My headline, of course, is metaphorical.

The publisher in question is Joseph Farah, founder of WorldNetDaily.com, which shares the bottom of the rightwing "news" chain with Matt Drudge's Drudgereport.com. For guys like Farah and Drudge, no baldfaced rightwing lie about a Democrat is too false or sleazy to publish. And once they publish such lies, they get promoted by more "credible" outlets like Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, FOX News, and Wall Street Journal, and are then embraced on MSNBC by Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, who together did more to promote the Swift Boat Liars than anyone on TV.

That's exactly why rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife has funded much of Farah's career - the same man who funded the Arkansas Project to manufacture and distribute baldfaced lies about Bill Clinton, which ultimately led to his impeachment by Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolutionaries.

Farah's dismal record as a "journalist" is a hoot, as Wikipedia details:

• In 1990, he bought the Sacramento Union from Scaife and managed to turn an already rightwing paper "in a more conservative direction." "After 15 months as editor of the Union, Farah stepped down, in part from the 30 percent decline of the paper's circulation." Ouch.
• In 1994, Farah wrote "See, I Told You So" with Rush Limbaugh.
• In 1997, Farah "co-founded the Western Journalism Center, which supplied Christopher W. Ruddy (founder of NewsMax) with "additional expense money, funding for Freedom of Information Act requests, legal support and publicity during his" investigation of a Clinton conspiracy surrounding the suicide of Vince Foster. In the 1994-95 course of the Center Scaife-connected foundations gave $330,000 in donations to the group."
• In May 1997, "Farah set his eyes on the internet and set up WorldNetDaily (WND) as a project of the Center. In 1999, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., with offices in Cave Junction, Ore. was incorporated in Delaware as a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Western Journalism Center with the backing of $4.5 million from investors." Perhaps one of those investors has the initials RMS?
• In 2003, Farah took over Oliver North's radio show. Three years later, Farah gave up the show to spend more time with his family, which apparently was the only group still listening to his show.
• In September 2007, Farah moderated the "Values Voter Presidential Debate" in Ft. Lauderdale which featured all the rightwing nuts: Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul and John Cox (who?). But the event was too toxic for mainstream Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Fred Thompson.

All of which sets the stage for Farah's latest "contribution" to "journalism": the first published story about Larry Sinclair, the sleazebag liar who claims without a scintilla of evidence that he did coke and oral sex with State Senator Barack Obama in the back of Sinclair's limo in 1999.

Sinclair first posted his fantasy on Youtube on January 18, and it has ricocheted around rightwing websites and emails ever since. On February 14, Sinclair filed a "lawsuit" against Obama, his consultant David Axelrod, and the Democratic National Committee.

Defendants have and continue to conspire against the rights of citizens in that they are actively engaged in ongoing internet intimidation, claiming to be engaging in the conduction of illegal investigations into plaintiffs personal life, and actively involved in preventing allegations brought of illegal drug use and sexual activity involving Defendant Obama from becoming public knowledge.

If you can follow the workings of this fevered brain you're a whole lot smarter than I am, but I'm sure the "loyal Bushies" in the Justice Department will file a friend-of-the-court brief by the end of the week, and Justice Clarence "Pubic Hair" Thomas will award Sinclair billions in damages.

Naturally Farah has no problem with these paranoid ramblings, and published them as though Moses carried them down from Mount Sinai.

Apparently what made Sinclair's delusions newsworthy for Farah was an offer of $10,000 for a lie detector test by another "high-quality" publisher, Dan Parisi of WhiteHouse.com. Wikipedia says Parisi made $1 million per year by turning the popular domain (especially among students) into a disgusting porn site, until his own son was old enough for kindergarten. Parisi offered the cash to Sinclair on Friday (with a promise of another $90,000 if Sinclair passed the test), and on Sunday Sinclair accepted the offer.

After communicating via email to work out the logistics of the challenge, we were able to reach an agreement. Now, the plan is to get together with Sinclair and one of the best polygraph experts in the country, and ask him some questions – with the camera rolling, of course. As more details are made available we will post it here.

The results of the whole thing will be posted right here on Whitehouse.com. Our pockets lighter by either ten grand or ten times that amount, we'll all have a better sense of what to make of Sinclair's almost-too-unbelievable-to-be-unbelievable allegations against a Senator who is poised, perhaps, to make history.

Mr Sinclair has put up instead of shutting up so we will see which way the chips fall.

Of course, polygraphs are about as credible as WorldNetDaily and WhiteHouse.com. According to Wikipedia, "A 1997 survey of 421 psychologists estimated the test's average accuracy at about 61%, a little better than chance."

Although defense attorneys often attempt to have the results of friendly CQTs admitted as evidence in court, there is no evidence supporting their validity and ample reason to doubt it. Members of scientific organizations who have the requisite background to evaluate the CQT are overwhelmingly skeptical of the claims made by polygraph proponents." Polygraph tests have also been criticized for failing to trap known spies such as double-agent Aldrich Ames, who passed two polygraph tests while spying for the Soviet Union. Other spies who passed the polygraph include Karl Koecher, Ana Belen Montes, and Leandro Aragoncillo. Noted pseudoscience debunker Bob Park recently commented, "The polygraph, in fact, has ruined careers, but never uncovered a single spy."

But if Sinclair "passes" Parisi's polygraph, we can be sure that it will be all over Drudge, FOX, and MSNBC within seconds.