UPDATED: LA Times' Andrew Malcolm helps GOP smear Franken

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is passing around a doctored photo of Al Franken wearing a diaper. Asked why they would distribute a doctored photo of a United States Senator, an NRSC spokesman replies: "you'll note the link is to the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest newspapers in the country - if there's a question about the authenticity of the photo, you should direct your question to the LA Times."

Would it surprise you at all to learn that the Los Angeles Times blog post that contains the photo in question was written by former Laura Bush press secretary Andrew Malcolm?

Or that by the time Malcolm penned that post last fall, it had been clear for two years that the photo was doctored?

UPDATE: Malcolm did not respond to an email about his use of the doctored photo. But the photo has now been replaced with an alternate photo of Franken, and his blog post now includes an update reading “UPDATE: Because of serious questions over the authenticity of the previous photo here showing Franken in diapers allegedly in an on-air SNL skit, it has been removed.”

The update gives no indication of how Malcolm came to use a doctored photo in the first place, or of why it took him more than nine months to remove it, even though the very first reader comment on the post, at 4:18 pm on September 21, 2008, raised questions about the photo's origin. Nor did the update address the use of the photo by Republican operatives who cited the Los Angeles Times.  Nor did it indicate that the fake photo seems to have originated with Republican operatives.