Free Republic

On the day I born, June 9th, 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was asked the famous question; “Have you no sense of decency sir?”. Some members of the media who saw an opening, pounced on the opportunity, and never looked back. This would become the beginning of the end of the anti-communist mood in America. It would be the birth of terms like McCarthyism, Redbaiting, and Blacklisting. The heirs of this movement are much more numerous today than in 1954, and the true journalists have been replaced by mere actors, playing the part of journalists. We have gone from a nation...

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis yesterday blamed the Bush administration for the organization’s woes and accused Republicans of “ACORN McCarthyism.� Lewis blamed Karl Rove for instigating the legal troubles the “community organizers� are facing. At this point, reports of ACORN illegal conduct have sparked a string of criminal investigations nationwide on charges of fraudulent voter registration activities.  Most recently, two young journalists caught ACORN staffers in a sting operation exposing tax and sex trafficking advice.  Both houses of congress have passed measures to de-fund the organization, Lewis was hosted by the National Press Club at a “Newsmaker� event yesterday where she...

Every Sunday, after church, the 7-year-old boy would escape to Grandpa's basement. He'd never seen such a room -- trophies and game balls and jerseys and photos and videotapes, all at his disposal. He'd heard about a place called heaven, a magical place they raved about in Bible school, and he decided this had to be it. It had to be. Because his father was here. One of those trophies … his daddy won. One of those game balls … his daddy earned. One of those jerseys … his daddy wore. One of those photos … his daddy's face. Stacks...

Without being labled as "on a witch-hunt", or having the tables turned on us, could we initiate a resurrection of the HUAC? This was the House Un-American Activities Committee that operated from 1938-1975 as an investigative committee into Communist or generally un-American persons or groups in the US. There was also the Fish Committee of 1930 that was hitting the ACLU pretty hard at the time. Also the Dies Committee, which focused on Nazi influence in America. Surprisingly, many of these groups were started by prominent Democrats at the time. Ironically, prominent Democrats of today, would be some of the...

Earlier this week, some of my National Review colleagues recoiled from Sarah Palin’s bracing allegation that Obamacare would foist government “death panels” on vulnerable Americans. I recoiled from the recoil, which I thought exemplified the same sort of “hysteria” the editorial in question, “Rationing and Rationality,” condemned. There followed a debate (see The Corner archives for August 17 and 18), largely a fine parsing of how — rationally, of course — the term “death panel” ought to be defined. As we went back and forth, I kept having this nagging thought: We could still blow this thing. (snip)Things may appear...

McCarthy on Pelosi, the NY Times and the German National Socialists August 14, 2009 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Are there any hate groups on the left? There are, right? Are they ever the subject of network news reports? Has Brian "The Repeater" Ross ever gone out there and done a report on left-wing hate groups? No! In fact, when we hear about left-wing hate groups and their work, we're supposed to marvel at the art. It may be offensive but we're supposed to marvel at the art. Southern Poverty Law Center, do you know how much these people are worth?...

National Socialism is banned from the Right’s case against socialism, but is somehow acceptable when leftists use it as a smear or when the Left’s nuanced geniuses, after their very thoughtful consideration, decide its invocation is suitable for mature audiences? I don’t think so.

Fear of communism permeated American culture in the 1950s. Neighbors turned in neighbors for suspicious activities. Libraries turned in book checkout lists to the government. Everyone was in each other’s business. Leftist historians like to demonize Joseph McCarthy and there’s a certain degree of good reason for that. He took his communist searches to extremes and made mistakes – but he was also right more often than liberal history books would have us believe. There were officials in power with communist/socialist links. Imagine what McCarthy would think of Washington now. At least in the past, one had to dig deeply...

“Fishing” for an Appropriate Response by Norma Zager “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” Edward R. Murrow Richard Nixon had an enemies list. Joe McCarthy gave a pass to those who turned in their communist neighbors and friends. The Nazis had the Hitler Youth who happily turned their traitorous family into the Gestapo for a new pair of black boots. In 2009 we have the “fishy” Chicago version of turn them in and we’ll take them out. In my last article, many responded they were...

