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Pres. Barack Hussein Obama Esq.


Self Description

January 2009: "Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7."

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/president_obama/

August 2008: "Early Years

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.

The College Years

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 president 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 eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Political Career

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 is 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' Affairs 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, 10, and Sasha, 7, live on Chicago's South Side."

http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php

February 2006: "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. 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 will also serve 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...

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 editor of the Harvard Law Review."

http://obama.senate.gov/about/

Third-Party Descriptions

March 2013: 'President Barack Obama has told CNN that a target must meet "very tight and very strict standards."'

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/15/world/asia/u-n-drone-objections/index.html

February 2013: "President Obama recently suggested that he would ask Congress to close this loophole. Eliminating the carried-interest tax rate should be an easy sell. It should play to Republicans’ supposed hatred of government handouts and to Democrats’ commitment to social justice."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/opinion/carried-interest-an-unjust-privilege-for-financiers.html

January 2013: "LAS VEGAS — Seizing an opening to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, President Obama challenged Congress on Tuesday to act swiftly to put 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States on a clear path to citizenship."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/politics/obama-issues-call-for-immigration-overhaul.html

February 2013: "The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the  September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes."

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-exclusive-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans

January 2013: 'WASHINGTON — In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of presidential “recess” appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he installed three officials on the National Labor Relations Board a year ago.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/business/court-rejects-recess-appointments-to-labor-board.html

December 2012: "President Obama has proposed raising the capital gains rate to 20 percent, which would still be a preferential rate for high-income taxpayers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/business/plan-to-cap-deductions-is-setback-for-charities.html

November 2012: "But the White House was notably silent after it had earlier this week extolled the emerging relationship between President Obama and Mr. Morsi and credited a series of telephone calls between the two men with helping to mediate the cease-fire in Gaza."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/world/middleeast/amid-protest-egypts-leader-defends-his-new-powers.html

November 2012: 'In a call so controversial the President of the United States weighed in, Las Vegas sports bettors said they lost out on a last minute touchdown..."NFL fans on both sides of the aisle hope the refs' lockout is settled soon. --bo"'

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pura-vida/201211/unequal-or-unfair-which-is-worse

November 2012: 'PolitiFact has chronicled 19 “pants on fire” lies by Mr. Romney and 7 by Mr. Obama since 2007, but Mr. Romney’s whoppers have been qualitatively far worse: the “apology tour,” the “government takeover of health care,” the “$4,000 tax hike on middle class families,” the gutting of welfare-to-work rules, the shipment by Chrysler of jobs from Ohio to China. Said one of his pollsters, Neil Newhouse, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/opinion/the-real-loser-truth.html

October 2012: "In February 2011, the Obama administration determined that the provision of the law that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, and President Obama said he had directed the Department of Justice not to defend that aspect of the law in court."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/us/appeals-court-rules-against-defense-of-marriage-act.html

July 2012: '“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, ‘well it must be ‘cause I was so smart.’ Because if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Just as Romney’s Web video does, the audio is edited to remove the chunk of the speech in which Obama talks about our “great American system” and “roads and bridges,” misleading listeners into believing that the “didn’t build that” line was an insult to business owners. Any listener would reasonably conclude that the language quoted above is exactly as Obama delivered it.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/scott-brown-gets-in-on-the-big-lie/2012/07/23/gJQAmPka4W_blog.html

June 2012: "President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the health care overhaul law passed in 2010, tries to make some improvements (though the Supreme Court is expected to rule whether all or some of the law is constitutional this month). But while the law’s changes help you shop around for insurance policies — specifically through its new HealthCare.gov Web site, a one-stop shop that lists all of your insurance options in one place — it’s still unclear how effective the law will be for anyone comparing medical services."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/your-money/health-insurance/navigating-the-labyrinth-of-medical-costs-your-money.html

May 2012: 'President Barack Obama said he was "disappointed" by the vote, describing it as discriminatory against gays and lesbians, a spokesman said.'

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/politics/north-carolina-marriage/index.html

April 2012: "Drone machismo is not confined to soldiers and special agents. President Obama recently joked that he’d use a Predator drone on anyone who messed with his daughters. In real life, he’s already approved the missiles that have killed more than one American—without trial, of course."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/28/buy-your-own-drone-now-only-300-online.html

January 2012: "In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama said a new refinancing program would cut through government red tape. He has yet to provide details of the program."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/business/freddie-mac-investments-under-scrutiny-by-treasury-dept.html

January 2012: 'WASHINGTON — President Obama pledged on Tuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America’s rich and the rest of the public, trying to present an election-year choice between continued leadership toward an economy “built to last” and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused an economic collapse.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/us/politics/state-of-the-union-2012.html

December 2011: "As Greg Sargent of The Washington Post has pointed out, there’s a common theme to these whoppers and a number of other things Mr. Romney has said: the strategy is clearly to portray the president as a suspect character, someone who doesn’t share American values. And since Mr. Obama has done and said nothing to justify this portrait, Mr. Romney just invents stuff to make his case."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/krugman-the-post-truth-campaign.html

December 2011: 'He said he was "shocked" to hear U.S. President Barack Obama greet al-Maliki at the White House on Monday as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq."'

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/17/world/meast/iraq-politics/index.html

December 2011: "Under Mr. Obama, the board has begun to take enforcement more seriously, by pursuing the court orders that the board under Mr. Bush had abandoned. Sadly, though, the board has also been plagued by unnecessary controversy. In April, the acting general counsel issued a complaint over Boeing’s decision to build airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, following a dispute with Boeing machinists in Washington State. Although the complaint was dropped last week after the machinists reached a new contract agreement with Boeing, the controversy reignited Republican threats to cut financing for the board."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/opinion/crippling-the-right-to-organize.html

November 2011: "For President Obama, the political stakes in the new policy are high. White House officials have concluded that there is no chance before next year’s presidential election to pass the immigration overhaul that Mr. Obama supports, which would include paths to legal status for illegal immigrants. But immigration authorities have sustained a fast pace of deportations, removing nearly 400,000 foreigners in each of the last three years."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/president-obamas-policy-on-deportation-is-unevenly-applied.html

September 2011: 'Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul denounced Obama for "assassinating" al-Awlaki, saying that the American cleric should have been tried in a U.S. court.'

