Holy cow. While checking some of owlmoose's links I came across the Rolling Stone article on McCain (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print). One has to take info from such a source with heavy grains of salt, but I had run into most of the information in that article before while looking up the Keating Five and McCain's deregulation vs. regulation record. Also I'd hit a British press bio piece on his first wife, the forgotten Ms. McCain. So the RS article isn't new info -- it's just putting it together into a coherent pattern that I hadn't quite seen, since my impression of McCain was formed in the last election when he seemed to me the more reasonable Republican candidate.

After reading that, I'm not so sure.