Are you paying attention? In response to your original post on this, Not Bob said:

• How about Fred Fisher, the Hale & Dorr lawyer who was accused by McCarthy of being a communist because he volunteered for the National Lawyers Guild?

According to Not Bob -- and I'll confess that he seems to know more about this than I do -- Fred Fisher was "accused by McCarthy of being a communist" when in fact all he had done was volunteer for an organization that also received Soviet support.

And, BTW, I spent a day in law school as a legal observer at an abortion clinic wearing a National Lawyers Guild armband. I did not then, and do not now, know anything about the group or their purported communist ties. So don't try to convince me that Fisher's volunteering made him a communist.

Watch Out for the Flying Pigs
 

Wow. We agree.

Oh, wait - you mean Iraq's infrastructure, don't you?

Watch Out for the Flying Pigs
 

Can you not make your philosophical argument without resort to misquoting? Is it that weak?

He didn't lie. He used the available facts and analyses that were helpful to his case. He sold his case.

Watch Out for the Flying Pigs
 

You asked me what should the Democrats be saying. I just pointed out some possible arguments.


Again - you got it wrong. I don't think Bush lied (and you have said you don't think he lied either). I think this is widely known but many Dems are intentionally lying about the lie: Pathetic. In addition, I don't think it would really matter if he did lie; so the Democrats are making up a problem that is not real, and even if it were real it would't really be a problem. That is what makes the whole thing totally pathetic.

The lawyers guild was a communist group. As I said the attorney general had said it was the legal arm of the communist party. The lawyers guild was a communist organization for lawyers. It was later discovered that its leaders were paid agents of the soviet union and that it received money from the Soviet Union. Why else would Stalin give money to the Lawyers Guild, because it was an altruist lawyers group? Fred Fisher was a member of an organization receiving funds from the biggest mass murderer in history. You make it sound like he joined the Rotary Club.

Really? You wore their arm band and new nothing about it. Unlike you, most people check out organizations that they affiliate themselves with. Fisher was also a member of the Lawyers Guild. He did not just volunteer. When someone becomes a member of an organization generally they ascertain the organizations goals and mission. Following your logic someone could join the KKK and not know it had racist tendencies. Don't you think it safe to assume a member of the KKK is a racist. Or a member of the Federalist society is generally a strict constructionist. Would it be slander to point out that someone had been a member of the Federalist society?

McCarthy did not accuse Fisher of being a communist. He accused Fisher of being a member of the Lawyers Guild which the attorney general has labeled the legal arm of the communist party. All of those things he said were true.

Where is the injustice?
 

Just to clear this up in the hearings McCarthy has said that there were communists in government service. Welch laughed at this idea and said:

"May I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a Communist spy, please hurry. Will you remember those words."

In other words if you know about communists please point them out because I don't believe you know of any.

To which McCarthy replied:

"since Mr. Welch has such terror and such a great desire to know where anyone is located who may be serving the Communist cause....we should just call to your attention that your Mr. Fischer, who is still in your law firm today, whom you asked to have down here looking over the secret and classified material, is a member of an organization, not named by me but named by the Attorney General, I quote this verbatim, "as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.' He belonged to that for a sizable number of years, according to his own admission, and he belonged to it long after it had been exposed as the legal arm of the Communist Party."

Now where is the smear here? From what I understand all this stuff is true. Where is the grave injustice?

Is this true: Ann Coulter claims.....
 

Yes, I recall that.

No (Republican) and no (Texan). That's why I listed them. Seriously, you should read the Nizer book (I just finished it -- saw it in a used bookstore on vacation, and since I am always looking for slick trial lawyer techniques to assist me in denying compensation to the injured, I grabbed it). I'd be happy to send it to you.

But let's assume that you run a law firm in 1955. You find out that one of your 45 year old partners contributed to a fund set up for the legal fees of the Scottsboro Boys when he was in law school in the 1930s. It turns out that the fund was administered by the CPUSA (who liked to make propaganda points against the capitalists by using lynchings and the like to make a point). Does he get fired? Or the bookkeeper who, in the depths of the Great Depression, thought that communism might work?

These are the type of people that lost their jobs, spouses, etc. during this time. People who had made the mistake of signing the wrong petition, attending the wrong rally, or working for Henry Wallace. It wasn't like most of them were ever communists, and that the ones who were actually in the party were still involved after the war.

