Does John McCain have the experience it takes to be President of the United States?

Who cares? His wife has the chutzpah it takes to piss on the little people, and that's good enough for her:

Cindy McCain: I'll never release my tax returns

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cindy McCain says she will never make her tax returns public even if her husband wins the White House and she becomes the first lady.

"You know, my husband and I have been married 28 years and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate," Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, said in an interview aired on NBC's Today on Thursday.

Thanks for carrying the story, USAToday. When can we expect you to chime in on this issue the way you did four years ago?

Transparency doesn't come easily to politicians. Though Kerry has released his tax returns, he continues to resist releasing those of his wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz. And though no one should be shocked that an administration headed by two former oilmen might seek energy-policy advice from Bush's and Vice President Cheney's oil-patch buddies, the White House has refused to disclose who met with Cheney's energy task force. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on whether Cheney must release meeting details.

Candidates should know by now that playing hide-and-seek with parts of their past just keeps the issues alive, fuels charges of a coverup and deflects attention from their desired message.

Voters are entitled to accountability and openness. Candidates who recognize that help raise democracy to a higher standard.

And USAToday is by no means alone in having found fault with Teresa Heinz Kerry, who in the end did release critical tax information, while giving a pass to Cindy McCain. The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Newsday all editorialized on the subject in 2004, but have been curiously silent this year.

Surprise!

And that doesn't even begin to touch on the expected silence from the usual Republican suspects: National Review, The Weekly Standard, etc.

Remember all that talk -- mostly coming from the panicked and dying traditional media -- about how they'd learned their lesson from becoming distracted and easily misled by the Bush team, both during the elections and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion?

Does it look like they were sincere about that to you?

UPDATE: Want the juicy bits of those NRO and Weekly Standard articles without sending them the traffic? Stop by at Nitpicker for his sardonic take on this travesty.

The FEC just posted millionaire Mitt Romney's financial disclosure form online. For the first time, we'll be able to see exactly where his $250 million dollar fortune is invested. But it's a big job, and we need your help. Please help us comb through the document to look for red flags, conflicts of interest, and other investments that look interesting.

We've started a thread on the Democratic Party' blog where we're asking you to let us know anything interesting that you find in Mitt Romney's financial disclosure forms.

Just when I thought that the Dems were going to be above smearing the character of their primary opponents, along comes Barack Obama in what turns out to be an intentional and rather odious smear, picked up by Drudge and the GOP, that attacks Bill Clinton (and by proxy Hillary, too.).

"We've just obtained an email that shows that the Obama campaign yesterday circulated a negative, and ultimately false, story about Bill Clinton -- that he allegedly made money giving a speech on September 11, 2006." -- Greg Sergent, TPM Cafe

This isn't right. Excuses can be made as to the exact wording of the Clintons' financial disclosure form, but the fact remains that he gave the speech on September 10, not September 11.  Obama should have checked that.  More importantly, so what if Bill did give a speech on that day, and was paid for it?  Did you or anyone else you know quit working on September 11 this past year?  Sheesh!  

Obama, take responsibility for this odious act, and swear to Democrats everywhere that this type of politics-as-usual is not what you're about.

Memo links on the flip side.