The presidential inauguration ceremony on Tuesday will begin and end with prayers from two men whom Barack Obama considers role models, advisers and dear friends. One, Joseph Lowery, is an 87-year-old black liberal Methodist from the Deep South who spent his career fighting for civil rights. The......

The Senate will swear in Roland W. Burris as the junior senator from Illinois this week, ending a standoff that had become an embarrassment for Democratic leaders and President-elect Barack Obama....

The Senate will swear in Roland W. Burris as the junior senator from Illinois this week, ending a standoff that had become an embarrassment for Democratic leaders and President-elect Barack Obama....

After a near perfect month of transition operations, Obama has stumbled twice in two weeks....

It was not lost on anyone that the president-elect of the United States, riding the crest of his popularity, and the Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate were outsmarted last week by a state politician who won his last election almost 20 years ago....

A familiar number showed up on Terry Link's cellphone last week, the one that belonged to the friend he tutored in politics, dominated in golf and sometimes referred to playfully as "Ears." At least once each week for almost a decade, the Illinois state senator had talked on the phone to Barack......

President-elect Barack Obama announced yesterday that he will resign his Senate seat effective Sunday, leaving Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) to choose from among a host of willing successors for the final two years of the Democrat's term....

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his wife, Michelle, announced yesterday that they have left their longtime Chicago church, Trinity United Church of Christ, after racially charged comments by a visiting pastor last week dragged them into yet another controversy over religion and race....

Hillary Clinton has been trying to make a point about Barack Obama that deserves one last careful look before Tuesday's probably decisive Democratic primaries: If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or apti...