It hit early Friday morning with all the subtlety of a punch in the solar plexus: Iran's parliament had just passed a law requiring all non-Muslims to wear colored badges. Suddenly, the rantings and ravings of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of wiping Israel from the face of the map didn't seem like the strident delusions of a madman as much as a template for the kind of institutionalized evil the world hasn't seen since Nazi Germany.

The story, which ran in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper printed online and affiliated with canada.com, quoted the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles as saying the Iranian decision was reminiscent of the Holocaust. It also quoted a member of the Iranian embassy in Ottawa as saying that the situation in Iran had nothing to do with people in Canada.

Rush Limbaugh picked up on the story immediately, and his millions of faithful listeners between San Bernardino and Philadelphia ate it up like their obese hero gobbling a handful of Oxycontin. Fox News and MSNBC reported it. The blogsphere ignited. People were posting it on their Myspace bulletins. It was an incendiary story.

And it was all complete bullshit. And anyone could have checked it out for themselves by going to their Google search button, typing in 'Iranian badges' and looking at the top news stories of the day. Within an hour or so of the Drudge Report plastering a screaming headline across the top of its website, which linked to the National Post story, Jewish websites, including a newspaper in Jerusalem, were posting alerts that the story might be phony.

Soon, the story on canada.com was "no longer available," although the Drudge Report still had the link on its front page — long after (somewhat) reputable news agencies like CBS had run stories online saying that neither its TV network or radio network would report the story until corroborated.

Which it never was. While the fact that Rush and his reactionary brethren would pounce on this story to further beat the war drums and fan the flames of fear among their constituents isn't surprising, it is a rather egregious example of reckless journalism and a stunning lack of integrity on the part of the news organizations that reported on a story that was not based in fact.

As distressing as that may be, however, the simple fact that alternatives to the story were out there so soon, that reputable news services refused to bite on a piece of right-wing propaganda, and that, once again, the blogosphere - at least those not in reactinary, Chicken Little mode - united to expose a story as bullshit, is cause for rejoicing.

But it's a pyrrhic victory at best. You can bet Rush won't retract his story or that Fox News or MSNBC will report on their own horrible reporting. And, even after most news organizations have debunked the story, trashier cousins, such as the New York Post, printed it as fact in today's editions.

For some great analysis of the story check out Power Line and Taylor Marsh. The truth is out there, people. We just have to exercise 20 seconds of individual enterprise to find it.