How do you leap from the fact that Fred Fisher volunteered for the National Lawyers Guild to this (even assuming that the NLG received funds from the CP)? Seriously?

Cite, please. For any of the above. According to Wikipedia (see below), the AG accused the NLG of being a front, but the DoJ later rescinded the designation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army-McCarthy_Hearings

• In 1953, the Attorney General of the United States proposed to designate the organization as subversive. His proposal was made under revised regulations, promulgated under Executive Order 10450 to comply with Anti-Fascist Committee, establishing a notice and hearing procedure prior to such designation of an organization. 18 Fed. Reg. 2619; see 1954 Annual Report of the Attorney General, p. 14. The Guild brought an action in the District Court for the District of Columbia attacking the Executive Order and the procedures. A summary judgment in favor of the Attorney General because of failure to exhaust administrative remedies was sustained on appeal and this Court denied certiorari, National Lawyers Guild v. Brownell, 96 U.S. App. D.C. 252, 225 F.2d 552, cert. denied, 351 U.S. 927. After a Hearing Officer determined that certain interrogatories propounded to the Guild should be answered, the Guild brought another action in the District Court, National Lawyers Guild v. Rogers, Civil Action No. 1738-58, filed July 2, 1958. On September 11, 1958, the Attorney General rescinded the proposal to designate the Guild. 1958 Annual Report of the Attorney General, p. 251. On September 12, 1958, the complaint was dismissed as moot at the instance of the Attorney General, who filed a motion reciting the rescission and stating that the Attorney General had "concluded that the evidence that would now be available at a hearing on the merits of the proposed designation fails to meet the strict standards of proof which guide the determination of proceedings of this character." The present federal statutes provide that the Subversive Activities Control Board may not designate an organization as a Communist front without first according the organization the procedural safeguards of notice and hearing. Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, 13, 64 Stat. 998, 50 U.S.C. 792 (1958 ed.

Spank, I think you should stand down here.

Picture parallel universe where it's not communism that's bad- say being anti-homo was bad. The government is trying to root out all anti-homo people.

Now say you belonged to the Boy Scouts as a teen. You can belong to the Boy Scouts for many reasons. Membership does not equal being anti-gay. Should you be excluded from government service because you liked to go camping?

Lots of these guys belonged to things that were not equivalent to be active members of a party trying to harm the US, and McCarthy outed them to build power.

And outing Fisher was just vile. He was outed to beat down Welch, and it seemed like the fact that a career might well be ruined was of no moment to McCarthy. (Spank you do realize how this outing turned out- and why Bob read the book to improve his advocacy don't you?)

If your point is that McCartny never lied about anyone being something (Former member of guild) maybe you're right. But the implication that guild membership equals active communist doesn't hold.

Dissent.

Remember, this all happened long ago and far away, in a time when communism wasn't just a whacko fringe party with bad hair and unemployed people wanting to share more. Communism represented the very worst of Russia and Co., the only real huge and viable threats to this country that we've ever actually faced. (Well, beyond disco.) This wasn't a witchhunt to ferret out lefties - this was a fight against an active and ongoing and well-financed attempt at hostile spying on the USA. People had real fears of annihilation. Paranoid? Maybe. But, with at least a tinge of realism? Yeah. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you, and they were.

Speaking of this in today's context is misleading at best. Look at it more like, we've found these people who have been contributing to Zarqawi. Personally, I'm not concerned at that point about their right to free speech and assembly. They're helping an org which is actively looking to kill me. A defense of, they do such nice work in Jordanian daycare centers, doesn't go far in changing my outlook.

Say last week I gave money to an organization that says it rebuilds orphanages. It turns out it really buys bombs. You think I should be branded a terrorist and ran out of any public positions?

Shut down the organization, sure. If someone gives money and notes in the memo line that want the money used to buy bombs, not orpanages, pick him up too.

But not every hypo donor is a bad guy B.

And the lies and excesses and abuses of McCarthy (how many people did he have on his list? which list? did he ever give any of those lists to J. Edgar Hoover?) provided aid and comfort to those who were hostile to us. Nixon was right about Hiss, and the FBI was right about the Rosenbergs, but that doesn't mean that McCarthy was right about Dean Acheson, George Marshall, or Harry Truman.

My last comment on McCarthy, I promise.

I'm not trying to defend McCarthy - he was truly vile - I'm just sayin' this discussion needs to take place in the proper context.

2. But I'll still never root for them commie bastard Detroit Red Wings.