The WaPo finally admits what we've all known.

The e-mail rumor mill is run by conservatives

Will Medicare premiums go up nearly 21/ 2 times over the next two years in order to pay for the health-care legislation signed by President Obama last year? Well, no, they won't. But you might think an increase is coming if you read a chain e-mail that has spread across the country in the past few months. "Send this to all seniors that you know," it says. "So they will know who's throwing them under the bus."

Like the Medicare premium story, these claims are demonstrably false, too. Nevertheless, they are among the players on the thriving underground e-mail circuit, a nonstop carnival of nonsense whose star attractions have included the canard that Obama is secretly a Muslim and variations on the debunked "birther" allegation about his origins.

Grass-roots whisper campaigns such as these predate the invention of the "send" button, of course. No one needed a Facebook page or an e-mail account to spread the word about Thomas Jefferson's secret love child or Grover Cleveland's out-of-wedlock offspring (both men won election despite the stories, which in Jefferson's case were very likely true).