AP Historical Amnesia by: Bethany Stotts, July 28, 2009 Academics and students exhibit a pervasive amnesia toward the pro-Stalin actions of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (ALB), a group of American volunteers who fought against General Francisco Franco and his Nationalists during Spain’s civil war. Recent Boston University graduate-turned Associated Press reporter Kelsey Abbruzzese did little better than her college peers this July, publishing a story that lauded ALB veteran John Hovan’s career. “In 1937, John Hovan volunteered to travel to Spain and fight on the side of democracy against Gen. Francisco Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War,” wrote...

McCain explicitly included the Fifth Amendment in his legislation because it addresses his target, coercive interrogation. As we’ve seen, in Dickerson, the Supreme Court held that Miranda was now considered part of the Fifth Amendment’s core. In the al-Owhali case, Judge Sand ruled that Miranda imposes daunting burdens on American agents overseas — burdens far more challenging than the rote reading of an advice-of-rights card that typically happens in domestic policing. With the Supreme Court, beginning in 2004, imposing more and more criminal-justice procedure on the battlefield, the McCain Amendment would almost certainly be used by courts or a Democratic...

On Friday, the CIA busted one of its own and charged him — or her — with leaking classified information. While this guy or gal goes to jail, over at The Washington Post, reporter Dana Priest is still admiring the brand new Pulitzer Prize sitting on her mantle, for writing about what this very leaker told her: the secret prison story. It was last November when Priest published a story in The Washington Post that the U.S. was maintaining a secret array of prisons where American intelligence could interrogate Al Qaeda-types who had been captured on the field of battle...

In arguing that the Uighurs must be kept out, the Justice Department speaks very generally about how the detainees do not qualify for entry under “the federal immigration laws.” The Supreme Court is informed that those laws are “comprehensive and reticulated,” but the DOJ is careful not to specify any of them except for Section 1182(f). That’s the statute in which Congress reposed sweeping discretionary powers in “the President” to bar “any aliens or ... class of aliens” whose entry the president believes “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That’s fine as far as it goes....

NY Rep introduces bill to turn "No Fly" list into "no gun" list Notorious Anti-gunner Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy has introduced a bill that would takes name from the so-called "no fly list" and place them in the National Instant Criminal Background Check system as ineligible to purchase a firearm. H.R. 2401, the so-called "No Fly, No Buy Act of 2009" uses provisions of the Patriot Act and the Brady Bill to attack the Second Amendment rights of American travelers. It should be no surprise that McCarthy, an anti-gun leader extraordinaire, would introduce such a bill. In recent years, such legislation...

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

'No Fly, No Buy' for Guns Bill Proposed by Rep. McCarthy User Rating: / 19 PoorBest Politics - Capitol Hill Written by Timothy Robertson Wednesday, 13 May 2009 13:32 Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) is co-sponsoring a House of Representatives bill preventing people on the government's no-fly list from purchasing guns. House representatives will introcude a bill Wednesday that would ban anyone on the controversial no-fly list from purchasing a gun in the U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a strong gun control advocate, is co-sponsoring the legislation that would apply to the nearly 1 million people that make up the government’s no-fly...

Newt Gingrich was on FOX News Sunday. He "as bitter a partisan attack on the Bush administration as we've seen since McCarthy". Gingrich blasts Nancy Pelosi's lies over what she knew and when she knew it and weighs in on the Notre Dame, Obama scandal. He calls Obama's position is the most "radical, pro-abortion" view of any President in history. Newt also laughed at Colin Powell's recent claim that "Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less."

American soldiers, American civilians, and other innocent people are going to die because Pres. Barack Obama wants to release photographs of prisoner abuse. Note: I said, “wants to release” — not “has to release,” or “is being forced to release,” or “will comply with court orders by releasing.” The photos, quite likely thousands of them, will be released because the president wants them released. Any other description of the situation is a dodge. If President Obama wanted to refrain from releasing these photos in order to protect the military forces he commands or promote the security of Americans — his...

Saying she still has no idea who sent her a box of dead fish, former top homeland security bioweapons official Maureen McCarthy says she has resigned from the department and begun legal action to clear her name. Occasionally breaking into tears during a 45-minute telephone interview, McCarthy called her resignation "involuntary" and said she had suffered severe financial distress since being suspended without pay in February over the incident. "I resigned against my will," she said. "I had no income, and I couldn't use my accrued annual leave" for cash. "By resigning I got that back," she said, and could...

When new information about Americans who had cooperated with the Soviet KGB began to emerge in the 1990s, no individual case generated as much controversy as that of the journalist I.F. Stone, who had long been installed in the pantheon of left-wing heroes as a symbol of rectitude and a teller of truth to power before his death in 1989.

