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In April, 2008, after the story became public, candidate Obama told a San Francisco crowd that during his college years he took a trip to Pakistan. This came as a surprise to reporters, and the candidate’s two autobiographies, Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006), made no mention of any trip to Pakistan. What the college student did there is not exactly clear, and some in the region found it disturbing. “Why did he keep mum on his visit to Pakistan till this question was raised?” wondered India’s former counterterrorist chief Bahukutumbi Raman. “Has he disclosed...

The State Department has spent $70,000 in taxpayer money to buy copies of Barack Obama’s book Dreams from My Father. One embassy in Indonesia spent more than $3,800 buying copies of Obama’s other book The Audacity of Hope. Again, all with taxpayer money — all while Obama profits from the purchases. But hey, it most be common place to buy books written by presidents to hand out as gifts and put in libraries, right? Nope. A search by the Washington Times of the federal database found no examples of the State Department purchasing books by President Clinton or President Bush....

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the release of the Clinton tax data last week was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance in 2001 for what would become his autobiography, My Life. As even the New York Times noticed, this was significantly “larger than previously thought” — or, more exactly, than previously reported. For example, an August 7, 2001 article in the Times puts the figure vaguely at “over $10 million.” A Wall Street Journal report from the following day cites a more concrete figure of “close...

SNIPPET: "Iranian parliament member Mahmoud Ahmadi Bigesh said Wednesday that Egypt has promised to issue entry permits for him and three of his fellow parliament members, who want to enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing."

McLEAN, Va. - The Bureau of Prisons says it reversed course months ago to allow some of the country's most dangerous prisoners to read two books written by President Barack Obama. Court papers filed Thursday show that prison officials twice rejected requests by inmate Ahmed Omar Abu Ali to read "Dreams from my Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

<p>MCLEAN, Virginia - The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them.</p> <p>Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."</p>

The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a Falls Church man and a member of al Qaeda who admitted he was planning to assassinate then-President George W. Bush, was sentenced to life in prison Monday at federal court in Alexandria. Abu Ali was originally sentenced in 2005 to 30 years in prison. U.S. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee of the U.S. District Court for eastern Virginia ruled Monday that Abu Ali should spend life in prison partially because he never renounced his al Qaeda ties. After the initial sentencing, both sides filed appeals. Abu Ali completed some of his sentence in solitary confinement at...

At Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side, where President-elect Barack Obama embraced Christianity, the congregation rejoiced today and shouted, "Yes, We did!" Hundreds of worshipers packed into the sanctuary for a joyous service that celebrated the church's role in the spiritual awakening of a future president. Trinity's pastor, Rev. Otis Moss III, said history would note that Trinity was the holy place where "God stirred a young man's soul and put him on the path to the presidency." "You have much to be proud of this morning," Moss said. "We rejoice today." In his memoirs and campaign...

I started reading Obama's "Audacity of Hope," to discover more inconsistencies between what he wrote then and what he speaks now. Only problem is that Obama is one of the worst writers I've ever read. It is so bad that the book should be called, "The Audacity of Ghastly Grammar and Sucky Syntax." The book is a mess of run-on sentences that are chock-full of errors in grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Run-on sentences was something that my fourth-grade teacher taught our class how to avoid by breaking them into separate sentences. One would think that, by the time he finished...