This is pretty egregious. As many of you already know, The Washington Post's John Solomon weighed in today with an astonishingly long article on...the Los Angeles stylist who gave John Edwards that infamous $400 haircut.

Most sane readers would look at this piece and wonder: Why now, more than two months after the "news" of his haircut broke?

The Solomon piece attempts to answer this question by portraying the interview he got with the stylist as news.

But here's the thing thing: It turns out that Solomon and his editors blatantly misled The Post's readers in order to portray this interview as something entirely new -- and hence, in order to justify running the piece in the first place.

In the piece, Solomon wrote:

Edwards said that he was embarrassed by the cost and that he "didn't know it would be that expensive," suggesting the haircuts were some kind of aberration given by "that guy" his staff had arranged. His wife, Elizabeth, made lots of jokes at her husband's expense and the campaign wished the whole issue would go away.

But Torrenueva's account of his long relationship with Edwards -- the first he's given -- probably guarantees that won't happen quite yet.

Plainly, the point here is that one central reason for running this piece now is that this is supposedly the "first" account this stylist has given of his relationship with Edwards.

There's only one problem: It actually isn't the first account the stylist has given to the press at all.

From the Associated Press on April 17 -- that is, over two months ago:

Torrenueva -- who specializes in men's haircuts -- confirmed in an interview with The Associated Press that Edwards is a longtime client and friend.

"I do cut his hair and I have cut it for quite a while," Torrenueva said. "We've been friends a long time."

One reason the cost of the cut was so steep even by Beverly Hills standards is that Torrenueva went to Edwards rather than the candidate coming into the stylist's salon a block off Rodeo Drive.

"I go to him wherever convenient," Torrenueva said.

So again, Solomon's piece was not the first account.

WaPo can legitimately claim here that it went back and got more detail from Edwards' stylist -- something that actually makes the paper look more ridiculous, not less. Nonetheless, it's completely clear that Solomon and the paper's editors either didn't know, or didn't care, that one of the key justifications for running this piece now -- again, two months after the "news" of the haircut broke -- was bogus.

But hey, the piece got a link from Drudge today, so WaPo's editors will no doubt fall asleep tonight with smiles on their faces.