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/30/politics/targeting-us-citizens/index.html

August 2011: "Late last year, President Obama signed the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibits knowingly using spoofing services to defraud, cause harm or wrongfully obtain anything of value. The fine is up to $10,000 for a single incident."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/your-money/your-phone-may-be-less-secure-than-you-thought.html

September 2011: "WASHINGTON — President Obama abandoned a contentious new air pollution rule on Friday, buoying business interests that had lobbied heavily against it, angering environmentalists who called the move a betrayal and unnerving his own top environmental regulators."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/science/earth/03air.html

July 2011: "Adding another element of uncertainty, and possible court battles, to the debate do not seem to appeal to the White House. And it is, in any event, not clear that the nation’s creditors would continue to lend money to the United States were the president to take unilateral action."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/us/politics/25legal.html

July 2011: "The White House on Wednesday declined to challenge an account in a new book that suggests that President Obama, in his campaign to overhaul American health care, mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/us/politics/14mother.html

July 2011: "But however complex the details, the effect of the change would be substantial, and in pushing for it Mr. Obama has kicked a hornet’s nest. Lobbyists from companies of all sizes are swarming around Congress to kill the proposal, which would prohibit the use of an accounting technique known as last in, first out, or LIFO. The technique is used to determine the cost of goods sold, and therefore the income earned, by a company."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/us/politics/13tax.html

June 2011: "The evaluation system, known as Impact, is disliked by many unionized teachers but has become a model for many educators. Spurred by President Obama and his $5 billion Race to the Top grant competition, some 20 states, including New York, and thousands of school districts are overhauling the way they grade teachers, and many have sent people to study Impact."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/education/28evals.html

June 2011: "WASHINGTON — The House dealt a symbolic blow to President Obama on Friday by resoundingly rejecting a bill to authorize United States military operations in Libya. But the chamber also defeated a measure that would have limited financing to support those efforts."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/us/politics/25powers.html

June 2011: "Last month, President Obama laid out broad principles for negotiations toward a Palestinian state based on the borders before that war, with mutually agreed land swaps. He suggested that talks focus first on borders and security, and deal later with the contentious issues of the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/world/middleeast/06mideast.html

May 2011: '"He cannot continue what he is doing in Libya without congressional authorization. When a president defiantly violates the law, that really undercuts our efforts to urge other countries to have the rule of law," Sherman said.'

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/05/20/war.powers/index.html

May 2011: "A day before the arrival in Washington of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20speech.html

March 2011: "President Obama's solution is to loosen accountability rules for most schools but tighten them for the lowest performers. His proposal, made public a year ago, has not seen action in Congress even though key lawmakers from both parties agree the law is ripe for revision."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030903089.html

January 2011: "WASHINGTON — The nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in Congress said on Thursday that the Republican plan to repeal President Obama’s health care law would add $230 billion to federal budget deficits over the next decade, intensifying the first legislative fight of the new session and highlighting the challenge Republicans face in pursuing their agenda."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/politics/07cong.html

December 2010: "It is becoming common practice nationally to rank teachers for their effectiveness, or value added, a measure that is defined as how much a teacher contributes to student progress on standardized tests. The practice was strongly supported by President Obama’s education grant competition, Race to the Top, and large school districts, including those in Houston, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and Washington, have begun to use a form of it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/nyregion/27teachers.html

December 2010: "President Obama plans to issue an executive order, perhaps as early as this week, ending a federal internship program that critics say circumvents proper hiring practices."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/25/AR2010122502099.html

December 2010: 'The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html

December 2010: 'Nonetheless, supporters said the 3-2 vote by the commission represented significant progress toward fulfilling a campaign promise by President Obama to preserve a level playing field for Web developers. In a statement, Mr. Obama congratulated the F.C.C. and said that the government would “remain vigilant and see to it that innovation is allowed to flourish, that consumers are protected from abuse, and that the democratic spirit of the Internet remains intact.”'

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/f-c-c-approves-net-rules-and-braces-for-fight

December 2010: "The years-long legislative debate over the policy came to an end Saturday as senators voted 65 to 31 to send the repeal legislation to President Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to eliminate the ban on gays serving openly. Eight Republicans joined 57 members of the Democratic caucus; four senators did not vote."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121801729.html

July 2010: "The official said President Obama had not spoken personally to Mr. Vilsack, but questions swirled around the White House on Wednesday over just how involved the president and his aides were."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/us/politics/22sherrod.html

June 2010: "WASHINGTON — President Obama will soon expand the rights of gay workers by allowing them to take family and medical leave to care for sick or newborn children of same-sex partners, administration officials said Monday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/us/politics/22rights.html?

