With Oprah Winfrey, the intersection of politics and education is making for strange bedfellows. Federal tax returns and other reports confirm that she’s accepted at least $5 million for her self-named South African girls’ school from perhaps Barack Obama’s single greatest political enemy.

Oprah was front and center in her support of Obama's presidential bid -- not so for her acceptance of $5M in contributions from one of his staunchest foes.

Oprah is probably the most well-known celebrity to back Senator Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency. She threw him a lavish launch party, endorsed him on her show, stumped for him in the early primaries, and cried — as captured by photographers — in a Chicago park when he won the election. Her loyalty seemed fierce.

But it turns out that Winfrey is very close friends with Dallas billionaire named Harold Simmons, a leading Republican donor and supporter of John McCain.

This past August it was revealed that Simmons was the single donor to a 527 committee called American Issues Project. Its only issue: to run ads linking Obama to William Ayers, the political activist who was once part of the Weather Underground. Simmons paid $2.9 million to try and make Ayers the Obama campaign’s “Swift Boat,” an issue that might have sidelined permanently the Illinois senator’s chances and advance John McCain — Simmons’s candidate — to the White House.

Nevertheless, Winfrey has cultivated her friendship with Simmons on many social fronts since 2001, resulting in his being second only to her in donating funds to her Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa.

According to the 2006 federal tax filing for the Oprah Winfrey Operating Fund, Winfrey accepted a $1 million donation to the school from Simmons. That amount, The Dallas Morning News reported in 2007, was only part of a $5 million pledge to the Academy. Simmons is considered Dallas’s leading philanthropist to worthy causes. In this case, though, it might have been unnecessary, since Winfrey herself has donated over $60 million to the school.

It’s not like Simmons is a new Republican donor. He gave over $100,000 in the 2007-2008 election cycle to Republican candidates, separate from his Ayers campaign. He has always been an active Republican. In 2004 he was a major donor to the Swift Boat Veterans, the group credited with destroying the campaign of John Kerry for president.

Winfrey has long been close friends with Simmons and his wife Annette. She’s their neighbor in Montecito, California, having bought the estate next to them in 2001. As recently as two weeks ago, Oprah mentioned the couple on her show during a telephone discussion of the Montecito fires with another neighbor, actor Rob Lowe.

(Winfrey was not available for comment, according to her representative. Simmons, who doesn’t have a press representative, did not return our call.)

The Dallas Morning News—thanks to the dogged byline of Alan Peppard — is full of stories over the years documenting Oprah’s friendship with the Simmonses. They are often at each others’ homes and parties. When Oprah’s significant other, Steadman Graham, spoke to a group in Dallas, it was noted that he dined with the Simmonses. In April, 2006 — two years after the Swift Boat scandal was revealed — Oprah sent a camera crew to a Dallas luncheon hosted by Annette Simmons showcasing the thousands of tulip bulbs surrounding the lake on her property.

It’s unlikely though that the Simmonses were at Oprah’s house next door on September 9, 2007. That’s when she hosted an all-star fundraiser for Obama with Stevie Wonder and guests like Halle Berry, Will Smith, and other A-list Hollywood names. One can only imagine what Simmons thought as the sound of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” blared over the loudspeaker system.

Interestingly, that was the last time either Oprah or Graham, for that matter, contributed any money either to the Obama campaign or to the Democratic Party. While they could have each made donations to Obama’s presidential bid, they gave just for the primary. And neither of them showed any interest in the Party itself, which funneled money to Obama.

Simmons, on the other hand, is a regular and constant Republican donor. And it’s not like the Obama campaign hasn’t taken notice of him. On August 21st and 25th, Robert Bauer, general counsel for Obama for America, wrote letters to John C. Keeney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, concerning the American Issues Project.

On the 25th Bauer wrote: “New facts have come to light that underscore the patently illegal nature of AIP’s formation and operation, and also demonstrate a knowing and willful violation of law on the part of its contributor, Howard Simmons [sic].” Bauer then attaches the Federal Election Committee filing by AIP that states its sole purpose: to defeat Barack Obama. Contran Corporation, owned by Simmons, is listed as AIP’s owner.

Bauer finishes his letter demanding Simmons’s prosecution: “We reiterate our request that the Department of Justice fulfill its commitment to take prompt action to investigate and to prosecute the American Issues Project, and we further request that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Howard [sic] Simmons for a knowing and willful violation of the individual aggregate contribution limits.”

Simmons, Bauer complained, had exceeded his personal donation limit because he’d given $2.88 million — roughly $2.7 million more than was allowed by FEC guidelines that state only $42,700 may be given to organizations other than candidate committees or party committees.

