Obama's Passport Records Breached

Here's a strange breaking scandal: Two State Department employees have been fired and a third disciplined after they reportedly sneaked a peek at Sen. Barack Obama's passport records.

The three people who had access to Obama's passport records were contract employees of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs

Apparently there's a high-tech monitoring system that is tripped when an employee opens the records of a high-profile individual.

Exactly why they did it remains unclear. Was it just curiosity or is there a more sinister motive?

UPDATE: Looks like the employees were just being nosy. A State Department spokesman tells the Washington Times: "As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity."

AM UPDATE: Maybe the motive wasn't so cut and dried. The State Department has launched an investigation into whether the employees might have had political reasons for checking out Obama's records. Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has apologized to Barack Obama for the breach, which his campaign has called "outgrageous."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now it turns out that the passport records of all three presidential candidates were breached. Sheesh, it's an epidemic.