Glad we live here and not some banana republic....

Otherwise I would have to be concerned that government collected information and resources could be used for political purposes. But since we live here, I don't care if the President can authorize on his say so wiretaps, or have investigators look at my e-mail, or low level contractors take a look at my passport files (how uninteresting that one is, except for the picture as it was taken during my Amish beard look-alike period). Nahhh... no need to worry, we can just trust them.

So I'll accept it as an honest mistake and imprudent personal curiousity when Barack Obama's passport files were repeatedly opened by unauthorized indviduals just as the campaign season was heating up.

Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's passport file, the State Department announced Thursday night.

Senior Department officials said they learned of the incidents only when a reporter made an inquiry Thursday afternoon. They said an initial investigation indicated the employees - all of whom worked on contract - were motivated by "imprudent curiosity."....

After seven years of being a paradigm of ethics and virtue, I trust everything that comes out of a Federal official's mouth. When have they failed to utter the complete truth in a comprehensive context... never... and when I see that passport records have been opened by unauthorized personnel in the past, it must have been an honest mistake...

The computer monitoring system, which focuses on politicians and celebrities, was put in place in recent years after the State Department became embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of Bill Clinton in 1992, when he was the Democratic presidential candidate.

Can't be a pattern here as that would require me to believe that government power is used politically, and we know that the Bush Administration never does that. It is just random luck that two charismatic, young, successful Democratic politicians have seen the State Department screw up on their own internal security procedures by having unauthorized individuals access their files in the midst of their presidential bids... just blind luck....