It wasn’t the first time Simmons had had trouble with political donations. In 1993, the FEC fined him just under $20,000 for exceeding limits in donations from 1988 and 1989. According to the New York Times, Simmons’s Swift Boat group was fined almost $300,000 for illegally spending $20 million to influence the election. Another Simmons-backed anti-Kerry group, Progress for America, was fined $750,000. They’d spent $31 million.

Simmons’ contentiousness is not limited to the backing of the Swift Boat Vets and the Ayers campaign to smear Obama. In December 1997, according to reports in the New York Times and elsewhere, Simmons was sued by two of his four daughters for abusing his powers in controlling millions of dollars he placed in trust funds for them. A jury agreed that he’d breached his financial duty as guardian of their inheritance, but were undecided on other issues. The case ended in a mistrial. Unusually, the case had been catalyzed when Simmons served her legal papers on one of the daughters by dropping them in her baby’s crib. The child had been born premature and was susceptible to infection, according to the New York Times and other reports.

Read more at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460109,00.html

Should we be concerned that ‘pagans’ are making sacrifices to their god’s for Obama????
Should American have as her president someone such as this?

Pentecostals and pagans press for an Obama victory with prayers and sacrifices as the Illinois senator becomes an icon in the land of his father.

KISUMU, Kenya — Believers across Kenya are praying for Barack Obama — literally. They’re making sacrificial offerings to help ensure his victory in a nation where the Illinois senator is considered a native son.

Minibuses festooned with Obama’s image ply Kenya’s roads, and his portrait is a fast-seller in marketplaces. But one prominent preacher is taking his fervor further, saying his church is engaged in “spiritual warfare” to ensure Obama is victorious.

Bishop Washington Ogonyo Ngede met Obama during the senator’s high-profile 2006 visit to his father’s village, Kogelo. Ngede, a Pentecostal leader, said a prayer in the village before Obama spoke and “laid hands upon” the Hawaii-born senator, who he believes is anointed by God for electoral victory.

Click here to see photos of Obama fever in Kenya.

“I prayed for him. I said, ‘God bless this young boy, and make him to become president of the United States of America.’ I prayed openly, with a lot of force. And I felt the anointing when I was praying,” said Ngede.

One tenet of Ngede’s faith is “spiritual warfare,” which he says combats “evil spirits” from carrying out their intentions. Ngede believes there are “evil plots” afoot in the spiritual realm to prevent Obama from taking office, and in recent months his Power of Jesus Around the World Church has engaged in the flamboyant prayers typical of Pentecostalism to counteract them.

Ngede’s church has 1,400 branches throughout East Africa and claims a membership of 250,000 people. Because of Ngede’s stature in the province and his membership in the Karuoth clan of the Luo tribe, to which the Kenyan Obamas belong, he was included in a welcoming committee for the senator when he visited Kenya two years ago.

“Now we are seeing the result of my prayer,” Ngede told FOXNews.com. Ngede knew Barack Obama Sr., the senator’s father and a Harvard-educated economist, and drew parallels between father and son.

“When you met the old Barack, you could leave him to talk. When he’s talking, he’s just like a gramophone. People loved to receive him. And he had a big voice, just like the voice of Senator Barack,” said Ngede. Obama Sr. died in a car accident in 1982. The presidential candidate’s grandmother, 86-year-old Sarah Obama, still lives in Kogelo village.

Many Kenyans, especially in the western heartland of the 3-million-strong Luo tribe, regard Obama as one of their own. One Luo-language monthly currently on newsstands in Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, even published a banner headline reading “Obama Muomo Amerka” — Obama Invades America.

Awash with radio, television, and newspapers, Kenyan city-dwellers do not want for news about the U.S. presidential race. Kenyan television correspondents report live daily from the United States, and even Sarah Palin has become a household name.

Framed photographs of Obama are sold in the street next to portraits of Kenya’s president and prime minister, which customarily are hung in offices. Peddlers also hawk Obama T-shirts, buttons and keychains.

Songs praising Obama are hits, heard nationwide in nightclubs, drinking dens and people’s homes. And drivers of the colorful matatu, the minibuses that swarm Kenya’s roads, have covered their rigs with Obama paraphernalia.

Besides Ndege, other religious figures in the area have pulled for an Obama victory as well.

At Kit Mikayi, a sacrificial rock shrine 20 miles from Kisumu, about a dozen people have visited on the senator’s behalf, according to Jennifer Okot, an elderly villager who lives near the shrine.

Customarily, those seeking large blessings sacrifice a goat by swinging it by its legs so that its head and neck are bludgeoned against a large rock in a naturally occurring enclosure between two massive boulders that serves as the shrine’s sanctuary. The goat’s demise incurs the blessings of the rock shrine’s god, said Caroline Odhiambo, a 24-year-old who tends to the shrine.

