face it, Obama's passport files are just the tip of the iceberg....

Here's a guy who hung out with unrepentent "terrorist bombers" like Dohrn and Ayres. I mean, IMHO, if the government isn't keeping track on those two, it isn't doing its job -- so there is probably a file with Obama's name on it thanks to those two.

And of course, Obama's 20 year association with "radical black activist preacher" Dr. Jereemiah Wright will be part of his files.

Then there is the whole "foreign born Muslim father", "foreign born Muslim stepfather", "educated in schools where he was registered as a Muslim and taught the Koran" stuff... after 9-11, you KNOW his file was flagged...

And while its all complete bullshit, at some point if he becomes the nominee the file will get leaked, and it won't matter that its bullshit, because it will be bullshit with a government stamp on it. And we're suddenly looking at four more years of GOP rule.

This seems kind of amateurish. Bush I's State Department spent two full days digging through Bill Clinton's in 1992. Remember that's when they tried to prove he'd done some communist sympathizing back in the USSR during his European travel. Good times.

My real concern about Obama's State Department files isn't his passport files. It's whether there's a letter from Obama on behalf of Rezko's friend Auchi to try to get him a passport. There was a news article some time ago (I'm trying to find the link) that said Rezko had called some of his friends in government to help. Now, maybe he called Illinois officials, but passports are issued by the federal government. I've been worried for awhile that if any such letter exists, the Bush-controlled State Department will release it under FOIA at the absolute worst time in the general election campaign. Hopefully, if he was asked by Rezko, Obama was smart enough not to do anything or if he wasn't that smart, at least he made a phone call instead of sending a letter.

Just like Elliot Spitzer, if it comes to that.

And it's all the more bizarre because we know that Obama's done very little travel.

So I imagine this translates to sending Obama a message that they've got something else.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Occasionally, government employees or others with access will get themselves fired looking up information on famous people out of curiosity, like Elizabeth Taylor's tax returns. So the cover story isn't necessarily a cover, it could be the real story. And wouldn't it be ironic if it is true, but ends up scaring Obama anyway because he thinks it's a sighting shot?

The thing that makes this so fishy is why would they do it three times? Or was it three unassociated people and so they were each doing an independent search? Certainly a group search on multiple days would be extremely fishy. But even if you have three ostensibly independent folks, that seems like a lot to all get curious about the same person. As someone who has access to a few government databases, I've never used them to simply peruse anyone's file out of curiosity. My curiosity isn't worth losing my government job. OTOH, as I said, some people aren't that bright.

What I want to know is how are these records stored and how easily are they searched? It's a lot easier to believe a couple of lookie-loos ran a computer search than did some extensive paper search. The more work, the more I'd say it looks like political motivation.

Along the same lines, I'd like to know if they only looked at Obama's records or if they looked up other famous people's records. Again, it's a lot easier to believe they were just curious if right after the Obama search, there was one for "Jolie, Angelina".

After ten minutes of this crap, I realized they think they've found the next Watergate break-in. It MIGHT have been that and they weren't wrong to cover it but they turned it into one of those stories that preempts all other news. Which, it seems to turn out, it wasn't. I switched to Larry King who was interviewing Obama about his campaign, real news. It did get mention on CNN as one story of many which was where Keith should have left it. MSNBC jumped the shark on this one. this morning the Sun-Times gave it a paragraph on page 22.

Now, if someone can tie all three of these people together, then you have a mega-story. But until they do, it's BS.

The State Department's narrative needs some fleshing out. It looks like somebody was peddling the information to the media:

The incidents, which occurred on January 9, February 21 and March 14, were quickly reported to lower-level State Department officials but only came to the notice of its senior management when a reporter e-mailed spokesman Sean McCormack on Thursday.

So 3 contractors (why do we trust them?) dipped into his passport records and somebody decided to call reporters: "Did you know …?" At least one reporter was intrigued enough to follow up, carrying the story up the State Department hierarchy and exposing the existence of the leak.

I'm dubious that this is a triumph of IT security. A reasonable guess is that McCormack or someone else realized that the exposure had the potential to embarrass everybody and used IT records to track down those who would be held (more or less) responsible.