Don’t you hate it when someone you don’t like does something you’re forced to applaud? Let’s hear it for Sen. Joe Lieberman. The one-time Democrat who lost his way after he and Al Gore were robbed of the White House in 2000 finally showed up. He’s asking the Internal Revenue Service very good questions about why they are singling out Barack Obama.

…the agency had advised the United Church of Christ last month of its “reasonable belief” the church violated a ban on partisan electioneering when Obama appeared at its 50th General Synod in Hartford last June.

But Lieberman contends there are no published guidelines on how churches remain tax-exempt while addressing issues of the day. The IRS’s “we know it when we see it so just take our word for it” policy makes compliance challenging.

Lieberman wrote that he was concerned about that inquiry and asked the IRS to explain “the specific process by which it establishes the statutorily required ‘reasonable belief’ of improper activity.”

…Lieberman complained that the agency’s guidance “implies that an individual who is a well-known candidate can become a ‘non-candidate’ for the purpose of a church appearance,” but that it doesn’t explain “how such a candidate can be transformed into a non-candidate for the purposes of the appearance.”

Meanwhile, the State Department announced it’s firing employees who passed their spare time browsing through Obama’s passport files. The agency is careful to identify the offenders as “contract workers,” reminding us all what life was like before we agreed to “run government like a business” and hand over the most sensitive tasks to whoever shows up at the day labor office.

[Officials] said that the three employees had access to the passport database for their jobs and had inappropriately accessed Obama’s information out of nothing more than “inappropriate curiosity.”

But they admitted that assessment was based on nothing more than the reassurances of the employees’ supervisors at the two outside companies. The officials said they don’t know the political affiliations of the individuals.

“No, no, these folks weren’t up to anything. Why Annie Rove and Bobby McCain and Wanda Clinton are just random employees with inquiring minds.”

Update: It looks like there could be a Clinton connection for real. Daily Kos:

This is what Hillary Clinton campagin said in a memo they released on March 12:

“As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?”

Now the question is, how did Hillary Clinton campaign know about the countries that Obama visited?

In the aftermath of the Obama passport breach something stinks in the Clinton camp.

Updated update! It just gets better! Now Secretary of State Condo Rice is saying someone took a look-see at Clinton’s files sometime in 2007.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday told Sen. Hillary Clinton that the security of her passport file were breached in 2007, according to Clinton’s Senate official…

The State Department will brief Clinton’s staff this afternoon, a statement from her Senate office said.

Updated updated update!! Now it’s McCain! Hilarity ensues!

An embarrassed State Department admitted today that the passport files of all three presidential candidates — Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — have been breached by its employees…

State Department Secretary called Obama to apologize. She then had to call Clinton to apologize as well. And by noon, the department held a news conference to concede that McCain’s personal file had also been improperly accessed.