Obama attended did not attend Wahhabi madrassah for 4 years

UPDATE: The following report is now being disputed and Fox News has withdrawn it. So much for Steve Doocy's credentials as a news man. As a reporter, he's a great weatherman.

Fox News' Fox and Friends talked about this report that Hillary's campaign staff have been looking into Obama's history and found that he attended a madrassa school as a child:

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?

This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."

This should set a cat among the pigeons. Obama will denounce the story, and Hillary will disclaim having anything to do with feeding it to the press, and the lefty blogosphere will all point at Karl Rove.

These madrassas expect kids to memorize the Koran word for word, which is a skill (memorization, not the Koran) which helps them excel in American schools if they get here.

Update: The Washington Post whose readers specialize in making up things to call President Bush like "Chimpy McBushitler" takes deep umbrage to people insisting on referring to Mr. Obama's middle name, Hussein, and points out the now-debunked report that Obama had attended a madrassa school in his boyhood as proof of the low character of his conservative critics:

When the madrassa story was debunked by CNN and the Associated Press, Insight didn't even have the decency to slink away.

But the "debunking" reads as follows:

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Whose aide? An aide at the school or an aide to Obama? And they take the denial by Hillary's campaign at face value. As though calling it a "right wing hit job" is all the debunking necessary.

Insight is standing by its story which was that Hillary's campaign had discovered that Obama had attended a Muslim school, and was weighing whether to publicize it. The CNN and Howard Kurtz reports denouncing the story don't sound all that definitive either, since they feature only a blank denial from Hillary's camp.

Nevertheless, the whole thing has shrunk to a squabble between the mighty WaPo, CNN and the Unification-Church-owned Insight Magazine. We know that Obama himself called it a Muslim school, but now there's a distinction between a Muslim school and a madrassa, which is more in the line of a religious seminary. The school was probably NOT a Wahhabi school, which are generally funded by the Saudis. In any event, it's pretty much a non-story except for Insight's report that Hillary's campaign people were discussing it.

Do I think Sen. Obama is a crypto-Muslim? No. Do I think pointing out his middle name is unfair? Not really. Do I think Hillary's people would stoop this low? Indubitably.