And today we have another woman telling a story of inappropriate behavior by Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

A former USAID worker claims Herman Cain asked her to set up dinner with a woman who attended a speech he gave in 2002, the Washington Examiner is reporting tonight.

The worker — 40-year-old Donna Donella, of Arlington, Va. — told the paper that the moment came after Cain gave a paid speech in Egypt that year. A woman in the crowd posed a query to Cain during the speech, the Examiner said.

Donella told them: “And after the seminar was over, Cain came over to me and a colleague and said, ‘Could you put me in touch with that lovely young lady who asked the question, so I can give her a more thorough answer over dinner?’”

She was “suspicious of Cain’s motives and delined to set up the date,” the Examiner reporter wrote.

That prompted Cain to reply, “Then you and I can have dinner.” Instead, some of Donella’s co-workers suggested a group outing.

Naturally, the press and the right wing blogs immediately started digging into the past of Sharon Bialek, who went public yesterday with her accusations of sexual assault by Cain: Herman Cain accuser has history of financial troubles, legal squabbles.

Imagine my surprise to find the right wing blogs in full-throated smear mode today against Bialek — but with an undercurrent of desperation that’s quite palpable.

White supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain, for example, took a break from calling Cain’s accusers “rent seekers” to offer some advice to the candidate: “Pray real hard.”

If I were in a position to advise Cain at this moment, the only thing I could advise him is to pray.

Pray real hard.

It is not generally my practice to preach here. Yet there are times — and this is one of them — when I’m reminded of the awesome sovereignty of God. It’s a Calvinist kind of thing, and it takes an enormous amount of faith in the Almighty to grasp it. In our secularized culture, people tend to look at you like you’re crazy when you start talking about God’s sovereignty, and His power to work His will.

Nevertheless I do not hesitate to say that if it pleases God that Herman Cain should be destroyed, no mortal power can save Cain. Yet if it pleases God that Herman Cain should be preserved and uplifted, no mortal power can destroy Cain. Therefore, if Cain is true to his professed faith, then in this dark hour, he must be praying mighty hard, and thinking of a stanza in an old gospel hymn, “Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by Thy help I’ve come; and I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.”

These people went way beyond parody long ago.

And after swearing yesterday in an official statement that he was going to ignore all this and “refuse to play by the media’s rules,” today Cain announced he’s going to hold a press conference at 5 pm ET.