From Ben Smith at Politico:

"I have said before and I will repeat again: People's families are off limits," Obama said. "And people's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics."

On charges that his campaign has stoked the story via liberal blogs:

"I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us," he said. "Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired."

There you have it.  Obama has officially put out the call to take the high road.  Will it stop the rumormill and blogosphere voyeur-vetting? 

No.

But he has done what he should have done and officially acknowledge, denounced and distanced himself from the issue.