Thursday Late and Early

Late Thursday the story was breaking that there had been three unauthorized viewings over the past three months of Barack Obama's passport records within the State Department, potentially violating the Privacy Act and suggesting the possibility of some kind of political skullduggery.

The State Department officials who briefed reporters had very little information, though they insisted the breaches were of no significance, due to individual curiosity. This insistence, as a frontpager at Kos demonstrated, was also the early claim in 1991 when Bill Clinton's passport files were breached, and turned out not to be true.

The State Department is of course controlled by the Republican Bush administration. There's also the reported fact that the head of the Bureau of Consular Affairs (the responsible agency) during the first two incidents was a former official of the Clinton administration. But really at this point nobody knows anything--not the names of the perpetrators, and nothing about them except that they were outside contractors, the first two were fired and the third (who breached the records just last Friday) is suspended. But that's also part of the point--there was no immediate investigation, as there should have been.

This story will pop on Friday and if there's much more to it, there could be months and even years of investigation, with a congressional committee hearing very likely in the near future. The committee most likely to do that, according to Al G. at The Field, is the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden chair, and other Dem members include Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Bob Casey, Jr. (of PA)...and Senator Barack Obama. Could be a pretty interesting hearing.

Two notes concerning the PA primary. While Clinton continues to soar in the polls there, and Gov. Rendell is marshaling every conceivable Democratic party official to endorse Clinton, there's some stirring outside the establishment--and the party. The Obama campaign is making a concerted effort to register voters in PA, especially Independents and sympathetic Republicans who need to register as Dems in order to vote for Obama in the primary. Seems it may be working--reports of big increases in voter registration, particularly in areas of the Commonwealth (Philly area, central PA) where Obama could do well, and needs to do well.

It definitely worked with this guy---the Patriot-News in Harrisburg reports that the Republican mayor of Camp Hill, PA has registered Dem in order to vote for Obama. "I'm sick and tired of the politics of fear in this country. He's the only one who doesn't do that," Thieblemont said of Obama. "He's the only candidate who's said he'd talk to our enemies and try to get some common ground."

Earlier on Thursday, Obama gave his third major speech this week, on the connection between the war in Iraq and the economy and well-being of America. He was in West Virginia this time, and this is part of what he said:

The costs of war are greatest for the troops and those who love them, but we know that war has other costs as well. Yesterday, I addressed some of these other costs in a speech on the strategic consequences of the Iraq war. I spoke about how this war has diverted us from fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and from addressing the other challenges of the 21st Century: violent extremism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease.

And today, I want to talk about another cost of this war – the toll it has taken on our economy. Because at a time when we’re on the brink of recession – when neighborhoods have For Sale signs outside every home, and working families are struggling to keep up with rising costs – ordinary Americans are paying a price for this war.

When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war. When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.

When a National Guard unit is over in Iraq and can’t help out during a hurricane in Louisiana or with floods here in West Virginia, our communities are paying a price for this war.

And the price our families and communities are paying reflects the price America is paying. The most conservative estimates say that Iraq has now cost more than half a trillion dollars, more than any other war in our history besides World War II. Some say the true cost is even higher and that by the time it’s over, this could be a $3 trillion war....

The truth is, this is all part of the reason I opposed this war from the start. It’s why I said back in 2002 that it could lead to an occupation not just of undetermined length or undetermined consequences, but of undetermined costs. It’s why I’ve said this war should have never been authorized and never been waged. ...

Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia. For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students....

Instead of fighting this war, we could be freeing ourselves from the tyranny of oil, and saving this planet for our children. We could be investing in renewable sources of energy, and in clean coal technology, and creating up to 5 million new green jobs in the bargain, including new clean coal jobs. And we could be doing it all for the cost of less than a year and a half in Iraq...

These are the investments we could be making, all within the parameters of a more responsible and disciplined budget. This is the future we could be building. And that is why I will bring this war to an end when I’m President of the United States of America."