"Outrageous breach of security and privacy" at State Department as Obama's passport file accessed

What a night.

The Washington Post reports a major security breach involving Barack Obama's passport:

The State Department said last night that it had fired two contract employees and disciplined a third for accessing Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.

Obama's presidential campaign immediately called for a "complete investigation."

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the employees had individually looked into Obama's passport file on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. To access such a file, the employees must first acknowledge a pledge to keep the information private.

This is not good. We know how much we can trust anyone who works for George Bush. NOT AT ALL.

The Post article included this statement from the Obama campaign:

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. "This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."

The first Bush administration did the same thing to Bill Clinton. Read the rest of this post...

McCain busts the FEC's spending cap, violating campaign finance law

John McCain, who raised a paltry $11 million in February, has been scamming the campaign finance system. The McCain campaign's February FEC report is the here. He is currently in public finance system, which has a spending limit. The way the Associated Press tallied McCain's expenditures, he's busted the spending limit, which is a violation of the law:

McCain has now spent $58.4 million in his primary bid, surpassing the $50 million limit he would have faced if he participated in the public financing system he had been certified to join. McCain has decided not to accept the public matching funds, but the FEC wants him to assure regulators that he did not use the promise of public money as collateral for a $4 million loan.

McCain and his lawyers said the loan was secured with other collateral, thus freeing him to spend as much money as he wishes on his primary campaign. The Democratic National Committee has filed a complaint with the FEC arguing McCain cannot withdraw from the public finance system without FEC approval.

Also, McCain used his participation in the public finance system to secure his placement on the ballots in key states like Ohio. Here's the DNC's complaint.

Now, AP seems to think McCain is out of the system, but that's a decision for the FEC, not John McCain or AP. And, the FEC already told McCain that he cannot withdraw from the system as the Washington Post reported last month:

The nation's top federal election official told Sen. John McCain yesterday that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public financing system as he had requested, a decision that threatens to dramatically restrict his spending until the general election campaign begins in the fall.

It's serious -- and, as the Post noted, it's criminal:

Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.

Read the rest of this post...

NAFTA comes back to haunt Hillary Clinton

Jed Report, one of my new favorite blogs, has a great video that dissects the Clinton 2008 statements on NAFTA with what was happening in 1993 on NAFTA. Something doesn't add up -- Clinton's credibility.

David Sirota, who knows this trade issue, has a post at DailyKos titled "Papers Expose Lies of Clinton, Emanuel & Gergen On NAFTA." You get the point, but it's worth a read. Read the rest of this post...

Rev. Hagee: "It's true that [John] McCain's campaign sought my endorsement"

We'll see this Sunday in the NY Times magazine, Easter Sunday coincidentally. We know it now thanks to Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher:

In an interview that will appear in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, controversial televangelist Rev. John Hagee declares, "It's true that [John] McCain's campaign sought my endorsement."

McCain has attempted to distance himself from some of Hagee's views, much as Barack Obama is doing in relation to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But unlike McCain, Obama has not stood on stage with Wright and accepted his accolades this year.

No wonder McCain was "honored" and "very proud" to receive Hagee's endorsement, McCain actively sought Hagee's endorsement.

So, this, of course, means we'll start seeing endless coverage on cable news of John McCain's relationship with Rev. Hagee, who thinks, among other outrages, that the Catholic Church is the "great whore." Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough and that painful David Gregory will undoubtedly convene panels to examine every detail of the McCain/Hagee relationship.

To see more about Hagee's hateful rhetoric, click here. It's very disturbing -- and surely warrants some attention from the traditional media. Read the rest of this post...

Dear AP: Please stop. You're not helping.

I've spent some time today trying to figure out why the AP article comparing Hillary's schedule to the Bill/Monica sexual encounter schedule made me feel so ... well... icky. Salacious details aside, I think it's because I don't see the point. Bottom line, AP - and other media outlets that choose to hash and rehash the details because they just can't resist the urge to follow the leader - you're not helping.

How does knowing where Hillary was when her husband was being a cad tell me how she is going to get us out of Iraq? It doesn't. Are the specifics of her healthcare plan and her blueprint for fixing the economy somehow affected by her husband's infidelity more than a decade ago? Not one bit.

We can expect this kind of dirt digging from Republicans because it's become par for the course in recent presidential campaigns, but why are we getting it from the media? How does this benefit the voters in any way, shape, or form?

Barack Obama's speech - while in part given to disavow his pastor's vitriolic sermon - was also meant to send the message of no more. Not this time, he offered. Let's bring discourse back up to a respectable level. Let's stop with the token character assassinations and bring the contest back to the issues that matter. Let's just - finally - aim to be better.

Yes, character matters. And if there is something in Obama's past or Clinton's past that we should know about and take into consideration when selecting the person best suited to steer this country back in the right direction, bring it up. Dissect it to pieces. Fine. But stop with the judgment based on tangential non-factors. Don't we have enough real stuff to worry about?

You can argue over who started it or what's fair game and play tit-for-tat in the ever-growing conga line of people who know or are affiliated with the candidates that make questionable statements. But all we're doing is snaking ourselves into a giant knot and getting nowhere. Please, just stop.

