DID RIGHT-WINGERS PLANT A RIDICULOUS JOE WILSON STORY TO DISCREDIT HIS DETRACTORS?

According to Memeorandum right now, the biggest story in the blogosphere is this:

Wilson took caffeine pills in 2007

By Jordan Fabian - 09/10/09 06:21 PM ET

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who shouted "you lie!" at President Obama during his Wednesday night address to Congress, admitted to regularly consuming caffeine pills in 2007.

It is unclear if Wilson still takes NoDoz, a brand of pill that contains 200 milligrams of caffeine a pop. By comparison, a seven ounce cup of drip coffee contains 115 to 175 milligrams of caffeine.

A source told The Hill in 2007 that the congressman ingested the tablets "like candy," but Wilson insisted he was not addicted despite the fact that he had been taking them since high school....

Oh, that dastardly liberal media! Is there nothing the press won't print to besmirch the reputation of someone who dares challenge a Democratic president?

... Er, except that this story doesn't appear in "the liberal media" -- it's in the online version of the D.C. journal known as The Hill.

And the writer, Jordan Fabian?

Well, he's a young man who, until recently, was an editor at the Cornell Review, a right-wing campus paper that was co-founded by Ann Coulter. He was an intern at The Weekly Standard and The American, a periodical published by the American Enterprise Institute.

So he's, um, not exactly a liberal journalist.

So why did he write this story? Is it a false flag operation -- a clumsy attempt by an ideological soul mate to change the subject from Wilson's outburst and to make Wilson appear to be the victim of journalistic malpractice, which can then be blamed on liberals?

Just a theory....