And so it begins...

The presidential campaign, complete with racial smears, is just getting underway. A magazine owned by the moonie run Washington Times -- quite humorously called Insight -- reported that as a child in Indonesia, Mr. Obama had attended a Madrassa, a school that teaches a radical version of the Muslim faith.

Of course, for anyone truly paying attention -- Mr. Obama, who spent a few years in Jakarta as a boy, is a Christian not a Muslim... Hmmmmm... wonder why they got that so wrong? I just wonder...

Adding to the political volatility of the report was the attribution of the news to "researchers connected to" Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Wow, a two-fer for the right-wing smear machine. Someone just peeped himself at the Wash T.

Representatives of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton denounced the Insight report, calling it false and an effort by a conservative publication to smear two Democratic contenders at the same time.

The Fox News Channel discussed the report on two of its programs. It was also picked up by The New York Post, which shares ownership with Fox News, and was discussed by several conservative talk-radio hosts.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, said in an e-mail message: "This is a textbook example of how the other side works. A right-wing rag makes up a scurrilous charge and prints it with no real attribution. The smear gets injected into the atmosphere and picked up by talk radio. In this case both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton were victimized."

A spokesman for Mr. Obama had previously been quoted in The Washington Post as calling the report "appallingly irresponsible."

On its Web site yesterday, Insight defended its report, saying, "Our reporter's sources close to the Clinton opposition research war room confirm the truth of the story."

The New York Times picked up the story, but only after CNN went after its arch rival Fox news over the original report. Aw, behold the press...