June 2010: "The Obama administration has decided to file a lawsuit to strike down a new Arizona law aimed at deporting illegal immigrants, thrusting itself into the fierce national debate over how the United States should enforce immigration policies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/us/politics/19arizona.html

June 2010: 'To Mr. Obama, this is all about rebalancing the books after two decades in which multinationals sometimes acted like mini-states beyond government reach, abetted by a faith in markets that, as Mr. Obama put it at Carnegie Mellon University a few weeks ago, “gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.” When Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican, opened hearings Thursday about the gulf oil gusher by accusing Mr. Obama of an unconstitutional “shakedown” of BP to create a “slush fund,” he was giving voice to an alternative narrative, a bubbling certainty in corporate suites that Mr. Obama, whenever faced with crisis that involves private-sector players, reveals himself to be viscerally antibusiness.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/18assess.html

June 2010: 'Ann Arbor, Mich. - “IF our laws were broken ... we will bring those responsible to justice,” President Obama pledged on Tuesday, in announcing an investigation of the events leading to the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. His words may have been, in part, political damage control; efforts to contain the spill remain dire. But federal prosecutors have been working behind the scenes for weeks to determine whether BP, Transocean (the owner of the rig) and Halliburton (the company that did the cementing job on the deep-ocean well) should be charged with crimes.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/opinion/04uhlmann.html

May 2010: 'WASHINGTON — President Obama established a bipartisan national commission on Friday to investigate what caused the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and figure out where the government went wrong so as to “make sure it never happens again,” as he put it.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/23address.html

May 2010: "WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that three men who had been detained by the United States military for years without trial in Afghanistan had no recourse to American courts. The decision was a broad victory for the Obama administration in its efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for indefinite periods without judicial oversight."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/world/asia/22detain.html

May 2010: 'But there were also the whispers — is she or isn’t she? — and the guys in the White House got all defensive, protesting too much that she isn’t. If roughly one out of nine Americans is gay, why shouldn’t one out of nine Supreme Court justices be? After all, President Obama has quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes as saying that “it is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/opinion/19dowd.html

May 2010: "On Wednesday, President Obama proposed legislation to create a variety of emergency programs to advance money to people affected by the spill, bolster the trust fund through a higher tax on oil companies and raise the overall spending limit to $1.5 billion per accident. Separate legislation already introduced would raise a company’s cap on liability to $10 billion."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/us/13q-n-a.html

April 2010: 'So how could President Obama untangle the knot? In David Remnick’s new book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,” one of the president’s former students at the University of Chicago comments on Mr. Obama’s mixed feelings about the reparations movement: “He told us what he thought about reparations. He agreed entirely with the theory of reparations. But in practice he didn’t think it was really workable.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html

April 2010: 'Saying the failure of officials in Washington to act on immigration would open the door to “irresponsibility by others,” he said the Arizona bill threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html

April 2010: "The latest sign: the emphatic rejection by both parties in recent days of a value-added tax, a sales tax imposed by nearly every other developed nation. After a White House economic adviser was reported speaking semi-favorably about a VAT, the White House this week vigorously denied that President Obama is looking to include the tax in his deficit-cutting arsenal."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042004102.html

April 2010: "Mr. Obama’s unexpected move, which was announced through a memorandum released Thursday night, brought muted responses from conservative groups. Rather than argue that same-sex partners should not be granted equal medical rights, they asserted that Mr. Obama was pandering to his political base and undermining the traditional definition of marriage."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/us/politics/17hospitals.html

March 2010: "WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/us/01nsa.html

March 2010: "For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/business/24leonhardt.html

March 2010: 'On the left, President Obama and Democrats have spent the past year arguing that, despite the government's massive deficits and overspending, they can responsibly propose even more spending. Future deficits are to be ignored (present deficits, to be sure, partially reflect the economic slump). The proposal is "responsible" because it's "paid for" through new taxes and spending cuts. Even if these financing sources were completely believable (they aren't), the logic is that the government can undertake new spending before dealing with the consequences of old spending. Of course, most households and businesses can't do this.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/28/AR2010022803363.html

September 2009: "Updated President Obama announced on Friday that he will open up White House visitor logs on a regular basis for the first time in modern history, providing the public an unusually extensive look at who gets the opportunity to help shape American policy at the highest levels."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/the-white-house-will-disclose-visitor-logs/

August 2009: "Obama has pushed for universal access to broadband since his presidential campaign, saying it would underpin the country's economic future. The stimulus funds target homes and businesses in the hinterlands that have largely been overlooked by broadband providers because of the hefty costs to lay down fiber-optic and other broadband pipes to small communities."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081302433.html

July 2009: "The heath-care bill that has been wending its way through the Senate Finance Committee is likely to contain a provision that President Obama opposed during his campaign: a tax on at least some employer-provided insurance plans."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/29/AR2009072902035.html

July 2009: "President Obama has been especially assertive in championing charter schools. On Friday, he and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, announced a competition for $4.35 billion in federal financing for states that ease restrictions on charter schools and adopt some charter-like standards for other schools — like linking teacher pay to student achievement."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/education/27charter.html

July 2009: 'President Barack Obama has said that he is concerned about the potential impact of such tariffs on free trade, and that putting up such barriers would only make a global agreement more elusive. But other provisions could give the U.S. quiet leverage over developing nations. Annie Petsonk, the international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, says that the U.S. could make access to American carbon markets — which could eventually be worth trillions — contingent on how developing nations deal with climate change, for example by agreeing to mandatory reductions in the rate of growth of their emissions. "Carbon-market access is the first and most powerful carrot and stick," she says. "Members of Congress can say that if countries want to sell us carbon credits after we have capped our emissions, we want them to follow suit."'

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1911843,00.html

qJune 2009: 'President Obama might not be disappointed if that turned out to be the case. During the presidential campaign, he said, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/business/economy/28view.html

June 2009: "Both nations agree that cyberspace is an emerging battleground. The two sides are expected to address the subject when President Obama visits Russia next week and at the General Assembly of the United Nations in November, according to a senior State Department official."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/28cyber.html

June 2009: "President Obama wants your advice on how the government should keep its secrets."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062604101.html

May 2009: "WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday called for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks to collect billions of dollars more from multinational companies and wealthy individuals."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/business/05tax.html

June 2009: "Last month, President Obama said he would seek to bar the release of photographs being sought by other nonprofit groups that depict abusive interrogations at military prisons during the Bush administration."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/08/AR2009060804117.html

June 2009: 'The decision of whether to build, and how much, goes to the heart of the tensions between the administrations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Obama, an unaccustomed and no-budge conflict between Israel and the United States. Washington is standing firm against any additional settlement construction in the West Bank, including what Israel argues is necessary to accommodate what it terms “natural growth.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html

June 2009: "President Barack Obama will promise tomorrow that he has no intention of taking over responsibility for the day-to-day running of the US car industry. The government will emerge with more than 70 per cent of the shares in GM following Chapter 11."

