DENVER - Maybe it’s his background teaching constitutional law.

If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.

Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama — a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School — was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.

“I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,” said Obama

Other goals for his first 100 days: work out a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq; make progress on alternative energy plans and launch legislation to reform the health care system.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (Obama talks to students during a visit to a school in Thornton, CO) 

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky - Katelyn Jenkins got a surprise visit from Sen. Hillary Clinton on one of the biggest days of her life so far. But odds are, she didn’t even notice.

The eight-week-old girl was getting baptised on Sunday morning at the State Street United Methodist Church, where the Democratic presidential contender paused in her campaigning to attend services.

At the sight of the former first lady, the baby’s father said: “I was pleasantly surprised and amazed.”

As for the red-haired baby in her father’s arms, she slept a bit, looked around a bit and fussed a bit.

“She just knew there was a big crowd, and everyone was looking at her,” said the baby’s father, adding that he was ”possibly” a Clinton supporter. The candidate briefly chatted with the baby’s parents after the service ended.

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Photo credit:  Reuters/Jason Reed (Clinton speaks at her West Virginia Presidential Primary night rally in Charleston, West Virginia on May 13, 2008)

 DURHAM, N.C. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took aim on Monday at his rival Hillary Clinton’s argument that he is less electable than her given his recent series of troubles and because he has not been fully “vetted.”

Amid a flap over comments from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other controversies, Obama has seen his poll numbers slide lately against both Clinton and the Republican candidate for November’s election, John McCain.

Obama publicly denounced Wright last week after the pastor moved back into the spotlight and repeated his inflammatory charges that the Sept. 11 attacks were in part retribution for U.S. policy and that the government spread AIDS to harm blacks.

Obama has also faced questions about his association with 1960s radical William Ayres and about why he doesn’t wear a U.S. flagpin.

The Illinois senator said those issues had hurt his campaign but did not “knock us off stride.” The fact that the impact from those problems was not greater was a sign that his candidacy was strong, he said.

“Despite all that, if you look at it, we’re still fundamentally tied with John McCain,” Obama said, responding to a question from an undecided voter who asked him about the electability question.

Clinton has pushed the argument that the party elders and officials known as the “superdelegates” should rally around her as the nominee because, as a former first lady, she has been “vetted” and is better able to fend off attacks from Republicans in a general election.

Obama’s counterargument is that the Wright controversy and other issues have that have come up amount to a “vetting” for him. He also challenged Clinton’s contention that Republicans would not try to dredge up old lines of attack against her.

“Sen. Clinton, despite what she says about being vetted, she hasn’t gone through what I’ve been going through over the last couple of months because she’s not the front-runner,” Obama said.

After Obama spoke, the McCain camp weighed in on the electability question, saying that Obama’s opposition to a summer gas tax holiday and his support for an increase in the capital gains tax would leave him vulnerable in the general election if he becomes the nominee.

“Those are Obama’s pledged positions, and they aren’t popular in North Carolina, Indiana or most anywhere else in America,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. 

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-Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama orders food and coffee in Durham, North Carolina on May 5)
   

NEW ALBANY, Ind. - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday brushed aside Hillary Clinton’s attempts to portray him as someone who lacked toughness and could not stand the heat of the media glare.

Clinton, who depicts herself as a fighter in her campaign speeches, has pounced on the Illinois senator’s critique of a television debate last week in which he was put on the defensive about issues such as whether he wears a flagpin and the fiery rhetoric of his pastor. She accused him of not being able to handle media scrutiny.

But Obama said it was the New York senator and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who have been thin-skinned about press questions.

“Nobody has complained more about the press about questions at debates, about being mistreated than Senator Clinton has or President Clinton. And so we have been pretty tame in terms of taking our shots and just rolling with them,” Obama told reporters while campaigning in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6.

Clinton has tried to underline her message that she is the tougher candidate by running an ad featuring images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Republican National Committee has weighed in as well, suggesting Obama tries to dodge hard questions from the media.

“I know that people like to talk tough and use a lot of rhetoric about fighting and obliterating and all that stuff. You know that I have always believed that if you are tough, you don’t have to talk about it,” Obama said.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama speaks at his Pennsylvania primary election night rally in Evansville.)

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Republican Sen. John McCain’s personal narrative as a war hero in Vietnam has Democrats treading carefully when they criticize him. 

Instead of trading barbs with each other, Democratic White House hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton this week have trained their attention on McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. 

Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, have assailed McCain for his support for the Iraq war and his backing of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. 

But they have made clear the attacks are not personal. 

Just before accusing McCain of lacking an understanding of how to fix the struggling economy and of pushing policies that amount to “standing on the sidelines” of the housing crisis, Obama at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, commended McCain for his service to his country. 

“Most of us know his biography and it is worthy of admiration. This is a man who is a genuine American hero and has served his country with distinction,” Obama said. 

“My argument with John McCain is not his biography. It’s with his policies,” he added. 

Clinton adopted a similar tone in Philadelphia on Tuesday, where she addressed a crowd of union workers. Just before she accused McCain of being just like Bush on labor issues, she too paused to give the former POW his due. 

“After seven disastrous years of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the stakes in this election couldn’t be higher, and the need to change course couldn’t be more urgent,” she said. 

“But I’m here to tell you Senator John McCain, a friend of mine, someone whose service to our country I admire, is only offering more of the same,” she said. 

McCain was serving as a Navy pilot when his plane was shot down over Hanoi. He spent 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war, where he was tortured. 

McCain’s service during Vietnam is in the spotlight this week as he takes a tour focusing on his life story.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (McCain speaks during a town hall meeting in Alexandria, Virginia) 

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