By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial board

Cindy McCain gets points for quietly doing good charitable work and for being outraged about Myanmar. (See details.

But she really needs to release her tax returns. The public can't piece together John McCain's financial picture without them. Skeptics will always wonder, with good reason, how the sources of his wife's financial largess affect McCain's public service.

If she doesn't disclose, what's to stop any political spouse--Bill Clinton, for instance--from filing an independent tax return and keeping it under wraps.