Hat tip to John Aravosis at Americablog for catching this.
According to today's AP report about McCain's medical records (titled "McCain Appears Cancer-Free, Healthy"), we learn this:
McCain's most recent exams show a range of health issues common in aging: He frequently has precancerous skin lesions removed, and in February had an early stage squamous cell carcinoma, an easily cured skin cancer, removed. He had benign colon growths called polyps taken out during a routine colonoscopy in March.
So why didn't the McCain campaign report this in February? Surely the Republican party would want to know that their 71-year-old candidate was having even more cancer surgery? And what else is the McCain campaign hiding?
Aravosis is bothered by this, as we should all be:
Anybody else troubled that candidate McCain was running for the GOP nomination, went for cancer surgery, and didn't bother telling anyone? What else isn't he bothering to tell us, and won't he tell us in the future? If this is McCain's standard for disclosure about his medical condition, we'd need weekly document dumps of his medical files because McCain clearly has a policy of hiding his true medical condition while running for president.
As you may know, John McCain has been battling skin cancer for fifteen years. Ted Kennedy (who is just four years older than McCain) demonstrates all too clearly that cancer is a very real threat for individuals in their 70s. The McCain campaign knows this, which is why they hid this information from Republican primary voters and have buried the info in a three-hour "peek" at McCain's records on the Friday before Memorial Day.
Andrew Sullivan, a longtime McCain fan, has called this limited disclosure "absurd".
It is also noteworthy that the McCain campaign has refused to release his psychiatric records. If anything, I'm more worried about McCain's mental state than his physical health. Yet apparently McCain has not had a psychiatric evaluation since 1994 and has no interest in filling us in further.
Let me state up front -- this has nothing to do with whether he is mentally unbalanced from his POW days. I know Republicans tossed around such charges in 2000 in order to get Bush elected, and I just don't buy that. But with McCain confusing Sunnis and Shiites, when he forgets all about Iran-Contra, when he thinks Putin is the President of Germany, when he starts bringing up the long since disbanded "League of Nations", and when he responds to political attacks with long-winded rants, then voters have a right to know if this senior politician really has his full mental capacity.
John McCain needs to release all of his medical records. If he is lying about the cancer that he had three months ago, what else is he lying about?
[Update] Let me make it clear, folks. The fact that he has this minor form of skin cancer is not the issue. The issue is that he had cancer surgery and didn't tell anybody. This, combined with the shady way in which they are disclosing a portion of his medical records to hand-picked reporters, does not inspire confidence in the truth-telling ability of the McCain campaign.