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2009/gb2009061_218300.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

May 2009: 'Mr. Obama was speaking, in particular, of his decision to revive George W. Bush’s practice of trying terrorism suspects in military commissions. True, Mr. Obama said, he fought Mr. Bush on the commissions. But, he went on, he had always said that with reforms he would support them. With “meaningful due process” — limiting hearsay evidence, giving suspects greater latitude in picking their lawyers — the president asserted, “my administration is bringing our commissions in line with the rule of law.” In short, Mr. Obama argued, what seemed like a reversal wasn’t a reversal at all.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/weekinreview/24stolberg.html

May 2009: 'President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html

January 2009: "Barack Obama, then a United States senator, was highly critical of the presidential wiretapping power claimed by Mr. Bush, and threatened to filibuster the final bill. But he ultimately voted for it, angering some of his liberal supporters. His administration is expected to examine possible changes in wiretapping law and operations, a review that will probably be affected by the findings of the FISA appeals court."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/washington/16fisa.html

January 2009: "In the first hours of his presidency, President Obama directed an immediate halt to the Bush administration’s military commissions system for prosecuting detainees at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

http://www10.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/washington/22gitmo.html

January 2009: "WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/us/politics/12inquire.html

January 2009: "Six weeks before the nation’s television stations are scheduled to convert to digital transmission, an aide to President-elect Barack Obama is asking Congress to consider a delay."

http://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/obama-recommends-delay-in-digital-tv-switch/index.html

December 2008: "The failed negotiations came despite a plea earlier in the day from President-elect Barack Obama for passage of the legislation to spare GM or Chrysler from having to file for bankruptcy protection, a prospect that has grown real enough for both firms to hire lawyers to deal with such a scenario. Chrysler acknowledged last week that it was working with Jones Day; last night, sources said GM had hired Weil, Gotshal & Manges, as well as turnaround veterans William Repko of Evercore Partners, Arthur Newman of Blackstone Group and Jay Alix."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121101578.html

December 2008: "The decision to explore the idea could offer the first glimpse into how Mr. Obama will handle the broader issue of executive power following the expansive assertions by President Bush and Vice President Cheney over the last eight years. During the campaign, Mr. Obama decried what he deemed overreach by the outgoing administration, but such issues can look different to a new president once he enters the Oval Office and finds himself seeking as much latitude as possible to advance his agenda."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/us/politics/11web-baker.html

November 2008: "A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds....objections to the rule by doctors, pharmacists, hospitals, state attorneys general and political leaders, including President-elect Barack Obama."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/washington/18abort.html

November 2008: "WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama has imposed stricter conflict-of-interest restrictions on his White House transition team than any president before him. But a list of transition team members that his office made public on Friday includes a complicated tangle of ties to private influence-seekers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15transition.html

November 2008: 'While President-elect Obama rejects prostitution and trafficking, as abuses of human rights, and calls for better tools for prosecuting within the United States...in answer to a question from Pastor Rick Warren, Obama saw the intimate connection between prostitution and trafficking: "What we have to do is to create better, more effective tools for prosecuting those who are engaging in human trafficking and we have to do that within our country. Sadly, there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement, here in our country, oftentimes, young women who are caught up in prostitution. So we've got to give prosecutors the tools to crack down on these human trafficking networks. It is a debasement of our common humanity, whenever we see something like that taking place."'

http://www.newsweek.com/id/168395

October 2008: "Is health care a right or a responsibility? During the third presidential debate, Barack Obama declared it to be a right, while John McCain called it a responsibility. These assertions underscore the different philosophies underlying the candidates' proposals. One assumes that everyone is entitled to health care; the other puts the responsibility for obtaining health care squarely on the shoulders of the consumer."

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/BoomerBucks/20081029_health_care_proposals_a1.asp

October 2008: "Still, at rally after rally Mr. McCain denounces Mr. Obama for wanting to redistribute wealth, hitting especially hard on Mr. Obama’s plan to give tax credits, in the form of checks, to some people who do not pay income tax. (Mr. McCain omits the fact that his own health care plan would do much the same thing, giving tax credits of $5,000 to families for health insurance, regardless of whether they pay income taxes.)"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/us/politics/20mccain.html

October 2008: "The six-paragraph letter from Dr. David L. Scheiner said Mr. Obama had no known medical problems that would affect his ability to serve as president. Until the release of test results last week, the letter was the only information that Mr. Obama had made public about his health."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/us/politics/20health.html

August 2008: 'ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain’s campaign accused Senator Barack Obama on Thursday of playing “the race card,” citing his remarks that Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/us/politics/01campaign.html

July 2008: "...Justice Sandra Day O’Connor famously said she thought that racial preferences would continue only for another 25 years. Barack Obama has said, looking ahead to his daughters’ college applications, that they don’t deserve an admissions break — an acknowledgment that the mix of race, affirmative action and privilege is a complicated one."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20integration-t.html

July 2008: "BERLIN, July 11 -- The German government strongly denied Friday that it had been pressured by the Bush administration to discourage Sen. Barack Obama from giving an address in front of the landmark Brandenburg Gate during his upcoming European tour."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071102967.html

