The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this shocking journalistic double standard is that McCain was running for president when the story ran and John Edwards is not.

So it's not a story because they weren't able to catch him red-handed until after he'd already dropped out of the race? Even though the baby would've had to have been conceived on the campaign trail?

Even assuming for the sake of argument that that's correct (which I do not concede - we shall simply have to agree to disagree on the import of the alleged affair in that story getting to press), we still have a) on the one hand a salacious story they were all too happy to run with, based on basically nothing, about events that were almost a decade old, and b) on the other hand a salacious story that's still breaking about which they're suddenly so cautious about that they've banned any mention of it, even posts which question its legitimacy. The disconnect is quite apparent to me.

Again, I am not defending the reporting. But the claim that these are both just affair stories is simply wrong and embarrassing and well below the standards readers like me expect of this site.

By the way, I don't particularly have any objection to the Edwards story. I do think adultery is a character issue that should be covered. I really, really doubt any McCain supporter is going to want to open up that can of worms though. The shenanigans with Cindy back when he was married to Carol were enough to turn Nancy Reagan off to McCain, and she was closer to the story than any of us is.

And this is different from "inappropriate relationship with Vicki Iseman" how? Seriously, the only reason the supposed lobbyist angle had any traction was because he was accused of having an affair with her. No difference.

As to the status of the campaigns, that dog won't hunt. Edwards is frequently mentioned as a potential AG and, given that he won some delegates, will most likely have a nice speaking slot at the convention. As such, this is just as (if not more) newsworthy as the bogus McCain story. As such, there's no credible excuse for this gag order.

Let's at least keep straight what the stories were about before we talk about whether they are credible or not.

Of course, having watched the McCain campaign of late, it could be argued that he's not really running, either. But at the time of the story, he seemed to be giving it a shot...

Or maybe not.