Obama Inspires Destitute Half-Brother

George denies charge, resisted arrest; prez barely knows him

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama’s half-brother has been arrested in Kenya for possessing marijuana, CNN reports. George Obama is being held at a Nairobi police station ahead of a Monday trial after police said he resisted arrest. He denies the charges. “They took me from my home," he said. "I don't know why they are charging me.” George and Barack barely know each other; George was the only close family member not to attend the inauguration. More»

Granddad was jailed, beaten for 2 years in '50s Mau Mau uprising

(NEWSER) - British jailers tortured Barack Obama's grandfather during the struggle for Kenyan independence, his family tells the Times of London. Hussein Onyango Obama, who worked as a cook for a British army officer, was arrested in 1949, aged 56, and imprisoned for two years. There he was subjected to daily whippings and horrific sexual torture that left him permanently scarred, according to his widow, Sarah Onyango. More»

Elder Barack critiqued Kenyan socialism

(NEWSER) - A mid-'60s treatise on Kenyan socialism has been causing a stir in the 2008 US presidential election, Politico reports, because of its author—Barack Obama Sr. Titled “Problems Facing Our Socialism,” conservative bloggers believe the paper reveals the elder Obama’s hidden communist leanings. But the scholarly paper is more a moderate, mocking critique of the “African Socialism” Kenya’s government was then advocating. More»

His father told immigrations officials he'd be given up at birth

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama’s father once told immigration officials that he and Ann Dunham were planning to give their then-unborn child up for adoption, writes Sally Jacobs for the Boston Globe . The elder Obama had been under scrutiny from federal immigration officials, who feared that he had another wife in Kenya. In writing a biography of the elder Obama, Jacobs recently obtained a memo from 1961 that reads: “Although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away." More»

And as for Kenya comment, 'I made a mistake, I corrected it'

(NEWSER) - Mike Huckabee has more to say on both of his recent headline-making statements: That Barack Obama grew up in Kenya , and that Natalie Portman is setting a bad example with her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mediaite reports Huckabee’s comments from Sirius Radio’s POTUS channel:

• On Kenya: “The reaction ranged from, ‘This guy is so dumb he doesn’t know that Barack Obama grew up in Indonesia not Kenya,’ all the way to the other extreme, I saw people like Andrea Mitchell saying, ‘Oh no, he did this on purpose, he is very smart and shrewd, he did this in a calculating way.' Well, I can’t be both. I can’t be the dumbest guy in the room and the smartest guy in the room at the same time. I have to be one or the other, or maybe it was just that I made a mistake, I corrected it.”