melanoma

The McCain campaign "released" the president-elect’s long awaited, long promised, health records in classic fashion: on the edge of a holiday weekend, when they would be guaranteed to get little attention. Not only that, but the records were made available to only 20 reporters hand-picked by the campaign.

Those journalists were given three hours to view more than 1,000 pages of often highly technical records; they were not allowed to make copies or remove them. McCain’s doctors were made available for 90 minutes — or so the newspeople were told. The questions were cut short after 45 minutes.

America’s increasingly lapdog media did not report much about this odd, not to mention suspicious, situation, made more compelling given McCain’s age and cancer history. The headlines were essentially "McCain is healthy…robust…takes a baby aspirin…no cancer recurrence."

Tellingly, the McCain campaign excluded the New York Times’ Lawrence K. Altman, a reporter and a medical doctor. Even so, Dr. Altman’s examination of the pool report made the real news, which Rogue Columnist will start your week with and keep up.