July 2008: "Since November, Mr. Obama had added just two new names to a list of 326 fund-raisers who have bundled contributions of $50,000 or more for him, despite the campaign’s taking in more than $180 million during that time."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/us/politics/11bundlers.html

July 2008: "The position of presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is indicative in this respect. Last year he vowed to support a filibuster of any bill that included retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms. But last month he said he no longer supported a filibuster and in fact would vote for the bill."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0710/p02s05-uspo.html

July 2008: 'WASHINGTON — The Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized on Wednesday for critical and crude comments he made about Senator Barack Obama, remarks in which he accused Mr. Obama of “talking down to black people.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/us/politics/10jackson.html

July 2008: "The audit, by State's inspector general, was prompted by the discovery in March that three of the department's contract workers had peeked at the private passport files of Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain and that a State Department trainee had examined the file of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070303799.html

June 2008: 'McCain's Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), said that outstanding questions about the nuclear program must be answered and that he supported "direct and aggressive diplomacy" with the North.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR2008062600252.html

June 2008: '"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?'

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/24/evangelical.vote/index.html

June 2008: "As Sen. Barack Obama opens his campaign as the first African American on a major party presidential ticket, nearly half of all Americans say race relations in the country are in bad shape and three in 10 acknowledge feelings of racial prejudice, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101825.html

June 2008: "As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/politics/24muslim.html

June 2008: "A Minnesota man trying to get mainstream exposure for his claims that he once enjoyed sex and cocaine with Barack Obama made a scheduled appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, and was promptly picked up by law enforcement on an out-of-state warrant."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/a-campaign-firs.html

June 2008: "WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain on Thursday accused Sen. Barack Obama of breaking a promise when the Democrat decided to forgo public financing in this fall's campaign."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/19/obama.public.financing/index.html

June 2008: '...McCain advisers criticized Obama as "naive" and "delusional" in his approach to the handling of terrorism suspects after he expressed support for last week's Supreme Court decision granting detainees the right to seek habeas corpus hearings. Obama fired back, saying the Republicans who had led failed efforts to capture Osama bin Laden lacked the standing to criticize him on the issue.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/17/AR2008061702819.html

June 2008: "In a taped interview with the network, Senator Barack Obama suggested that Senator John McCain should have done more to tamp down attacks on Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle, who has been the target of false rumors and criticism about her personal character and her patriotism."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/leave-the-wives-alone-candidates-say/index.html

June 2008: 'Angered by what they consider sexist news coverage of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, many women and erstwhile Clinton supporters are proposing boycotts of the cable networks, putting up videos on a “Media Hall of Shame,” starting a national conversation about sexism and pushing Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Barack Obama, to address the matter.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/us/politics/13women.html

June 2008: "Barack Obama often blurs identity lines; much of his candidacy has seemed almost post-racial. Mrs. Obama’s identity is less mutable. She is a descendant of slaves and a product of Chicago’s historically black South Side. She burns hot where he banks cool, and that too can make her an inviting proxy for attack."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/us/politics/18michelle.html

June 2008: "Even before the disclosure of Mr. Bush’s decision, the drilling issue caused a heated back-and-forth on the campaign trail on Tuesday, as Mr. McCain sought to straddle the divide between environmentalists and the energy industry, while facing accusations from his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, that he had flip-flopped and capitulated to the oil industry."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/washington/18drill.html

June 2008: "WASHINGTON — As the bitter Democratic nomination battle continued to be bogged down in rancorous maneuverings to the very end, Senator John McCain honed his national security message before Jewish-American leaders, charging on Monday that Senator Barack Obama’s policies toward Iraq and Iran would create chaos and endanger the United States and Israel."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/us/politics/02cnd-mccain.html

May 2008: 'Although Bush did not mention Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the remarks were widely seen as an attack on the Democratic presidential front-runner, who has said he would be willing to talk with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions during his first year in office. The presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), said yesterday that Obama's willingness to talk with Iran reveals "inexperience and reckless judgment."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/19/AR2008051902639.html

May 2008: 'Before they became presidential rivals, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, both Democrats, co-sponsored federal legislation in 2005 that would have made [medical?--Ed.] apologies inadmissible. The measure died in a committee under Republican control.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/us/18apology.html

May 2008: "They are hoping that any of the three presidential candidates will be willing to provide that leadership, and they're encouraging members to question the candidates publicly. Gushee posed a question on torture policy during the Compassion Forum on CNN in April and, in response, Sen. Barack Obama unequivocally rejected torture and rendition of prisoners to other countries known to use torture."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0508/p03s05-usju.html

May 2008: "Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton both oppose same-sex marriage but support civil unions. They also oppose a constitutional ban."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/15/same.sex.marriage/index.html

May 2008: "Not equipped with the volunteer-driven grass-roots movement that has propelled Mr. Obama’s get-out-the-vote efforts, the Clinton campaign hired more than three times as many local operatives as he to fill that role in those two states. While mostly forgoing the use of street money in Ohio and other places, the Obama campaign paid about 150 people in Texas, most of them college students, for campaign work. The payments were widely dispersed, with only a handful in South Texas and fewer than 20 in Houston."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/us/politics/13streetcash.html

May 2008: "Both Democratic presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, have strongly condemned the racial disparities in arrests and incarceration during their campaigns, although neither has said how they would end them."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06disparities.html

August 2007: "The Clinton campaign has said it will give to charity $23,000 that Mr. Hsu contributed, and on Thursday representatives of Mr. Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who received $50,000 from Mr. Hsu, said they would do the same. A spokesman for Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is a rival of Mrs. Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination, said Mr. Obama intended to give away $7,000 that Mr. Hsu contributed to his committees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/politics/31cnd-hsu.html

