http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/03/23/AR2008032301706. html?hpid=topnews

Tomorrow on the front page of the Washington Post, the Post will report on how both candidates embellish their roles.  Here is the lead:

After weeks of arduous negotiations, on April 6, 2006, a bipartisan group of senators burst out of the "President's Room," just off the Senate chamber, with a deal on new immigration policy.

As the half-dozen senators -- including John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) -- headed to announce their plan, they met Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who made a request common when Capitol Hill news conferences are in the offing: "Hey, guys, can I come along?" And when Obama went before the microphones, he was generous with his list of senators to congratulate -- a list that included himself.

"I want to cite Lindsey Graham, Sam Brownback, Mel Martinez, Ken Salazar, myself, Dick Durbin, Joe Lieberman . . . who've actually had to wake up early to try to hammer this stuff out," he said.

To Senate staff members, who had been arriving for 7 a.m. negotiating sessions for weeks, it was a galling moment. Those morning sessions had attracted just three to four senators a side, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recalled, each deeply involved in the issue. Obama was not one of them.

For those interested in reading about Obama's padded Illinois resume, read the following:  http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/n ews/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/full

It's a long piece, but well worth reading.

When it rains it pours -- Tony Rezko has been sued for fraud by a son of the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.  Businessman Jabir Herbert Muhammad has filed a lawsuit against Antoin "Tony" Rezko, claiming the indicted political fundraiser swindled him out of a home.  http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/v-print /story/288159.html

According to the suit, Rezko persuaded Muhammad, 78, and his wife Antonia Muhammad, 75, to make him the trustee of their South Side home, adjoining property and business affairs in the early 1990s because Jabir Herbert Muhammad's health was failing. The suit alleges that Rezko used the home, business and property for his own means, selling some of it and using it as collateral to build his own business.
*

"I totally trusted Tony Rezko and he betrayed me. He worked for me for years and I gave him his start in business," Muhammad said in a statement. "I believe that he used my name, my credit, and my property to start his empire. ... He has given me no choice but to go to court to protect my family and my home. "
*
Muhammad, a one-time manager for former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, said he hired Rezko into his fast-food and concession management business in the 1980s. Rezko also became a family friend.

"(Rezko) became so close, he was a virtual son," Morris said Saturday. "He was around all the time."

If true, this is sad.  It adds to the reputation of Rezko as an extremely corrupt person.

In a freshly minted blast of oratory aimed at his religious counselor, Barack Obama has e-mailed JTA, the international Jewish news service, condemning Rev. Wright's 2007 printing of a pro-Hamas editorial in a Sunday church bulletin.

Published: 03/21/2008

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Sen. Barack Obama says that a pro-Hamas Op-Ed printed in his church's bulletin was "outrageously wrong."

In an issue dated July 22, 2007, in a section titled "Pastor's Page," the Trinity United Church in Chicago reprinted an article by Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzook. The article, which originally appeared as an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, justifies the Palestinian terrorist group's denial of Israel's right to exist.
*

In slamming the Hamas piece, Obama noted that he strongly rejects some of his longtime pastor's views.

"I have already condemned my former pastor's views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn't in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin," Obama said in a statement e-mailed to JTA late Thursday. "Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel's destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. *

JTA noted that "[o]ne line in the Op-Ed directly defended strikes against Israeli targets: "Hamas," Marzook wrote, "has never supported attacks on Westerners, as even our harshest critics will concede; our struggle has always been focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to it -- a right of occupied people that is explicitly supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention."

JTA added: "In addition to his statement on the Hamas article, Obama issued a separate statement timed for the Jewish holiday of Purim - a holiday rarely remarked upon by candidates or congressmen."

Full story at: http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/art icle/2008032120080321wrighthamas.html  [simple registration req'd for access]