… just keeps rolling along. The other day, the topic of conversation turned to autism and vaccines. “There is strong evidence,” John McCain said, “that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.”

Strong evidence, eh? If so, that evidence has escaped the attention of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, which recently published a thorough review of the data available on this matter and, well, shot John McCain’s opinion to pieces. But what do they know? John McCain has been studying this issue for years — in between his investigation of human growth hormones in baseball, of course, and a panoply of other pressing medical and scientific matters.

Seriously, what the …? Is John McCain the political equivalent of Cliff Clavin? Or will he say just about anything to get a vote?

It’s one thing when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. peddles this nonsense. He’s a Deep (very deep)-Green-Environmentalist, and environmentalists like him are at eternal war with the Periodic Table. This narrative of mercury-killing-kids-for-drug-company-profit comes naturally to him, so one makes allowances in his case. (Fun aside: the next time RFK Jr. talks about the moral and intellectual imperative to defer to the consensus of science when it comes to global warming, ask him [or his image on television] to square that instinct with the dangerous nonsense he’s spouting about vaccines. But I digress.) But for John McCain to offer the same tripe is something else entirely. How many kids have to die in Boulder, Colorado, to deliver John McCain to the White House?

Okay, perhaps that’s a little unfair (emphasis on “perhaps” and “little”), but the question remains. John McCain: cynical panderer or dangerous crackpot? We report, you decide.