The Knucklehead of the Day award

Goes to former Southern Illinois University student Jaimie Reynolds. She hoodwinked SIU student newspaper The Daily Egyptian into believing a story about a little girl and her letters to her father serving in Iraq. I posted part of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article below, it's truly incredible. The people at the college newspaper are almost as big a knuckleheads, they never bothered to do any elementary fact checking in the two years this story ran.

Hat tip- Michelle Malkin

CARBONDALE, Ill. - For two years, Carbondale residents have been riveted by the writing of a little girl imploring her father in Iraq: "Don't die, OK?"

Only now are they learning there was never any danger of that.

The Daily Egyptian, Southern Illinois University's student-run newspaper, today will admit to its readers that the saga - of a little girl's published letters to her father serving in Iraq - was apparently an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the girl's aunt.

In fact, the newspaper will report today, the man identified as the girl's father was never in Iraq, and it was the woman who apparently wrote the letters and regular columns that were published under the little girl's name - and even impersonated the girl in telephone interviews.