This is just too damn funny to pass up. Mickey Kaus (Mickey! permalinks, dammit!) shows up in my RSS feed (plus as a link in Instapundit) reprinting the following email from LA Times blog editor Tony Pierce:

From: "Pierce, Tony"

Date: July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT

To: [XXX]

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

Now this is funny as hell on any number of levels. The obvious one is that the newspaper of record believes that it must preclude writers working for it from covering a story - not set standards for how, not make sure that they added facts, not anything at all except gag them. That's wrong, simply put.

But coming from Tony Pierce, who appeared as the topic of a post here when he made wild fact-free accusations against Pajamas Media (where Insty posts now, completing the weird self-reflective nature of the whole thing) - well, that's just jam on my morning toast.