Patterico has it. You may have read about the speculation that John Edwards was having an affair? Well, shortly after he officially denied it, a blog on The LA Times’ website discussed the situation. But then, it disappeared. Gone. Error 404, if you will. Then, 11 minutes after Patterico posted, it returned.

But it was different this time. It now came with this explanatory note:

(This item was originally posted Thursday evening, Oct. 11. It was removed by an editor Friday but was reposted Saturday in a shortened form.)

Why was it removed in the first place? Good question. A clue may have been in a comment the blogger, Andrew Malcolm, responded to. One commentator lectured Malcolm for actually putting up the post. Malcolm responded in the comment itself as a note. Patterico saved a screencap for posterity:

Ans: We intend to ignore it for now, but when the candidate himself addresses the issue and no longer ignores it, how could we? Then we’re censoring. –AM)

Patterico continued down the comment page and saw several other comments with responses from Malcolm along the same lines. Then Patterico updated with this:

Itsme now points out that the parenthetical responses in the comments, justifying the need for the post, are now all gone. Such as, for example, the one preserved for posterity in the first screenshot above, in which Mr. Malcolm says it would be “censoring” content not to be talking about Edwards’s denial.

So first The LA Times removed the post, then replaced it, minus the comments saying that not reporting it would be censorship. Patterico ends with:

Fascinating. I’m starting to think I won’t hear from Mr. Malcolm in response to my e-mail . . . There’s just too much here to explain.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes…