N.Y. Times Targets McCain's Melanoma

Sunday, March 9, 2008 5:42 PM

By: Phil Brennan, Newsmax.com

For the third time in less than three weeks, The New York Times has swung its hatchet at Sen. John McCain, reporting Sunday on his winning bout with a deadly form of skin cancer eight years ago and speculating that it might somehow reappear despite medical opinions that a recurrence is unlikely.

Obviously horrified at the prospect of the Arizona senator winning the presidency, the Times first tried to bury its hatchet in McCain's candidacy with a widely condemned Feb. 20 story alleging that aides to McCain had intervened when they became worried that a relationship between the senator and a lobbyist might have become romantic. McCain denied the report.

That was followed by an obvious attempt by Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller, one of the reporters who wrote the discredited sex scandal story, to provoke a temper tantrum from the senator by pointlessly dredging up a 2004 story about the invitation to him from John Kerry to join his ticket.

Instead of blowing his top as she hoped, McCain merely asked why she was bringing up a long-past matter that was widely known.

Despite his mild rejoinder, Bumiller asked “Why are you so angry?â€