John Edwards will admit he is the father of his mistress' child, according to anonymously-sourced reports. The sex scandal continues to destroy what's left of Edwards' reputation as a truthful or good man. Indeed, two bloggers asserted that if Edwards confirms that he is the father of Rielle Hunter's 18-month-old daughter, it will prove he lied about the timeline of his affair when he "came clean" in an interview last year. So much for coming clean.

Mickey Kaus writes that Edwards' "second edifice of lies" in his interview has now fallen:

Edwards didn't just deny paternity but said paternity was "not possible" because the affair with Hunter was over when the baby must have been conceived. To do otherwise would have interfered with his carefully crafted modified limited story about the affair--that it involved "a short period in 2006" and ended before Elizabeth's cancer recurred and before he went galavanting around the country advertising his fidelity and good character. If Edwards is in fact the father this entire fallback edifice of BS crumbles. ... It's worth reading the transcrip of the ABC interview--practically every sentence out of Edwards' mouth is a lie. He doesn't know who the baby was in the Enquirer's photos, suggests the photos were doctored, doesn't know whether Andrew Young, the aide who took the fall, is the father, says Rielle Hunter's hiring as a videographer had nothing to do with the affair, etc.. And he does it all sanctimoniously. 

Given Edwards's slow journey to telling the truth, Sister Toljah asks why he didn't confess paternity at the same time that he admitted to the affair. "I mean, at that point his political career was pretty much over," she wrote. "Why not go all the way?"

"The idea was not to fool his wife but to preserve his political viability as much as possible," Kaus speculates. "Just a short mistaken affair! He slipped! Happens all the time! I also suspect St. Elizabeth was in on this second set of lies just as she went out and helped him try to preserve the first set of lies (i.e., that there was no affair at all and it was all just tabloid trash)."

Speaking of Mrs. Edwards, The Atlantic's Megan McArdle defended Rielle Hunter, the mistress, and Mrs. Edwards from getting too much heat. "Whatever Hunter's sins, John Edwards was the one in charge of taking care of Elizabeth Edwards," she argued. "She clearly deserved much better than she got."

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