Mickey Kaus has a typically thoughtful, elegant, and counter-intuitive assessment of why, exactly, the press has been so irresponsibly hostile toward Sarah Palin. I won't spoil it, but it involves a detailed accounting of the how the internet and traditional media have evolved over time in a new dialectical, coming to grips with one another and their roles in a shifting technological and journalistic space. Kaus believes that it was actually the press's manifest embarrassment at being caught ignoring the John Edwards story that has spurred them to reexamine how they should approach Sarah Palin.

"They waited with Edwards. They don't want to go through that again," Kaus says. "It helps, of course, that this week's rumors involve a Republican."

You don't say.