John Edwards is putting up Rielle Hunter—and the daughter he fathered with her—in $6,550-a-month, 3,600-square-foot seaside home just down the beach from the Edwards' Wilmington, N.C., mansion, the National Enquirer reports. Again.

Poor Elizabeth Edwards. As if the woman hasn't already had to deal with enough over the last couple of years. Now her husband is moving his trashy mistress and their lovechild into the family's neighborhood, and Elizabeth's understandably pissed.

From the files of things that are ridiculously long overdue: a North Carolina news station is reporting tonight that John Edwards will finally admit publicly that he is the father of Rielle Hunter's child.

In a historic first, it seems the National Enquirer's headline from January proclaiming that Michael Jackson had "six months to live" turned out to be spot on. Not that any of us should be that surprised. "When you constantly make things up, you're bound to get something right. Right?" [Buzzfeed]

Brad and Angelina are getting married in New Orleans, Brooke Shields settled with the National Enquirer for kidnapping her mother, Mariah Carey is getting fat, Pete Doherty shot up on a commercial flight, and Denise Richards is addicted to boob jobs.

When John Edwards finally admitted his affair with Rielle Hunter, he denied fathering her child and offered to take a DNA test to prove it. Hunter—conveniently!—turned him down. Now she's changed her mind.

John Edwards' philandering has gone federal. It might soon hit the courts. And to think just last summer the scandal was penny ante: stuck in the tabloid swamps, save for a disappointing ABC finale.

Levi Johnston, a 19-year-old Alaskan who, unlike Meghan McCain, has held a real job, is going to write a book. Maybe. Or maybe not!

Zsa Zsa Gabor and her publicity-loving husband, Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, tell the National Enquirer that they lost "a fortune" because of Bernie Madoff and they may now be forced to sell their Bel-Air home, cars, artwork and jewelry to stay afloat. "I'm going to have to make back that money somehow or we're going to face financial ruin," the prince tells the magazine. Accepting a check from the Enquirer to tell your story sounds like a good enough place to start. [Radar]

The National Enquirer and Star could theoretically be out of business within weeks, what with publisher American Media facing a creditor takeover or even bankruptcy.

RadarOnline.com was bought by National Enquirer publisher AMI in October, and Enquirer editor David Perel was put in charge of it. And thanks to Jett Travolta's death, the site is now a great gossip reputation-launderer.

<i>National Enquirer</i> publisher AMI is cutting staff (12 now, more tomorrow) as it races to avoid bankruptcy.

Last week, the cover of the esteemed National Enquirer reported that Kelly Ripa was splitting up with her husband Mark Consuelos. Was it true? Not so much! Ripa's reps denied the rumor, and her lawyers jumped into action, too, which probably explains why the Enquirer has since removed from the story from its website. In fact, the relationship appears to be going strong, at least judging by the couple's behavior at the "Marriage is a Beautiful Thing" event on Monday night, which was hosted by Jerry Seinfeld to benefit his wife's charity, Baby Buggy. "Not only didn't there seem to be any tension," a tipster tells us, "but they looked totally in love. At one point, Kelly leaned in and gave him a kiss. Could have been just for show, but it looked pretty real to me." Remember: Once you land the stripper of your dreams, you never let him go!

Your National Enquirer newspaper has published photos purporting to show Cindy McCain, fragile, lonely beer heiress wife to Senator John McCain, kissing some guy who isn't Senator John McCain! "Multiple witnesses" caught Cindy and this mystery man "lip locking on several other occasions." The guy is "a long-haired man who resembles 'a washed-up '80s rock musician,'" apparently. Just read the "stunned reaction of an eyewitness":

John Edwards could have settled the question of whether or not he fathered the child of campaign "filmmaker" Rielle Hunter during his affair with her last year, but instead he left it up to the discretion of the National Enquirer. Edwards' payoffs through recently deceased trial lawyer Fred Baron had previously convinced Hunter to refuse a paternity test, but her rumored new tell-all book and an end to getting paid may change that reticence. Racing her to press is the Enquirer, who are apparently keen on settling the matter in the most disgusting way possible: DNA siphoned from a months-old dirty diaper.In the wake of the Edwards' potential separation and Hunter's pending tell-all, the tabloid says it collected a dirty diaper during its original stake-out of Edwards' visit to Hunter at the Beverly Hilton. The Daily News is reporting that the Enquirer has been holding onto the baby's stinky diaper hoping to get some of Edwards' DNA for a match. To compare the sample they have "all they need is a cup he drank from," says the News source. Of course, they'll need to get that cup before Rielle Hunter scoops the paper herself. If you really want the goods, why not match poop with poop? If Edwards is staying in a hotel, sabotage the hotel's sewage system and work from there. If you're in the shit, might as well go as deep as you can.

The new editor of RadarOnline.com—presumably replacing Alex Balk—will be David Perel. He's the current editor of the National Enquirer! So what does he do on the same day that AMI buys the website and everyone there gets laid off? He tells CoverAwards, “I have already been contacted today by some top entertainment and news journalists who want to be part of this new venture. I am looking forward to putting together a new team that is the best of the best. We are hiring now!” Uh, is it just me or is that an enormous prick move?

Cindy McCain is the saddest figure in this miserable election. Seriously, we feel real sympathy for this woman, rich and brittle and Obama-smearing though she may be. We read the Ariel Levy story. She's got a distant, temperamental, emotionally abusive husband she never sees (until election season!) and she can't even develop a painkiller addiction in peace without the press jumping all over it (because her family certainly didn't notice or care). So it's cruel, really, that the National Enquirer is jumping all over the various obvious easily disproved lies she's told on the campaign trail about meeting Mother Theresa and visiting her husband's Vietnamese hospital bed. You can click to read the story, though you won't learn anything you didn't learn from the Levy profile and the New York Times piece on her sad life.