Backbone of Economy Aches by: Heather Latham, March 30, 2009 “Small businesses are the heart of the American economy,” President Obama said at an event at the White House attended by small business owners. “They’re responsible for half of all private sector jobs and they created roughly 70 percent of all new jobs in the past decade.” Representative Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., agrees but argues that the president’s proposals harm these enterprises. “That’s where we should focus and grow this economy and make sure the government controls their spending that we don’t put this debt on future generations,” Rep. McCarthy said...

Militants who have had terrorist training or are affiliated with terrorist organizations are supposed to be excluded from entering our country — even when we are not in a state of war against them — under U.S. statutory law. As NR's editors observed in October: In the 2005 REAL ID Act, Congress explicitly provided for the exclusion from the U.S. of any alien who has received terrorist training or has belonged to an organization that promotes terrorism — against anyone. The Uighurs are ineligible on both grounds: Even if one accepts, for argument’s sake, the contention that their dispute is...

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed a measure Wednesday that supporters are calling the most sweeping reform of nationally-backed volunteer programs since AmeriCorps. But some opponents are strongly criticizing the legislation, calling it expensive indoctrination and forced advocacy. The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act -- sponsored by Reps. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y, and George Miller, D-Calif. -- was approved by a 321-105 vote and now goes to the Senate.

The Barackistan credo is to seize upon every opportunity to exploit it — and find yet another way to redistribute the wealth (taxpayer wealth, that is). Next up on the agenda this week is the GIVE Act, short for the “Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act”. The ABC News headline ‘GIVE’ Act Would Give Back. Volunteer Programs Would Provide Jobs to Unemployed, Assist Those in Need says it all. In his address to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called on lawmakers to expand federally funded national service opportunities. “To encourage a renewed spirit of national service for this and...

HR 1388, will hit the House floor on Tuesday.It is called the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (The Give Act.) The House is scheduled to Rule this week. Sponsored by Democrat Representative Carolyn McCarthy (NY), Education and Labor Committee. The objective is to reauthorize and reform the national service laws. Democrat Rep. McCarthy is sponsoring the bill with 25 co-sponsors, ALL Democrats, including Charlie Rangel. Need I say more.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, long-secret archives of the Communist International were thrown open to western researchers for the first time. Many previously unknown details of communist history have been revealed--including the 1935 Comintern orders directing Communists to begin work in Hawaii. These were uncovered by veteran researcher Herbert Romerstein in Moscow.

Among our illustrious allies in the War on Terror, Yemen ranks right up there with Pakistan, whose government just released nuke-peddler A. Q. Kahn from house arrest. Yemen’s government says it is preparing a major combat operation to drain one of the many swamps where jihad festers. So what preparations is it making? Massing troops? Infiltrating terrorist strongholds to identify top targets? No, Yemen’s approach is a little different: They’re releasing al-Qaeda operatives from prison—more than 170 of them. It’s a development worth remembering as the Obama administration continues its hand-wringing over the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, where 245...

McCarthy Unplugged by: Bethany Stotts, February 05, 2009 More than half a century after Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hearings, Americans continue to paint frightening portraits of these “red witchhunts”—often without regard for the facts of the time. As M. Stanton Evans writes in Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies, “So deeply etched is the malign image of McCarthy that the ‘ism’ linked to his name is now a standard feature of the language, defined in all the dictionaries as a great evil and routinely used this way by people accusing others...

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy said yesterday Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand's gun control views make her unacceptable for the U.S. Senate and threatened a primary challenge in 2010 if Gov. David A. Paterson selects the Hudson Democrat to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. --snip-- "I've spent 15 years trying to prevent gun violence in this country, and if he does pick her and if no one goes and primaries her, I will primary her," McCarthy said. "I will do that. I'm not going to give up on this. I'm not going to let New York State get represented by someone who gets a 100...

Justice Samuel Alito was the featured keynote speaker at the American Spectator’s annual Robert L. Bartley dinner at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel last night. Along with taking a crack at the new vice-president elect (h/t Politico), he also joked about the famous 2008 Obama campaign mantra of “Hope and Change.” (Eyeblast.tv has the audio uploaded here:)

Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, has tapped California Rep. Kevin O. McCarthy as his top deputy, cementing an already fruitful partnership between two rising stars in the party. The selection gives Cantor a politically astute ally at the leadership table as he seeks to translate six years of potential into a real power base within the House GOP. The move, which will be announced Monday, also solidifies McCarthy as the next Eric Cantor. Many view this pair as the next face of the GOP in the House. They combined last year to help raise...

