E Pluribus Unum

Senator Barack Obama (D- IL) will formally announce Saturday that he's running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

As for those who think his resume is a bit thin, the candidate turns that around:

[T]he brevity of his political résumé is his "greatest strength."

His work as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, constitutional law professor and state legislator "provides me with insights into solving problems at the federal level and at the local level and at the neighborhood level," Obama said in an interview with USA TODAY. That experience "is what's needed right now," he said.

Obama, 45, has been in the U.S. Senate for two years and served seven years in the Illinois Senate.

Clinton, Edwards, Richardson -- they're all excellent candidates and I'd be thrilled to see any of them get the nomination. I feel the same thing about Obama -- with one difference: with the other candidates, I get the general feeling that perhaps their best days are behind them. Not so with Obama.

In a related story, Obama has contacted the FEC with a question about campaign finance procedures:

Obama is asking whether he can take money from donors who want him to be president, then give it back later. The Federal Election Commission said Wednesday that it will look into the novel question.

There's something you don't see every day: someone asking to give money back.

Read more about other novel campaign finance ideas.

UPDATE: Obama will be making his announcement in Springfield, Illinois and Jim Rasenberger wonders if Obama will mention the race riot that occured there 100 years ago:

[T]here is a message in the shameful history of the 1908 riot that is every bit as stirring as memories of Lincoln. The riot reminds us, for one thing, that as far as we still have to go in race relations, we have come a very long way. More broadly, it reminds us that even when things seem to be beyond hope, as they do now in Iraq, for instance, and in New Orleans -- and as they did for African-Americans in the early part of the last century -- they do sometimes, in some ways, get better.

If Obama can make Americans believe that, he really may be our next president.