I, like AP, don’t believe it. Just a few minutes after Drudge highlighted this, I received this in my inbox from the Obama campaign.

This race took a sharply negative turn yesterday.

With recent polls giving Barack the lead in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and just three weeks left before the Iowa caucuses, the attacks on Barack’s character that Hillary Clinton has called “the fun part” of this campaign have reached a new low.

In an increasingly desperate effort to slow Senator Clinton’s slide, the focus of the Clinton campaign has moved from Barack Obama’s kindergarten years to his teenage years.

On Wednesday, their top advisor in New Hampshire tried to recycle old news by smearing Barack for experimenting with drugs as a young man — something Barack candidly wrote about years ago in his memoir and has since talked about with young people in an effort to teach them the lessons he learned from his mistakes.

The only way to stop these kinds of tired, desperate attacks is to demonstrate very clearly that they have a real cost to Senator Clinton’s campaign.

If 5,000 people donate in the next 24 hours, we can show their campaign that we reject this kind of divisive politics. Make your donation of $25 now.

These remarks crossed a line that should never be crossed in a Democratic primary. In fact, even Republicans think it’s beyond the pale. When asked about this very topic recently, one of the GOP presidential frontrunners actually commended Barack’s candor and honesty.

It’s a sad day when a Democrat running for president takes up a line of attack that even a potential Republican opponent refuses to dignify.

Raise the cost of this kind of negativity for the Clinton campaign by making your donation of $25 now:

It keeps going, but you get the point. Was the email compiled before the apology, then automatically sent out? Or is this “Apology not accepted”?