What's happening to my language?

I thought the past tense of "lead" was spelled "led." In my recent offline reading of online content, I've noticed a tendency toward uses of "led" in this context being outnumbered by uses of "lead" by, let's say, ten to one. Now I even see the "lead" spelling used utterly consistently (as if by editorial policy) at Progressive Historians, a website purporting to include folks with Ph.D.'s among its contributors.

This being said, the article linked from the above paragraph makes it plain that the Canadian government lead [sic] by S. J. Harper makes good on the promises implied by taking the "P" out of "PC." It's reminiscent of the purge of the moderates from the GOP in connection with the so-called Reagan Revolution.