Back in January, I posted on my personal blog an incident where Bill Clinton laid into Jessica Yellin - CNN's Congressional correspondent - for perpetuating crap that no one cares about (3:20 in). The exchange - important in its own right, posted by CNN without a hint of irony, and ultimately making absolutely no impact whatsoever - gave me an excuse to repost Jon Stewart's famous Crossfire appearance where he tells Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson (but mostly Tucker) to stop hurting America.

It's been more than 2 years, and yet, sadly, it's more relevant than ever. Read the rest of this post...

Clinton won't deny pushing the Wright story. She won't even answer the question.

Shameless.

Last night, I wrote a post about Lanny Davis, a pretty despicable top surrogate for the Clinton campaign pushing the Rev. Wright story. Davis isn't a free agent. He's on Team Clinton. At around the same time I was publishing that post, an article appeared on the New York Times website confirming what the Clinton campaign operatives were doing to use Rev. Wright to their political advantage:

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama’s association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.

That argument could be Mrs. Clinton’s last hope for winning this contest.

That article confirms the desperation of the Clinton campaign -- and their desperate tactics. Today, we learn from ABC News that the candidate herself not only wouldn't deny what the campaign was doing, in somewhat typical fashion, Clinton wouldn't even answer the question:

However at a Thursday press availability in Terra Haute, Indiana after a report surfaced that the Clinton campaign was pushing the Wright story to superdelegates arguing that the relationship hurt Obama's electibility -– Clinton refused to deny that her campaign was pushing the story.

When asked, Clinton ignored the Wright portion of the question and said “well my campaign has been making the case that I am the most electable that I have said that for a year or more that I am the person best able to make the challenges that our country faces as commander in chief.”

When Clinton was then asked specifically if her campaign was pushing the Wright story –- she shrugged and took the next question, ignoring the reporter.

Classy. Very classy. Makes you proud, doesn't it? And, seriously, why does Hillary want to go there? Seriously? Why would someone with as many skeletons in her closet want this campaign to go to the ugliest places? Desperation is the only possible answer.

Given this ugliness, Clinton also loses the ability to feign any kind of moral outrage over Florida and Michigan. Read the rest of this post...

McCain campaign staffer pushed racist, anti-Obama video

From Greg Sargent:

A McCain campaign aide actively pushed an incendiary, racially-charged video that uses the controversial words of Barack Obama's pastor to tar Obama as unpatriotic -- despite the fact that McCain himself has suggested that Obama shouldn't be held accountable for Wright's views.

The aide, Soren Dayton, who works in McCain's political department, has been suspended from the campaign, a McCain spokesperson, Jill Hazelbaker, confimed to me.

The move by McCain's aide could create controversy for the McCain camp, because the video itself is thoroughly reprehensible -- it interweaves footage of Obama explaining why he won't wear the American flag pin, Wright saying "God damn America," Malcolm X, and Obama's wife saying that his candidacy has made her proud of America for the "first time."

McCain needs to answer for this. He was paying Mr. Dayton. He is responsible for Mr. Dayton. What about the McCain internal campaign conversations made Dayton think this was acceptable? Read the rest of this post...

Dear MSNBC, if you're going call a poll the latest poll, then use the latest poll

UPDATE 5:03 PM. MSNBC is still using yesterday's Gallup tracking poll -- although the new Gallup numbers for today came out hours ago. Is MSNBC that pathetic?



MSNBC has been reporting on the "Latest Poll Positions" this afternoon.

Only problem: It's not the latest. Gallup already published today's tracking poll showing Clinton leading by a smaller margin: 48% - 43%.

It's not like these polls matter all that much. But, it's the principle. And, it makes you wonder whether MSNBC and the other cable networks care about accuracy.

You'd think that if MSNBC is going to be talking about the latest poll positions, they'd be accurate. You'd like to think that anyway. But, the new poll might distort MSNBC's story line. Unlike MSNBC, I don't have a full time researchers and producers, but I figured it out. Read the rest of this post...

We've moved to a new comment system

UPDATE: Try this link, instead, to sign up for your account.

I've moved the blog over to a new comment system called Disqus. It's pretty cool, and will be a massive improvement in functionality for those of you commenting, and for those of us administering the comments.

First off, you'll need to create an account for free at Disqus. Then make sure that your browser has java-enabled.

Then, just click the "comments" button on a post and it will bring you to a new page where you can enter a comment (make sure you're logged in, of course). Among the much-improved features that Disqus now offers us:

- Threaded comments. You can actually follow a conversation in the comments, watching the conversation indent as you reply to a specific comment. (If enough folks hate this, we can switch back to regular "flat" comments where each new comment will appear on top of the previous one. Give it a few days, and then let me know.)

- Avatars. You can upload a photo to go along with your name with each comment.

- Rating comments. Which isn't just a beauty contest, but rather, enables each commenter to build up some credibility, by the number of comments they've made and ratings they get, but also permits you to choose to view the comments ranked by their favorability (you can choose how you see the comments by clicking on the "options" link right below the comments box on any comments page). Ratings helps us do other things as well, so definitely rate comments good or bad.

