Hm. Eight months ago, Robert Spencer wrote an article for Human Events entitled “Our First Muslim President?” It examined and debunked email stories that Barack Obama remains, secretly, a Muslim, and it also looked at the possibility that some people might see Obama’s Muslim past as an asset in the war.

This week, Perry Bacon of the Washington Post asked Spencer’s editor at Human Events about that article. Robert puts that together with this week’s Doonesbury cartoon and the much discussed Robert Novak column regarding Clinton operatives who claim to have dirt on Obama but are classily refraining from using it — but not refraining from whispering of its existence, obviously — and wonders whether there’s a connection.

Go read Robert’s post on this. It’s interesting. Given the fact that we already know about Obama’s past drug use, and that a) he doesn’t strike anyone as a skirt-chaser, b) Team Clinton is hardly in a position to bring up skirt-chasing allegations even if they’re true, we’re left to wonder what else the dirt could be. It could be anything. And that’s supposing the mention of it isn’t itself the trick, a sort of political MacGuffin to set hearts racing with no actual object to be found. That would be a smooth trick, in that it could put the Obama campaign on the defensive as it starts fearing its own shadow and it could set the press on perpetual chase mode, all of which helps the Clinton campaign and keeps hounds from hunting them. Obviously at least someone at the Washington Post is suddenly curious about the Obama/Muslim story now. And Doonesbury mentions it, in a close time frame to Novak’s column. I question the timing, I guess.

That this is all taking place shortly after dirty trickster Sid Blumenthal joins up with the Clinton campaign just pours a little more Boy Scout juice on the tinder.