Earlier this week, we learned that the McCain campaign had barred New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd from traveling on their plane, stranding her at an airport hotel in Pittsburgh as McCain's pool of reporters wended their way on without her ready skill at alliteration and musical theater references. Since then, Dowd has had the opportunity to respond:

"I had had a great relationship with John McCain for 16 years, through columns he liked and didn't like. So at first I thought it was a mistake and doublechecked with the press office. They said I was banned from both planes for 'the foreseeable future.' Then [McCain spokeswoman] Nicolle Wallace was gloating about it to reporters on the Palin plane," Dowd wrote in an email.
"It was disappointing because I didn't think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney."

Actually, I'd say McCain is being far more "dismissive" than Cheney. After all, nothing gave Adam Clymer as much cachet as being known as the press corps' "Major League Asshole of 2000." That's BIG TIME.