March 2008: 'Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, told journalists, "this is an outrageous breach of security and privacy...We demand to know who opened Sen. Obama's file." Reuters news service quoted McCain saying that "if anyone's privacy is breached, they deserve an apology and a full investigation and I believe that will take place." And Clinton's office released a statement saying "Senator Clinton will closely monitor the State Department's investigation into this and the other breaches of private passport information."'

http://www.newsweek.com/id/124566/

March 2008: 'In the states where Connerly's self-described "civil rights initiative" appears on the ballot, voters are likely to see it alongside the name of the first black or female major-party presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) Connerly contends that the success of Obama and Clinton shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism."'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/25/AR2008032502401.html

March 2008: "The Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), have laid out proposals for expanding health-care coverage by requiring most employers to either offer it or pay a fee to subsidize the purchase of health insurance. Expanded coverage, they say, will lower costs for everyone. They also support legislation that would make it easier to organize labor unions, something they say would give workers better leverage in seeking pay and benefit improvements."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301770.html

March 2008: '"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society," Obama said in his speech. "It's that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made; as if this country ... is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.'

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/355571_joel19.html

March 2008: "While Obama's candidacy has often united blacks and whites at the ballot box, it has driven a wedge through the black political establishment, exposing a rift between a new generation, whose members see their political horizons as limitless, and their predecessors, who have struggled to establish a following outside of heavily African American areas."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/02/AR2008030202434.html

January 2008: "[re: economic stimulus package--Ed.] Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has already proposed a $90 billion program of rebates and supplemental Social Security payments that his aides said would reach 95 percent of workers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20rebate.html

January 2008: 'This week, BET founder Bob Johnson made sure to say he was "truly sorry" when he apologized to Barack Obama for his "uncalled-for comments" (aka, apparent allusions to Obama's drug use). Which somehow only made it seem more likely that the Clintons forced him to apologize in the first place. Begging forgiveness is an art. Even when it's carefully considered, as this effort must have been, it's hard to pull off gracefully.'

http://www.slate.com/id/2182349

December 2007: "In a telephone interview, Mr. Obama denied that he had spoken less about race issues than other candidates. But he said he focused when possible on “the universal issues that all Americans care about.” His aim, he said, is “to build broader coalitions that can actually deliver health care for all people or jobs that pay a living wage or all the issues that face not only black Americans but Americans generally.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/politics/29obama.html

November 2007: "In his criticism of Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, a senator from Illinois, said he had not referred to his race when he was challenged at the debate."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/us/politics/05memo.html

November 2007: This year, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former Gov. Bill Richardson, candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, have all voiced support for quality charters. So have a few teachers’ union officials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/us/08charter.html

October 2007: That reply did not satisfy some senators, who noted that the technique had been widely described in the press. Four Democratic senators who are running for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Christopher J. Dodd, said this week that they would not support Mr. Mukasey based on his initial testimony on waterboarding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/washington/31mukasey.html

October 2007: Senator Barack Obama says he would “establish a new public insurance program” for people who do not have access to group coverage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/washington/06health.html

September 2007: Sen. Barack Obama, who has placed a consistent second in national polls, said President Bush missed a chance to defuse the fears of American workers who believe illegal immigrants will take their jobs.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/09/spanish.debate/index.html

August 2007: The press is agog at the pace at which presidential candidates are schnorring for cash. And, to be fair, the sums involved are terrifying: Hillary Clinton has already raised $63 million, with Barack Obama not far behind.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070827&s=editorial082707b

June 2007: During his 12 years in politics, Sen. Barack Obama has received nearly three times more campaign cash from indicted businessman Tony Rezko and his associates than he has publicly acknowledged, the Chicago Sun-Times has found.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/432197,CST-NWS-obama18.article

July 2007: The Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama joined the conservative Fox News channel in calling for a crackdown on rap lyrics.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/01/wrap101.xml

June 2007: Of the leading Democratic candidates, Barack Obama is the least entangled with K Street. His campaign has no lobbyists on the payroll or serving as key advisers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/23/huffpost-exclusive-more-_n_53456.html

June 2007: This week, the Senate is expected to vote on an [immigration--Ed.] amendment offered by Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, to end the point system after five years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/washington/05immig.html

November 2004: Elected Senator from Illinois.

September 2004: Kenyan-born Illinois Democratic politician. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/national/29africa

