Last week, I asked what happened to Josh Marshall, an excellent blogger, who wrote the following about GOP gubernatorial candidate and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell:

Helping steal the 2004 election wasn’t enough. Down by double digits and facing a career-ending election, Ken Blackwell accuses Ted Strickland of being pro-pedophile, possibly gay.

The phrase “helping steal” implies the election was stolen. And while there are serious allegations against Blackwell, there’s no credible evidence to support the insinuation that the election was stolen (ie the wrong man won).

Now Marshall is pushing slime against Lynne Cheney, the Vice President’s wife. Yesterday, he wrote, “Lynne Cheney gets amnesia about her lesbian fantasies.” The post Marshall linked shows that Cheney may have dissembled about the fact that her novel has lesbian characters. But it doesn’t prove that Cheney has “lesbian fantasies” or that the scenes in her novel are representations of her “fantasies.” That’s phony mind-reading.

In addition, Marshall is pushing George Allen to release his sealed divorce records, writing, “Now that the Allen campaign is about to go on the airwaves about sex scenes in Jim Webb’s books, maybe you should know about this too.” The attack on Webb’s fiction is phony, but it doesn’t make Allen’s divorce records publicly relevant.

What’s going on?

[Disclosure: The post about Lynne Cheney that Marshall linked to was written by Greg Sargent, who I blogged with at The Horse’s Mouth before quitting.]