Uh Oh...

A couple of days ago, I mentioned the explosive allegation first reported by Salon.com that Senator George Allen (R-Virginia) stuffed a severed deer's head in the mailbox of a house in an African American neighborhood. Again, I will note in fairness to Allen that he denied the allegations during an interview he gave to the Associated Press.

Looks like the alleged Godfather stunt is now being checked in the historical archives:

I spoke to a deputy in the Louisa County Sheriff's Office late yesterday afternoon. They are looking though old records for any report of a deer's head stuffed into a black family's mailbox. This is an active investigation again- I have the cell phone number of deputy working on the case.

More bad news for Senator Allen on the same allegation - the New Republic's Ryan Lizza has found a second, on the record source who heard about the incident from one of the men who was there when it happened.

A former college classmate of George Allen and Ken Shelton, the North Carolina radiologist who says Allen regularly used the N-word in the 1970s and once stuck the head of a deer in the mailbox of a black family, has come forward to corroborate one of Shelton's accusations.

"I'm not out to get George Allen," says George Beam, a 53 year-old technical manager in the nuclear industry, who lives in Forest, Virginia and who spoke to The New Republic this morning. "I just think Kenny Shelton is a fine, upstanding person, and I know he is telling the truth."

Beam was roommates with Billy Lanahan, now deceased, who along with Allen and Shelton, was the third member of the now infamous hunting party. According to Beam, Lanahan later told him the bizarre story of the three men stuffing the deer head into a mailbox. He says Lanahan did not tell him that the prank had any racial overtones.

"Some time drinking a beer at U Heights," Beam says, referring to the campus housing complex where Beam, Lanahan, and Allen all lived, "Lanahan told me they went hunting and killed a deer. All I know is they cut off a deer head and stuck it in someone's mailbox. ... He didn't say it was racial -- just said they stuck it in a mailbox as a prank."

For Allen's sake, I hope this winds up being a wild goose chase, because if it is confirmed that this incident did happen, 1) his credibility will be shot, and 2) his political career will be over.