Attacking the messenger.....

A pretty desperate "attack the messenger" from the McCain campaign on Rick Davis taking almost $2 million from Fannie and Freddie,

“Everything that is read in The New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective – that it is an organization that has made a decision to deemphasize its journalistic integrity and tradition, to advocate for the defeat of one candidate – in this case, John McCain – and to advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.”

I assume this level of response means they're really worried about the story and are trying to warn off other media organizations.

(Oh, and I guess this also means that they don't want to throw Rick Davis overboard.)

Later: The call from the McCain camp was supposed to be about "guilt by association" on Obama, but, I don't think the effort was too convincing. From the Politico's story on the call,

But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.

(And let's remember that this attempt at mudslinging is about distracting the other side before the debates.)