- Ban features. Suffice it to say that this is light-years ahead of what we used to use to ban people. This should clean up the comments considerably.

- You can add links to your blog, your Twitter account, Facebook, flickr, etc. to your profile. You can also add a description of yourself, hometown, etc.

- Email settings. You can, I think, subscribe to some commenters (to follow what they write), have the comments auto-email to you any replies to your own comments, etc.

- All your comments will be pulled together on one page so that you, or anyone else, can check out what else you've written.

Again, I think it's pretty cool, and it's definitely better than what we had. And yes, I know, some of you don't like it. Well, I know change is hard. Give it a chance.

Having said that, I've heard that some people are having problems with Internet Explorer and this new system, let me know if you're having any problems. (You can email me.) Read the rest of this post...

Robots!

This is some astonishing technology. Doesn't seem like it'd be very hard to put, say, a gun on the top of this thing . . .



But here's the craziest part for me: It looks so much like a living thing that I found myself feeling bad when it slipped. That's pretty weird, right? Read the rest of this post...

MySpace, Rupert Murdoch, FOX News, and terrorist Web pages

Earlier this year, arm chair terrorism fighter Bill O'Reilly blasted the chair of General Electric for doing business with terrorist countries like Iran. Bill was in rare form when he took on this issue. But, Bill needs to have on another guest and blast him for cavorting with Iranians and Syrians, possibly even aiding in the recruitment of terrorists and certainly facilitating the spewing of hatred against Israel.

That guest would be Rupert Murdoch, the head of FOX News.

Murdoch owns FOX, for whom O'Reilly works. Murdoch also owns MySpace.com. Therein lies the problem. An astute observer pointed us to some of the users of Mr. Murdoch's site. There are numerous users of MySpace.com in states that sponsor terrorism, like Iran, Syria and Sudan. That alone should warrant intervention from O'Reilly using his own standards for doing business with terrorist nations. But, that's not the biggest problem. It's the Web sites honoring terrorist organizations that give us pause:

There is the self-described "Offical Hezbollah MySpace" page.



There's a page for Hamas:



There's also a Death to Israel" site.



There are many other similar sites on MySpace, like this one that honors Ayatollah Khomeini and contains a number of other troubling-looking videos. Granted, there is no way for me to verify whether that site above is the official Hezbollah site on MySpace. But, given the grave nature of the threat, figuring that out seems like a perfect task for Bill O'Reilly and his crack team of terror fighters over at Fox News.

Also, don't forget, O'Reilly spent a lot of time attacking DailyKos and other blogs for content that he viewed as objectionable, even though it was written by kooky anonymous visitors to our sites (and even though O'Reilly's own kooky commenters made some rather troubling threats about Hillary). O'Reilly has a very strict standard for accountability from others, even when they're not really responsible for the hate that may appear on their Web sites. Let's see if Bill O'Reilly and FOX News hold Murdoch's MySpace to that same standard of accountability. Read the rest of this post...

AP brings up Monica

Hillary Clinton's calendar as First Lady was released yesterday. The Associated Press did a lengthy comparison of Hillary's calendar appointments and how they coincided with the times that Monica and Bill Clinton had sex. It's a pretty risque, and risky, article for AP. I can easily see the firestorm of indignation this is going to produce from the Clinton campaign and its supporters. And some of it might be deserved, as AP doesn't exactly explain why it wrote this article now (the article goes into some detail about what sex acts they did on what day and where Hillary was at the time). Having said that, the Republicans are certainly going to rehash Monica should Hillary become the nominee, and we'll again be forced to deal with the excruciatingly public details of Bill Clinton's sex life through election day and beyond. As Hillary always reminds us, Obama's scandals are issues that should be publicly discussed now so that the Superdelegates can take them into account when deciding whether Obama can win against the Republicans in the fall. Unfortunately for Hillary, AP appears to have applied Hillary's "bring those scandals on!" standard against Hillary herself. The lesson here: Be careful what you wish for. Read the rest of this post...

Jobless claims jump

More of what happens when we let business self regulate and decide what's best for America. Unfortunately, there's going to a lot more of this coming soon enough. Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good Morning.

Today is the day John McCain files his FEC report. Today is the day we find out if McCain has already broken the campaign finance laws by breaking the FEC's spending cap. That's a criminal offense. Yes, a crime.

No wonder McCain is out of the country on a taxpayer funder photo op for his campaign.

Start threading. Read the rest of this post...

China loves the Olympic spirit to death

The Olympic charter:

According to the Olympic Charter, established by Pierre de Coubertin, the goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

And China's implementation of that spirit:

China acknowledged Thursday that anti-government riots that rocked Tibet last week have spread to other provinces, while communist authorities announced the first group of arrests in connection with the violence.

Where are pro-democracy Americans now? You know, the ones who still talk about bringing democracy and freedom around the world? Where are they? Are they serious about democracy and freedom or only when it helps open up or expand business? Hypocrites. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: 71% of Americans think Iraq spending hurts economy

The taxpayer blank check for Iraq is coming to an end. Selling more war (Republican policy) and more war costs (Republican policy also) to the public has become much tougher thanks to the Republican economic policy. Read the rest of this post...