Obama Extols Community Service

'A LARGER AMERICAN STORY'

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Obama Extols Community Service

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DES MOINES -- Barack Obama, addressing students Wednesday at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, laid out a vision of a more service-oriented future that includes expanding the AmeriCorps program, doubling the size of the Peace Corps, establishing an "America's Voice" initiative to recruit and train Americans to speak foreign languages, and enlisting more people over age 55 in community service.

"Through service, I found a community that embraced me, a church to belong to, citizenship that was meaningful, the direction I'd been seeking," said the Democratic senator from Illinois, according to an excerpt released by the campaign. "Through service, I found that my own improbable story fit into a larger American story."

-- Anne E. Kornblut

THE MUSLIM RUMOR

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Clinton Volunteer Out Over Obama E-Mail

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Hillary Clinton's campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after reports surfaced indicating the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Obama is a Christian and attends Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, but chain e-mails have been circulating that falsely describe him as a Muslim.

"There is no place in our campaign or any campaign for this kind of politics," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said in a statement that was posted Wednesday morning on the liberal blog Daily Kos. "A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated."

The coordinator was not named in Solis Doyle's statement. The Clinton campaign's statement, which said the claim has been "investigated," came in response to a posting on Daily Kos from a person who identified himself as a supporter of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). "Over the past week or so, I have received two of the most hateful hit pieces on Obama parroting right wing talking points," the person wrote on the Kos site Wednesday.

"One was forwarded to me from a Clinton county chair. . . . They both repeat the Obama/Osama crap, and the 'madrassa' charges. And there is the conclusion that Obama is a mole whose intention is to make a Muslim revolution in the US. I have replied with factual citations and a suggestion that those people are doing their candidate no good by spreading the hate."

A conservative magazine reported earlier this year Obama attended a madrassa, a kind of Islamic school, a charge that CNN and other outlets found to be untrue. Obama himself has publicly denounced the false charge that he is a "Muslim plant."