Barack Hussein Obama
Barack Obama, (b. August 4, 1961) is the junior Senator from Illinois, elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat in 2004. Obama is currently the only African American serving in the United States Senate, where he serves his first term. Obama is pro-choice.
During that same period, he was planning to run for the House of Representatives, which was unsuccessful, and then for U.S. Senate, which was successful after his opponent was smeared with a court-ordered disclosure of confidential divorce records.
Barack Obama is often praised for his speeches.
Early Life and Education
Senator Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr., and Ann Dunham in 1961. In 1967 he moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, with his mother and new stepfather. He attended a Catholic elementary school, followed by an Indonesian public school, until he returned with his mother to Hawaii. Obama continued his education at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, before graduating with his Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University in New York, New York. After working as a community organizer in New York City and Chicago, Illinois, Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School. He became a member of the Harvard Law Review in 1989 and was then elected by popular vote as its first African American president in 1990. He graduated magna cum laude with his J.D. in 1991 and chose not to pursue a federal clerkship, which is the typical post-graduate position for top law students.
He was a professor at The University of Chicago Law School as of 2004. He is no longer active at the school.[1]
Legal Career
Following law school, Obama continued his work as a community organizer in Chicago as Director of Illinois Project Vote. In 1993 he was hired as an associate at the Chicago law firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C., and began lecturing in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. He remains on the faculty on leave of absence through today. During this time he wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father, detailing his background, his youth, and his education. Dreams was published in 1995.
Senate Career
Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate for the first time in 1996 and served there for the next eight years. Following a failed campaign for the House of Representatives, Obama ran for the open Senate seat from Illinois in 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He won a seat in the U.S. Senate after his opponent, Jack Ryan, resigned from the race and be replaced by an out-of-state candidate, Alan Keyes.
Bills Co-Sponsored
Obama's principal legislation was S. 2433, which was an attempt to force the U.S. to increase its foreign aid by hundreds of billions of dollars under the guide of reducing global poverty. Conservatives blocked the bill.[2]
Obama did support and co-sponsor a bill championed by Tom Coburn and known as the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Sept. 9, 2006. This law created a website that will list the federal government's grants and contracts.[3]
Obama worked with Sen. Lugar writing legislation aimed at improving conventional and nuclear non-proliferation efforts. This legislation was signed by President Bush in January 2008.