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Opponent (past or present) Supported by (past or present) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) Organization Sep 5, 2009
Student/Trainee (past or present) Columbia University Organization Feb 6, 2006
Supported by (past or present) Culinary Workers Union Organization Jan 30, 2008
Member of (past or present) Democratic Party / Democratic National Committee (DNC) Organization Feb 6, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Harvard University Organization Feb 6, 2006
Student/Trainee (past or present) Occidental College Organization Jan 20, 2009
Research/Analysis Subject PolitiFact Source Nov 7, 2012
Organization Head/Leader (past or present) US Federal Government - Executive Branch Organization Jan 20, 2009
Member of (past or present) US Senate Organization Feb 6, 2006
Advised by (past or present) David Axelrod Person May 26, 2009
Advised by (past or present) Robert F. Bauer Esq. Person Jun 12, 2010
Research/Analysis Subject Naftali Bendavid Person Jun 12, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) John O. Brennan Person May 12, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Carol M. Browner Person Oct 24, 2009
Succeeded by Sen. Roland W. Burris Esq. Person Jan 20, 2009
Subordinate of (past or present) Bill Burton Person May 16, 2011
Successor to President George W. Bush Person Jan 20, 2009
Representative to (past or present) Ambassador Luis CdeBaca Person May 25, 2010
Advised by (past or present) Appointed/Selected Aneesh Chopra Person Jun 17, 2009
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Dr. Steven Chu Ph.D. Person May 26, 2010
Cooperation (past or present) Opponent (past or present) Supervisor of (past or present) Colleague/Co-worker of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Person Dec 3, 2010
Advised by (past or present) Prof. Susan P. Crawford Esq. Person Jun 22, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) William B. Daley Esq. Person Jun 17, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Gen. Martin E. Dempsey Person Dec 23, 2011
Advised by (past or present) Thomas "Tom" E. Donilon Esq. Person Jun 18, 2011
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Shaun Donovan MS Person Apr 22, 2010
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Secretary Arne Duncan Person Jun 2, 2009
Cooperation (past or present) Opponent (past or present) Supported by (past or present) Senator John Edwards Esq. Person Jun 19, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Mayor Rahm Emanuel Person Jun 12, 2010
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Timothy F. Geithner Person Jun 20, 2009
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Julius Genachowski Esq. Person Aug 20, 2009
Opponent (past or present) Speaker Newt Gingrich Person Feb 19, 2012
Appointed/Selected Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg M.D. Person Mar 4, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Eric H. Holder Jr., Esq. Person Feb 5, 2009
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Norman Hsu Person Apr 24, 2008
Advised by (past or present) Reed Hundt Person Nov 19, 2008
Represented by (past or present) Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. Person Jun 12, 2010
Appointed/Selected Mr. Walter Isaacson Person Nov 30, 2011
Supported by (past or present) Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Person Jan 6, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Lisa P. Jackson MS Person Oct 24, 2009
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Gregory B. Jaczko Person Nov 21, 2009
Appointed/Selected Jeh Johnson Esq. Person Feb 5, 2013
Appointed/Selected Justice Elena Kagan Esq. Person May 27, 2009
Advised by (past or present) William "Bill" Kennard Person Nov 19, 2008
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Ambassador Ron Kirk Person Jun 25, 2009
Opponent (past or present) Charles de Ganahl Koch Person Feb 22, 2011
Opponent (past or present) David Hamilton Koch Person Feb 22, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Rep. Ray LaHood Person Feb 18, 2010
Appointed/Selected Supervisor of (past or present) Gov. Gary Locke Esq. Person Jul 16, 2009
Appointed/Selected Neil H. MacBride Esq. Person Aug 6, 2011
Opponent (past or present) Sen. John McCain Person Jan 20, 2009
Subordinate of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Gov. Janet Napolitano Person May 24, 2009
Family Member Michelle Obama Esq. Person Feb 29, 2008
Friend (past or present) Gov. Deval Patrick Esq. Person Jan 6, 2008
Appointed/Selected Thomas E. Perez Esq. MPP Person Feb 28, 2010
Advised by (past or present) John David Podesta Esq. Person Dec 12, 2008
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Advised by (past or present) Penny Pritzker Person Nov 26, 2008
Research/Analysis Subject David Remnick Person Apr 23, 2010
Possible/Unclear Financial Recipient from (past or present) Antoin "Tony" Rezko Person Mar 3, 2008
Represented by (past or present) Ambassador Susan E. Rice Ph.D. Person Jun 17, 2011
Opponent (past or present) Governor Willard Mitt Romney Esq., MBA Person Nov 7, 2012
Appointed/Selected Kenneth "Ken" Lee Salazar Esq. Person May 26, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Gov. Kathleen Sebelius Person Jul 12, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) Douglas Shulman MPA, JD. Person Sep 7, 2009
Appointed/Selected Judge Sonia Sotomayor Esq. Person May 18, 2010
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Nancy Sutley Person Oct 24, 2009
Appointed/Selected Marilyn B. Tavenner Person Aug 15, 2012
Advised by (past or present) Prof. Laurence H. Tribe Esq. Person Aug 1, 2011
Supervisor of (past or present) Appointed/Selected Secretary Tom Vilsack Esq. Person Apr 1, 2010
Advised by (past or present) Paul A. Volcker Person Apr 21, 2010
Financial Recipient from (past or present) Hamed Wardak Person Mar 29, 2010
Advised by (past or present) Friend (past or present) Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Person Jun 19, 2008

Articles and Resources

326 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Mar 15, 2013 Drones killing innocent Pakistanis, U.N. official says

QUOTE: The New America Foundation estimates that in Pakistan, drones have killed between 1,953 and 3,279 people since 2004 - and that between 18% and 23% of them were not militants....The study concludes that the strikes have killed far more people than the United States has acknowledged, and traumatized many more innocent people.

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Feb 24, 2013 A Costly and Unjust Perk for Financiers

QUOTE: Millions of general partners in investment funds receive carried-interest income when they earn profits for their clients. Since these partners do not have to risk any of their own capital, carried interest is really a taxpayer-subsidized fee for managing their clients’ money....This state of affairs denies our Treasury much-needed revenue; fuels public cynicism in government; and is evidence of the “crony capitalism” that favors some economic sectors over others

 New York Times
Feb 04, 2013 Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

QUOTE: A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S. The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects abroad, including those aimed at American citizens

 NBC News
Jan 29, 2013 Obama Urges Speed on Immigration Plan, but Exposes Conflicts

QUOTE: Seizing an opening to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws, President Obama challenged Congress on Tuesday to act swiftly to put 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States on a clear path to citizenship. But his push for speedy action and his silence on proposals to defer the opportunity for legal residency until the country’s borders are deemed secure provoked criticism from a Republican leader on the issue.

 New York Times
Jan 25, 2013 Court Rejects Obama Move to Fill Posts

QUOTE: In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of presidential “recess” appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he installed three officials on the National Labor Relations Board a year ago.

 New York Times
Dec 27, 2012 Viral Spiral 2012: The constant battle against crackpot claims, paranoid conspiracy theories and malicious lies.

