Seven days ago we broke the story of the Nudegate scandal. So it’s been broken for a week. Kayti Didriksen, the comely barmaid who initially dispensed the scandalous alleged painting, has admitted she did it to embarrass the president, who she claims had somehow previously embarrassed her.

As an anxious nation has watched this unseemly tale of nudity, politics, and cocktails unfold, one allegation has managed to sit there like an unwanted lime garnish: Did the president at some time paint an atrocious malformed nude portrait of Miss Didriksen, as some allege? (It might look like our artist’s conception, below.) Is this how he embarrassed her?

Absolutely not, allege others. “Some people have been spending too many hours looking at left-wing conspiracy Web sites,” Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said, in reference to something largely unrelated.

But yesterday, a cryptic anonymous comment appeared on blog.gleeson.us, a respected news source. It read, in part, “HA! Not surprising how you small-minded chumps criticize someone you know nothing about and have only seen a painting and have not heard a single word this person said about it.”

Since the anonymous comment also contained hate speech (specifically praising Adolf Hitler), which violates blog.gleeson.us policies, the management deleted it, and banned the originating I.P. address 138.88.171.162 (a residential Verizon account) from further activity here.

But questions remain. Who is really behind this attempt to silence these rumors of presidential artmongering? Could it be Karl Rove, as some allege? And just how closely is this scandal related to this one, or that one, or how about these five other scandals?

We will continue courageously to pursue this story, wherever it leads.