Barack Hussein Obama II (pronounced
/bəˈrɑːk hʊˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the
44th and current
President of the United States. He is the first
African American to hold the office. Obama was the
junior United States Senator from
Illinois from 2005 until he resigned following his
2008 election to the
presidency. He was
inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.
Obama is a graduate of
Columbia University and
Harvard Law School, where he was the
first African American president of the
Harvard Law Review. He worked as a
community organizer in
Chicago prior to earning his law degree, and practiced as a
civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the
Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught
Constitutional Law at the
University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the
U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the
keynote address at the
Democratic National Convention in July 2004.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the
109th Congress, Obama helped create legislation to control
conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to
Eastern Europe, the
Middle East, and
Africa. During the
110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding
lobbying and
electoral fraud,
climate change,
nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat assignments in
Iraq and
Afghanistan.
January's Poetry Picks
Posts
