It didn't take long for someone to refute John Edwards' claim that he only started sleeping with Rielle Hunter, the mistress whom he didn't love but liked enough to cheat on his dying wife with, after he paid her $114,000 to produce Internet campaign videos for him back in July 2006.

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein already reported that he had e-mails in which Hunter describes "being in love with a (still somewhat dysfunctional) married man" she calls "my love lips" which she sent in early April of that year, and which contradict Edwards' carefully crafted time line. Now, a friend of Hunter's named Pigeon O'Brien is claiming that "the affair began long, long, long before she was hired to work for the campaign—almost half a year before she was hired to work on those videos." (Judging from the quotes in both stories, it looks like O'Brien was Stein's source as well, unless of course Hunter blabbed to pretty much everyone she knew about the affair using the same phrases, which is certainly possible.)

Edwards also seemingly lied about having put an end to the affair a few months after it started: the Enquirer is set to report that it has proof that the affair actually ended sometime in 2007, which would make Edwards the father of Hunter's daughter Frances Quinn, who was born last February.

Meanwhile, the Daily News points a finger at Hunter's confidante Robert McGovern as being the Enquirer's likely source for the story, assuming, you know, it's not Hunter herself. (Which is a possibility. The Enquirer pays for info; it's not inconceivable that Hunter was taking money from both sides because she realized she had a kid to support and was going to come off looking ugly either way, so, hey, why not make a buck or two?) It was McGovern who set up the meeting between Hunter and Edwards at the Beverly Hilton; he also made some vaguely blackmail-sounding statement about Edwards having to come because Hunter was "having some trouble." Not that Edwards paid any blackmail money himself—recall that he didn't even have a clue that Hunter and Young were being paid by a benevolent benefactor pal of his!

We even have a fun little blind item! "What publisher and man-about-town may have had a liaison with Rielle Hunter, the woman who had an affair with John Edwards and a relationship with his pal Jay McInerney? He's told friends they were 'in bed for a week.'" Jason Binn seems too young, and the most likely culprit, David Zinczenko, isn't technically a publisher. Any other guesses?