There's a lot of frustration among conservatives over how Barack Obama's radical past seems to be making no impact whatsoever among the American public. His connection to communists in particular, from communist-terrorists like Bill Ayers to the communist agitator-journalist Frank Marshall Davis to fellow travelers like Saul Alinsky, has simply failed to resonate beyond the political right. Quite the contrary, the more information that becomes available on Obama's radical associations, the more he seems to widen his lead over John McCain, a man who was tortured by communists in Vietnam. I understand these frustrations completely. I'm also not surprised. I...

The GOP is making a dramatic change to its stance on climate change thanks to a “push” from presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, according to the 2008 Republican Platform Committee chairman. Platform Chair Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Calif., spoke to the group of conservative bloggers at the Republican National Convention on September 3 in St. Paul, Minn. He said McCain’s campaign was an instrumental part in pushing for a plank about climate change, to the chagrin of many conservatives. “One thing you got to understand, when it comes to a platform, this is the difficulty that you have – you have...

BANGOR, Maine — The Maine Humanities Council will present a two-part series, “Fear, Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law” this fall at the Bangor Public Library.

Cold War Amnesia by: Malcolm A. Kline, July 02, 2008 The Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union is still being fought, not by unrepentant, unreconstructed anti-communists such as your servant but by campus leftists born too late to be collaborators. “In last month’s undergraduate elections, a cadre of demagogues, in a disgusting publicity stunt, projected the image of a hammer and sickle onto one of Stanford’s most venerable landmarks: Hoover Tower,” Jason Dunkel, the business manager of the Stanford Review writes in a June 2008 fundraising letter. “Their platform called for the detainment of such...

SPEAKING without a text in front of him, Barack Obama betrays a troubling lack of knowledge on important issues - such as the law and terrorism. In his ABC interview last Monday, for example, Obama attacked the Bush approach on fighting terror. He claimed that, in the case of "the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in US prisons, incapacitated."

Communists also used political subversion to shape the course of World War II. They manipulated intelligence and State Department analysis to push America toward war with Japan, relieving the threat that Japan might go to war with Moscow. They fought against a plan to invade Europe through Italy, rather than France, as this would have imperiled the eventual Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Soviet agent Alger Hiss was a top advisor to Roosevelt at the Yalta conference that confirmed Soviet control of Eastern Europe, leading to forty years of tyranny and millions murdered in those countries.

As it happens, this is not my first such experience with the Journal. Five years ago, the paper ran a misleading column by Dorothy Rabinowitz attacking Ann Coulter for her comments on McCarthy, the main point of contention being the above-noted case of Annie Lee Moss. Ann's comments were very much on target, while those of Rabinowitz were, to put it mildly, misguided. On that occasion I wrote a letter to the Journal pointing out the facts about the case. That missive never appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

The Unreal Ronald Kessler by: M. Stanton Evans, May 06, 2008 Herewith a letter sent to The Wall Street Journal a week ago in response to the recent anti-McCarthy article by Ronald Kessler....(snip)I have held off on circulating this letter until The Wall Street Journal had ample chance to run it....(snip) Like many other critics of Joe McCarthy, Ronald Kessler would be more persuasive if he knew something of the subject. Kessler’s Journal essay ("The Real Joe McCarthy," April 22), attacking the Wisconsin senator and taking a sidewise shot at my recent book about him, is an odd amalgam of...

McCain MirageThe senator is not ready-for-prime-time commander-in-chief.By Andrew C. McCarthySenator John McCain’s ascendancy in the Republican presidential race has been truly remarkable. Yet, it’s no groundswell. To this point, about two out of every three primary and caucus participants have voted against him. If the Democrats and independents some states permit to crash the Grand Old Party were factored out, his standing in the Republican base would be even less impressive. Still, you have to hand it to his admirers: They have parlayed his thin support into an aura of inevitability. The glow could intensify this week, when McCain is...

