If you’re coming in late to the party, you may want to read the previous post.  Here’s the short version:  in 1948 Joseph McCarthy won a seat in the US Senate with a dirty campaign and began his senatorial career with a press conference calling for striking miners to be drafted, court-martialed, and then shot.…

Senator Joe McCarthy* and the Red Scare of the 1950s have been on my mind a lot lately.   McCarthy took the very real fear many Americans felt about the spread of communism** and turned them into an official witch-hunt for his personal political benefit. Born to  a Wisconsin farm family in 1908, McCarthy left school…