Barack Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States. He will be the initial African American to hold the office. Obama formerly served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 till he resigned following his victory within the 2008 presidential election. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law in the University Of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms which signifies the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following a not successful bid against the Democratic incumbent to get a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate hard money lenders in 2004. A number of events introduced him to national attention during the campaign, which includes his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic main for the Senate election and his keynote address in the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign started in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party’s nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate in October 2009. As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the track slider type of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act in 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Inexpensive Care Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In foreign policy, he gradually withdrew combat troops from Iraq and announced that all troops would be microdermabrasion machines house by the end of 2011, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New Begin arms manage treaty with Russia, ordered enforcement with the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone more than Libya, and ordered the military operation that resulted within the death of Osama bin Laden. In April 2011, Obama declared his intention to seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois’s 13th District, which in those days spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan assistance for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law growing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted elevated subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman with the bipartisan Joint Committee on metal detector Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan’s payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting house foreclosures. Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, defeating Republican Yesse Yehudah in the common election, and was reelected once more in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic main run for the U.S. Home of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one. In May 2002, Obama commissioned a poll to evaluate his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race; he produced a campaign committee, began bringing up funds and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002, and formally announced his candidacy in January 2003. Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 3, 2005, turning on the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly characterized him as a “loyal Democrat” based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005-2007. Obama announced on November 13, 2008, that tankless water heaters he would resign his Senate seat on November 16, 2008, prior to begin of the lame-duck session, to concentrate on his transition period for the presidency. On February 10, 2007, Obama declared 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 symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic “House Divided” speech in 1858. Obama emphasized the problems of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care in a campaign that forecasted themes of “hope” and “change.”