When Barack Obama was 10, his grandfather would take him over to ole Frank Davis' house, where the two older men would drink whisky out of jars and play Scrabble. Sometimes Obama would help the men compose dirty limericks, or listen as Davis read poetry. This went on until the Democratic presidential nominee was 17, and during that time Davis acted as a mentor, according to Obama's memoir. It later emerged that Davis pseudonymously wrote a "hard-core pornographic autobiography" detailing his sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. This was all known in August, after a widely-blogged report in Britain's Telegraph, but the National Enquirer is now reporting it as an "Exclusive OBAMA SEX PERV SCANDAL," because Obama should be ashamed of almost being molested, or something:

The National Enquirer has the details of what the tabloid dubs its "exhaustive" and "extensive" probe of Sarah Palin's extramarital dalliance this week. It was not with that guy who had his divorce papers sealed, but with a city council member in nearby Palmer (pop: smaller than Wasilla) they say! And from the looks of his facial hair, he is a total Toddpelganger.* It went down in the nineties, when David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Wurtzel were an item, and it involved: snowmobiles, remote cabins, polygraphs, declarations of love, small-town politics and another one of those wackjob ex-brothers-in-law that are such a rich natural resource in Alaska. Full story after the jump!Okay, Brad Hanson. Born in Montana, he grew up in small town Alaska, was a high school jock and is basically the exact same as Todd Palin down to the facial hair but not nearly as totally awesome, which sort of stands to reason why Palin would fall in love with him. A supporter of strip malls and self-professed enemy of "small-town charm" the Palmer football/hockey coach and property developer bonded with Todd over sports and hunting-type activities and ran a snowmobile dealership together until Todd discovered Brad and Sarah had been bonding, according to the Enquirer, over a shared interest in politics. The Enquirer says Sarah Palin told friends the relationship was never "consummated" but you know how they get around that in Islam. Here's their evidence: 1. This guy they picture, Jim Burdett. He's the ex-con former brother-in-law of Brad Hanson's wife Carolyn's brother Craig Bratton, and boy is he a piece of work. Served three years in some unspecified clink for some sort of "theft," he filed for bankruptcy in 2001, he supposedly "turned his life around" and now "speaks regularly with family members" - that may change! - and says that everyone always knew Brad had had an affair but that it wasn't until recently that word went down the family pipeline that the affair had been with Sarah Palin, and that if the Enquirer came calling they had better deny that the affair had been with Sarah Palin. Just to make sure, the Enquirer strapped him to a polygraph and he passed with flying colors. 2. When the Enquirer initially called the Hanson household, Carolyn reportedly said: "I would prefer not to talk about it. It's a nonissue." Then she hung up. Then she called back. And then said, "There is absolutely no truth to this story. It is a complete rumor." 3. Than Brad got on the phone and said, hilariously: "Todd and I are still friends. We own a cabin together. I talked to him four times this week. Does that sound like there was a disagreement?" Um, I have had boyfriends I didn't talk to on the phone four times in a week unless something was SERIOUSLY UP so yeah. Anyway, thoughts: 1. Brad owns a cabin with Todd. Todd also owns a cabin with that other guy with the sealed divorce papers, Scott Richter. The Palins are looking like the Treasury Department with all those ownership stakes in the housing market! 2. Unless it's the same house, in which case, with the affairs and divorces and procreation and prescription pill-popping and Divine Energy Policy Intervention going down, that house is more zeitgeisty than the Real World house circa 1992! 3. I hated the movie American Beauty, so why can I not get it out of my mind with this crew? 4. Sigh, speaking of, as Wonkette pointed out, Peggy Noonan sorta said it best about these scandals back on Friday. Yeah, we will bite on this, of course we will bite, but our teeth are sure getting rotten from the attention deficit drugs..

Bristol Palin smoked weed on camera, the Enquirer reports today in the latest installment of the tabloid's investigation into the Republican running mate's family values. And Bristol's boyfriend Levi could desensitize Cindy McCain under the table! (Also, cocaine.) See the full sordid story after the jump, along with our attempt to explain Whether Christians Will Care.A lot of churches ban the use of drugs and alcohol and even coffee, which is ridiculous, but pot is a particularly thorny issue. In the late seventies the religious right was widely credited for galvanizing public sentiment against the strides the Nixon and Carter administrations made toward the decriminalization of drugs and raising the political capital to fund the endless gazillion dollar War On Drugs. Those religious rightists did all this because they were creeped out by their kids under the influence of pot. Still, the Christians have never imposed any sort of Islamish ban on mood-altering substances, namely I would venture because "Thou Shalt Not Kill Brain Cells" is nowhere to be found in the Ten Commandments, perhaps because Moses was high on hallucinogens when God revealed them to him, and a couple thousand years later when God sent down that community organizer son of his to save us from our original sins, Jesus seemed to develop a keen understanding of the value of the "addictive personality" to the propagation of his cause. There is nothing like an addiction to drugs to keep a guy sinning, and there is nothing like compulsive sin to remind you how much you need Christ's forgiveness. So Father forgive Levi and Bristol for they have committed the sin of premarital sex on at least one known occasion and here are maybe some clues as to the demons that led them so terribly astray: