Awaz Apni

Awaz Apni Washington: Barack Obama’s holiday is over, the countdown to his inauguration has begun and the smoothest presidential transition in recent history is hitting some bumps in the road. Yesterday, hours before the President-elect arrived in Washington for a final fortnight of preparations before taking office, his choice as commerce secretary announced abruptly that he was withdrawing before facing tough questions about business dealings in Senate confirmation hearings. Bill Richardson, the New Mexico Governor, said that a pending investigation into a company that had contracts with his state “would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process”, — even though he insisted that had done nothing wrong. Mr Obama accepted the decision by Mr Richardson, a former rival for the Democratic nomination and the most prominent Hispanic politician in America, with “deep regret”. Last month a federal grand jury was reported to be investigating how a company that had already threa...

Barack Hussein Obama II, born August 4, 1961, is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 general election. Obama is the first African American to be nominated by a major political party for president. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He 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, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. As a member of the Democratic minori...