Barack Obama

Barrack Obama was born August 4th, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Before being inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009 he had a whole different life. He graduated high school at Punahou School in 1979. Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College. Later in 1981, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation, then at the New York Public Interest Research Group. In late 1988, he entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. In 1991, he accepted a two year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book. He then taught at the University Of Chicago Law School for twelve years as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004 teaching constitutional law. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the general election, and was reelected again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one. In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the U.S. Senate. Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3rd, 2005 becoming the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008 to focus on his transition period for the presidency. On February 10th 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. The choice of the announcement site was viewed as a symbol because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858. A large number of candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to a duel between Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton after early contests. With the race remaining close throughout the primary process but with Obama gaining a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long range planning, superior fundraising, dominant organizing in caucus states, and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules. On June 7th 2008, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama. On June 19th 2008, Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976. Obama won 52.9 percent of the popular vote to McCain's 45.7 percent. He became the first African American to be elected president. In his first few days in office Obama issued executive orders and presidential memoranda directing the U.S. military to develop plans to withdraw troops from Iraq.[113] He ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp "as soon as practicable and no later than" January 2010,[114] but during his first three years in office he has been unable to persuade Congress to appropriate funds required to accomplish the shutdown. Obama reduced the secrecy given to presidential records and changed procedures to promote disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. He also reversed George W. Bush's ban on federal funding to foreign establishments that allow abortions. The first bill signed into law by Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, relaxing the statute of limitations for equal-pay lawsuits. Five days later, he signed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program to cover an additional 4 million uninsured children. On March 30th 2010, Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, a reconciliation bill which ends the process of the federal government giving subsidies to private banks to give out federally insured loans, increases the Pell Grant scholarship award, and makes changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a major space policy speech in April 2010, Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA, the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and ended development of the Ares I rocket, Ares V rocket and Constellation program. He is focusing funding on Earth science projects and a new rocket type, as well as research and development for an eventual manned mission to Mars. Missions to the International Space Station are expected to continue until 2020. Among other plans and goals, Obama spoke of enacting a five-year freeze in domestic spending, eliminating tax breaks for oil companies and tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans, banning congressional earmarks, and reducing healthcare costs. Looking to the future, Obama promised that by 2015, the United States would have one million electric vehicles on the road and by 2035; clean-energy sources would be providing 80 percent of U.S. electricity. An important thing Obama did during his office was ordering to kill Osama bin Laden, and that was a success in May 1st, 2011. He is still in office to this day, 2012, and has a lot ahead of him. That’s a little bit of his life and presidency though.
Alyssa Stefanell. B2- May 14th, 2012.
Barack Hussein Obama II

Sites used.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
-http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Li-Ou/Obama-Barack.html
-http://www.nysun.com/new-york/obamas-years-at-columbia-are-a-mystery/85015/