Just shy of 4:00 pm today, a message went out to staffers at Washington Post HQ at 15th and L Streets NW: Employees may now retrieve copies of the Washington Post commemorative Obama edition in the lobby.

What ensued was a bum rush.

The area around the elevators on the fifth floor newsroom were jammed. You could only get on a car going up. Those going down were packed like a Japanese commuter train.

People took to the stairs, fire-drill fashion, full stampede mode. Totally packed. Think all those employees would have been stumbling over one another to grab the McCain commemorative edition? “This is the definition of the liberal media,” went one quip.

All day long, friends of Posties had been calling to ask Hey, can you score me one of those precious commemorative editions?

No, as a matter of fact: When the employees got to the distribution area by the building’s lobby, the rule was this: One copy per employee ID card. No cronyism in Washington anymore!

Publisher Katharine Weymouth saw a Kodak moment in all of this. She was snapping pictures of employees getting their editions.