The charismatic faith healer Fr. John Pesa I says he has offered prayers for an Obama victory over the past two months in his cathedral of the Holy Ghost Coptic Church on the outskirts of Kisumu.

Pesa, a former Roman Catholic whose followers address him with the honorific “Your Holiness,” claims 3.5 million members, and his church is disproportionately strong among the Luo people.

Oscar Nyangwesoh, who runs an orphanage in a nearby village, estimates that only the Anglican and Catholic churches are larger than Pesa’s church in Kenya’s Nyanza Province, where Kisumu and Kogelo are located.

Obama himself detailed his Kenyan ancestry in his memoir Dreams From My Father, which is about the young Obama’s search for roots. Obama’s father bore children by four women in the United States and Kenya. He left the candidate’s mother, Ann Dunham, to return to Kenya.

Members of the Obama family, including the candidate’s grandmother, half-sister Auma, uncle Said and his father’s first wife Kezia, have gathered in Kogelo village in advance of the election. Swamped by journalists, the modest family homestead has been cordoned off by the Kenyan police, and the family is refusing comment until the election is over.

The Illinois senator’s aunt has been residing in Boston public housing since her request for asylum was denied four years ago.

Barack Obama said Saturday he was unaware that one of his relatives from Kenya was living in the United States illegally and added that believes the appropriate laws should be followed.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Obama’s aunt had been instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya.

The woman, Zeituni Onyango is living in public housing in Boston and is the half-sister of Obama’s late father .

“Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed,” the Obama campaign said in a written statement given to FOX News.

The campaign said it was returning $260 that Onyango had contributed in small increments to Obama’s presidential bid over several months. Federal election law prohibits foreigners from making political donations. Onyango listed her employer as the Boston Housing Authority and last gave $5 on Sept. 19.

Onyango, 56, is part of Obama’s large paternal family, with many related to him by blood whom he never knew growing up.

Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., left the future presidential nominee when the boy was 2, and they reunited only once — for a monthlong visit when Obama was 10. The elder Obama lived most of his life in Kenya, where he fathered seven other children with three other wives. He died in a car crash in 1982.

Obama was raised for the most part by his mother and her parents in Hawaii. He first met his father’s side of the family when he traveled to Africa 20 years ago. He referred to Onyango as “Auntie Zeituni” when describing the trip in his memoir, saying she was “a proud woman.”

Obama’s campaign said he had seen her a few times since that meeting, beginning with a return trip to Kenya with his future wife, Michelle, in 1992. Onyango visited the family in Chicago on a tourist visa at Obama’s invitation about nine years ago, the campaign said, stopping to visit friends on the East Coast before returning to Kenya.

She attended Obama’s swearing-in to the U.S. Senate in 2004, but campaign officials said Obama provided no assistance in getting her a tourist visa and doesn’t know the details of her stay. The campaign said he last heard from her about two years ago when she called saying she was in Boston, but he did not see her there.

Onyango moved into public housing a year before her request for asylum was rejected, a spokeswoman for the Boston Housing Authority told FOXNews.com.

“If there was a deportation order, we wouldn’t have known about it,” spokeswoman Lydia Agro said, explaining that there is no mechanism in place for her agency to get that information.

“We were unaware of her status until this morning,” Agro said.

Click here for photos.

Two separate sources, including a federal law enforcement official, disclosed and confirmed information to the AP about the deportation case. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

Onyango’s refusal to leave the country would represent an administrative, non-criminal violation of U.S. immigration law, meaning such cases are handled outside the criminal court system. Estimates vary, but many experts believe there are more than 10 million such immigrants in the United States.

The AP could not reach Onyango immediately for comment. No one answered the telephone number listed in her name late Friday. It was unclear why her request for asylum was rejected in 2004.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Kelly Nantel, told the AP the government does not comment on an individual’s citizenship status or immigration case.

Onyango’s case — coming to light just days before the presidential election — led to an unusual nationwide directive within Immigrations and Customs Enforcement requiring any deportations prior to Tuesday’s election to be approved at least at the level of ICE regional directors, the U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.

The unusual directive suggests that the Bush administration is sensitive to the political implications of Onyango’s case coming to light so close to the election.

One of the sources acknowledged he was not a supporter of Obama or John McCain and said he has no plans to vote on Tuesday. He said that was not a motive for releasing the information.

Kenya is in eastern Africa between Somalia and Tanzania. The country has been fractured in violence in recent years, including a period of two months of bloodshed after December 2007 that killed 1,500 people.

Obama Aunt Found Living in Boston Public Housing

The Associated Press contributed to this report.