QUOTE: old viral emails, unfortunately, never die — and new ones spread like a highly contagious disease. These overwhelmingly anonymous messages are, by and large, bogus. Many not only twist the facts but also peddle pure fabrications, urging recipients to forward these “shocking” revelations to all their friends. And despite all good common sense, people do pass along these malicious attempts to deceive, often in the same amount of time it would take to check their tenuous hold on veracity.

 FactCheck.org
Dec 14, 2012 Tax Plan Is Popular, but Not Quite Fair

QUOTE: The political appeal of a proposal that limits deductions without actually naming any — inciting the powerful interests and lobbyists that support them — seems obvious. But many tax experts said that a fixed dollar cap is anything but the evenhanded approach to closing loopholes it appears to be.

 New York Times
Nov 23, 2012 Clashes Break Out After Morsi Seizes New Power in Egypt

QUOTE: Protests erupted across Egypt on Friday, as opponents of President Mohamed Morsi clashed with his supporters over a presidential edict that gave him unchecked authority and polarized an already divided nation while raising a specter, the president’s critics charged, of a return to autocracy.

 New York Times
Nov 13, 2012 Unequal or Unfair: Which Is Worse? Inequality is a symptom; unfairness is the disease.

QUOTE: Fairness—or lack of it—is central to human relationships at every level, from a marriage between two people to disputes involving war and peace among the nations of the world. I believe fairness is what we need to focus on, not inequality—though I readily acknowledge that high inequality in wealth and income is corrosive to society.

 Psychology Today
Nov 05, 2012 The Real Loser: Truth (Op-Ed)

QUOTE: To be sure, the Obama campaign has certainly had its own share of dissembling and distortion, including about Mr. Romney’s positions on abortion and foreign aid. But nothing in it — or in past campaigns, for that matter — has equaled the efforts of the Romney campaign in this realm. Its fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new....win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity.

 New York Times
Nov 03, 2012 One Safety Net That Needs to Shrink (Fair Game)

QUOTE: ...Dodd-Frank actually widened the federal safety net for big institutions. Under that law, eight more giants were granted the right to tap the Federal Reserve for funding when the next crisis hits. At the same time, those eight may avoid Dodd-Frank measures that govern how we’re supposed to wind down institutions that get into trouble.

 New York Times
Oct 18, 2012 A Second Appeals Court Calls Marriage Law Unfair to Gays

QUOTE: A federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that the federal statute defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman unlawfully discriminates against same-sex married couples by denying them equal federal benefits. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is the second federal appeals court to reject a central portion of the federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act...

 New York Times
Jul 23, 2012 Scott Brown gets in on the Big Lie (Plum Line)

QUOTE: Obama’s now infamous “didn’t build that” speech is similar to Elizabeth Warren’s viral remarks about how the rich didn’t get rich on their own. So it’s not surprising that Senator Scott Brown has just released a new Web video (embedded below) tying Obama’s remarks to Warren’s and painting them as vaguely anti-American. Brown says: “I will never demonize you as business leaders and business owners.”

 Washington Post
Jun 22, 2012 Getting Lost in the Labyrinth of Medical Bills

QUOTE: With the exception of Medicare and Medicaid, experts say, the amount paid for services — or the price your insurers pay — is based on the market power of the insurance company on the one side and the hospitals and providers on the other, and the reimbursement agreements they ultimately reach. So large insurers that command a lot of market power may be able to negotiate lower rates than smaller companies with less influence.

 New York Times
May 11, 2012 Same-Sex Marriage Activists Look to Law

QUOTE: Several cases are winding their way through the judicial system, most of which challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and defines marriage as between one man and one woman. The myriad indignities that gay couples and their families regularly encounter are one reason many of them say they are fighting to dismantle the law. But the financial burden they also bear can be measured. And several court cases put that into stark focus.

 New York Times
May 09, 2012 North Carolina's ban on gay marriage sparks cheers, jeers

QUOTE: North Carolina voted Tuesday to outlaw same-sex marriage, which was already prohibited in the state. Supporters pushed for the constitutional amendment, arguing that it is needed to ward off future legal challenges.

 CNN (Cable News Network)
Apr 28, 2012 Buy Your Own Drone! Now Only $300 Online: We don’t need to imagine the future anymore.... In the dystopian reality of 2012, the drone can ruin your life in ways you never imagined.

QUOTE: independent data suggest that U.S. drones have killed hundreds of women and children. That should be no surprise, since the CIA is using the same forms of intelligence that landed 779 people in Guantánamo Bay, more than 80 percent of whom were subsequently shown not to be terrible terrorists. The intel the agency relies on is purchased by offering bounties to people who would sell their own grandmothers for half the price.

 The Daily Beast
Jan 30, 2012 Treasury Investigates Freddie Mac Investment

QUOTE: The Treasury Department is investigating a report that Freddie Mac, the mortgage giant, bet against homeowners’ ability to refinance their loans even as it was making it more difficult for them to do so...

 New York Times
Jan 26, 2012 Gingrich Stuck to Caustic Path in Ethics Battles

QUOTE: Mr. Gingrich, Democrats and Republicans here agree, emerged as one of Washington’s most aggressive practitioners of slash-and-burn politics; many fault him for erasing whatever civility once existed in the capital. He believed, and preached, that harsh language could win elections; in 1990, the political action committee he ran, Gopac, instructed Republican candidates to learn to “speak like Newt,” and offered a list of words to describe Democrats — like decay, traitors, radical, sick, destroy, pathetic, corrupt and shame. Those same qualities are now on display as Mr. Gingrich, a Republican candidate for president, turns his caustic tongue against Republicans and Democrats alike.

 New York Times
Jan 24, 2012 In Address, Obama Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness

QUOTE: President Obama pledged on Tuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America’s rich and the rest of the public, trying to present an election-year choice between continued leadership toward an economy “built to last” and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused an economic collapse.

 New York Times

326 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 20]   [End]