From M. Stanton Evans: Herewith a letter sent to The Wall Street Journal a week ago in response to the recent anti-McCarthy article by Ronald Kessler. By way of explanation for the staccato nature of this letter, I was told that I could have 750-800 words to reply to Kessler (whose article ran to 1,059 words). I overran this by 85 words, but even so it's difficult to answer so many misstatements in such a constricted format. It's significant, for instance, that Kessler (falsely) invokes the authority of Willard Edwards to support his attack against McCarthy. I point out that...

The Real Joe McCarthy Fifty-four years ago today, Sen. Joseph McCarthy started his televised hearings on alleged Soviet spies and communists in the Army. The spectacle grabbed the country's attention for the next two months. By the end of the McCarthy hearings, the senator's career was over; before an audience that often numbered 20 million Americans, he came across as bullying and unscrupulous. Yet today, more and more conservative writers are trying to vindicate the late senator. Authors M. Stanton Evans and Ann Coulter, for example, have claimed that McCarthy was more right than wrong because he, along with dozens...

Rush Interviews Andrew McCarthy May 2, 2008 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, as you know, folks, we don't do too many interviews here. We're not on the author circuit. Friends of mine, however, do write books; and I try to have them on, especially in this most recent example. Andrew McCarthy has written a book entitled Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. Its timing is beautiful, because we have been so successful in thwarting another attack, terrorist attack on our country, that it is easy for people to assume the threat has subsided when it really hasn't. I welcome...

<p>Upon hearing this accusation, Joseph Welch of Hale and Dorr, responded, "Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness." When McCarthy continued to hound Fischer, Welch said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"</p>

For education and discussion purposes only. We Told You So By Stephen Goode Since the fall of the Soviet Union, hard proof confirms that the Communist Party U.S.A. was active in espionage and clandestine activities. Liberals steadfastly claimed it wasn't true. What amazes me is that it is far worse than I thought," Hoover In-stitution research fellow Arnold Beichman tells Insight, emphasizing every word. Beichman, author of books such as Anti-American Myths: Their Causes and Consequences, is talking about the amount of espionage and clandestine activity carried out by American members of the Communist Party in the United States from...

Bill Ayers' brother, Rick Ayers, is lashing out at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of "McCarthyism" for making an issue of rival Barack Obama's links to Chicago professor Bill Ayers during this week's Democratic presidential debate. "The fact that she would drag up this pathetic red herring about Obama's alleged ties to so-called terrorist Bill Ayers (my brother!) brings her right down to the level of Fox News and the National Enquirer," blogged Rick Ayers, a California high school teacher and author. "This is the most base version of McCarthyism," he wrote. "Obama should have taken a page from Joseph Welch...

I am reading Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies by M. Stanton Evans and recently started Chapter 36, Scott McLeod, Where Are You? What is remarkable is when M. Stanton Evans is describing the make-up of the Ike administration and the status of the GOP in the early 50's, it sounds very much like what is happening now. Case in point, Ike's speechwriter was a Emmet Hughes, a self-confessed Democrat. Another case - while staunch conservatives were fighting against communism within government, they would turn a blind eye to their...

National Security: The latest sin ex-President Clinton is accused of is "McCarthyism." But a new, meticulously researched book corrects misconceptions about the abuse of that term by the media and the left.Over the weekend, a retired Air Force general and Barack Obama supporter charged the former president with McCarthyism for seeming to question the patriotism of the Illinois senator, now leading the Democratic race for president. The Obama and Hillary campaigns both soon scrambled to apologize — such sting does that venomous word carry. The dictionary defines McCarthyism as "personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations,...

"Merrill 'Tony' McPeak said he was astonished and disappointed by recent comments Bill Clinton made while speculating about a general election between Obama's Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Republican John McCain. Standing next to Obama on stage at a campaign stop in southern Oregon, the retired Air Force chief of staff repeated Bill Clinton's comments aloud to a silent audience...McPeak also had made off-the-cuff remarks to reporters Friday in comparing the former president's comments with the actions of Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator. 'I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans...

The Barack Obama campaign may find itself back in hot water, but this time squarely with Democrats, thanks to one of their premier surrogates. Former Air Force Chief of Staff General Tony McPeak compared a relatively mild Bill Clinton statement to McCarthyism. His remarks about the former President and actual party elder will no doubt stoke outrage just as some of Obama’s other troubles had begun to recede: A retired Air Force general compared former President Clinton to Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator, on Friday after Clinton seemed to question Democrat Barack Obama’s patriotism.Merrill “Tony” McPeak, a former chief...