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If all you did was read the article, you don't have the facts. The article cuts both the question, AND the answer, and makes it look like the "aspersions" was directly related to the question.

In fact, the question was twice as long as written, and very offensive and combative, worse than the part you see. It included comments about his middle name, a suggestion he's lying about macaca, and that his mother his hiding her jewishness. It asks "when did you stop being a jew", but Allen answers THAT part of the question with a solid minute of why nobody's religion should be part of the debate. He ended his answer with a "why would you even ASK such a question".

The reporter then RESPONDS : Honesty. It is to THAT response that Allen launches into the answer that ends with "casting aspersions".

Certainly a reporter saying she's asking a question to try to get the candidate to be honest is "casting aspersions", NOT about the mother for being jewish, but on the candidate for being untruthful. He entire question was about casting aspersions on the mother for teaching her son racist remarks (previous question), his mother hiding her jewishness, and Allen lying about it.

Also, it was at the tail end of his question, where he was running out of steam, the moderator was interrupting him to move on, and he had to summarise.

NOBODY at the event thought he was "casting aspersions" about being jewish. When the Webb camp saw the tapes and did their polling, they realised that they had been crushed on the issues, and decided the only way they could save themselves was to turn this into an attack on a female reporter.

THEN, when they launched that attack, one of their blogger minions said that "casting aspersions" could be linked with "is your mom jewish" to suggest Allen thought calling his mother jewish was offensive.

Milbank went along with it, he loves Webb and hates Allen. Don't fall for it, watch the entire tape of the question, and see for yourself what he was talking about when he said "casting aspersions".

It's fine if you think he responded inappropriately, that a subjective thing -- but don't buy the lie that he said that suggesting he might be jewish is "casting aspersions".