JANUARY 17: Insight, a conservative magazine affiliated with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, publishes an anonymous story that begins, “Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage? That is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Senator Barack Obama.” Citing anonymous sources with information allegedly obtained by “researchers connected to Senator Clinton,” the article says Obama spent “at least four years” at a “Muslim seminary” in Indonesia that may be linked to Wahabbism, a fundamentalist strain of Islam. The article also says Obama attends church irregularly and may actually still be a Muslim.

JANUARY 19: The hosts of Fox News & Friends discuss the allegations contained in the Insight article, taking both their validity and their connection to the Clinton campaign for granted. (Steve Doocy: “What have we heard about, coming out of the madrassa schools in Indonesia? This is huge!”) In addition, Doocy et al. suggest that Obama has been dishonest about this aspect of his history; in fact, both Obama’s biographies mention living in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather and attending mostly Muslim and Catholic schools before leaving the country at the age of 10. (Insight’s allegations are also relayed in the New York Post, on Fox’s The Big Story, and by CNN talker Glenn Beck.)

JANUARY 21: In the Chicago Sun-Times, conservative columnist Mark Steyn writes that Obama “was raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams.” Obama will be welcomed by Democrats who think radical Islam is just a conservative bogeyman. He adds, “What would more resoundingly confirm that view than if the nicest, most non-bitter, nonpartisan guy in politics turns out to have graduated from the Sword of the Infidel Slayer grade school in Jakarta?”

JANUARY 22: The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz asks Bill Shine, Fox News senior VP for programming, if his network is promoting unfounded rumors about Obama and Clinton. “Some on the left might think that,” Shine replies. “I don’t think anybody should read anything into that.”

JANUARY 22: The staff of Fox News & Friends apologizes, sort of, for their January 19 show, noting that both the Obama and Clinton camps say the Insight story was wrong. “There was a firestorm created over that, so we just want to say that’s the story,” says co-host Brian Kilmeade. “The Obama camp was upset, so we hope they’re not now.” “Come back, Senator Obama,” pleads co-host Gretchen Carlson.

JANUARY 23: After dispatching international correspondent John Vause to Indonesia to visit the Basuki school, CNN concludes that Insight’s claims were false, and posts this conclusion on its Web site. “I came here to Barack Obama’s elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa . . . like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Vause is quoted as saying. “This school is nothing like that.”

In fact, it actually seems to be a public school — but now, of course, the damage is done.