Keep in mind John McCain's associations with S&L kingpin Charles Keating and other historically tarnished creatures.

We've known for a while that McCain has befriended a convicted felon who advised his supporters on how best to shoot federal officials, used the money of a convicted criminal to help buy a house, befriended a radical anti-Catholic televangelist, befriended a radical anti-American televangelist, was a long-time associate of Charles Keating, and hired for his campaign the publisher of a Confederate nostalgia magazine who has described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist." We also learned about McCain serving on the board of the extremist U.S. Council for World Freedom, where he worked alongside Iran-Contra figures, and a eugenics researcher studying "white superiority."

McCain sat on the board of a very right wing organization, the U.S. Council for World Freedom, led by a retired Army Maj. General named John Singlaub. The Anti-Defamation League allegedly called the CWF's parent organization a gathering place for racists and anti-Semites.

Other negative associations for McCain are his long-time South Carolina consultant, Richard Quinn, a publisher of a Southern heritagte magazine, and John Hagee, a pastor whose endorsement McCain solicited and later rejected. John McCain actively sought the endorsement of Pastor Hagee prior to the Texas primary, without giving two craps about who he was. Both McCain and his allies give speeches (see AIPAC and others) with Pastor Hagee.

Then there's McCains Buddy Gordon Liddy and McCain's association with Sarah Palin and her association with the Alaska Independence Party. Does Sarah really support the US if she supports Alaska independence? What does this say about McCains loyalties.

What about McCain's collaboration with Hanoi and his Russian interrogators?

McCain's associations, including the McCain campaign touting an endorsement from Leonore Annenberg, who helped created the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where, wouldn't you know it, Obama and Ayers met. Keith Olbermann recently noted McCain having hooked up with a right-wing hate group called the Oregon Citizens' Alliance, despite warnings McCain received from then-Sen. Mark Hatfield, an Oregon Republican, about the radical nature of the organization.

While hanging out with the group, McCain heard speakers praise -- you guessed it -- domestic terrorists. McCain could have gotten up and left, but didn't.

Since McCain has been talking about tenuous associations lately... well, here's another interesting one that I haven't seen covered anywhere else, as reported by The Anniston Star (AL):

Presidential hopeful John McCain has a connection to a former Alabama state trooper charged with the murder of a man at the height of the civil rights movement, according to documents obtained by The Star.

In the early 1990s, Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department regarding James B. Fowler, who was at the time imprisoned in Thailand on narcotics charges. McCain's State Department letter was dated Nov. 15, 1991. It briefly explains Fowler's situation and asks Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Tamposi of the Office of Consular Affairs to look into his case.

In 2005, The Star published an interview with James B. Fowler who admitted publicly for the first time that he shot Jimmie Lee Jackson during a melee in February 1965 in the west Alabama town of Marion. Fowler insisted it was in self defense.

You should read the whole story because it is a little complicated, but basically this guy - James Fowler - was arrested in Thailand for heroin trafficking and John McCain wrote a letter to the State Department asking what they were doing about it. Why would he care about this guy? As John Fleming reports, they had at least two mutual friends. Fowler was released from Thai prison in 1996 and has since confessed to shooting Jimmie Lee Jackson.