The NYT's is reporting (via the AP) that John McCain's health records appear to show that he is free of cancer. The Times can't actually report this directly since of the 400 reporters allowed to view McCain's records only two newspapers are being represented, neither of which are the Times (WaPo and the Arizona Republic got the call). Says Times political editor Richard Stevenson, "when we learned of the arrangements for the release this week, we made a number of very specific requests to be included and they turned us down."

One wonders if those requests had anything to do with the fact that the McCain camp ruled reporters will have only three hours to go through 400 pages of documents and will "be allowed to take notes but not remove or photocopy the records." Or maybe, as Politico suggests, McCain just doesn't like the Times. For whatever reason, it looks like McCain, by allowing the release to happen just prior to a long week-end, was hoping to get away with the old "Friday Night Newsdump." Nice try! Says Pareene over at Gawker: "We've all become sooo media savvy that it just looks pathetic and worrying." Also, possibly another example of just how unsavvy McCain is about the ways of the internets.