of January 20.Crime-- Senator Obama is a strong proponent of tougher measures to fight crime and provide more resources to local law enforcement officers. He is particularly concerned about the growing problem of methamphetamine, which is ravaging many communities in Illinois.