MCCARTHY CONDEMNED BY SENATE:

I wonder if this sort of action will take place with a few of our more notorious "elected" representatives. It would be nice to think so but I wion't hold my breath.......PEACE..........Scott


MCCARTHY CONDEMNED BY SENATE:
December 2, 1954

The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct
unbecoming of a senator. The condemnation, which was equivalent to a censure,
related to McCarthy's controversial investigation of suspected communists in the
U.S. government, military, and civilian society.What is known as "McCarthyism"
began on February 9, 1950, when McCarthy, a relatively obscure Republican
senator from Wisconsin, announced during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia,
that he had in his possession a list of 205 communists who had infiltrated the
U.S. State Department. The unsubstantiated declaration, which was little more
than a publicity stunt, thrust Senator McCarthy into the national spotlight.
Asked to reveal the names on the list, the opportunistic senator named just one
official who he determined guilty by association: Owen Lattimore, an expert on
Chinese culture and affairs who had advised the State Department. McCarthy
described Lattimore as the "top Russian spy" in America.These and other equally
shocking accusations prompted the Senate to form a special committee, headed by
Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, to investigate the matter. The committee
found little to substantiate McCarthy's charges, but McCarthy nevertheless
touched a nerve in the American public, and during the next two years he made
increasingly sensational charges, even attacking President Harry S. Truman's
respected former secretary of state, George C. Marshall.In 1953, a newly
Republican Congress appointed McCarthy chairman of the Committee on Government
Operations and its Subcommittee on Investigations, and McCarthyism reached a
fever pitch. In widely publicized hearings, McCarthy bullied defendants under
cross-examination with unlawful and damaging accusations, destroying the
reputations of hundreds of innocent officials and citizens.In the early months
of 1954, McCarthy, who had already lost the support of much of his party because
of his controversial tactics, finally overreached himself when he accused
several U.S. Army officers of communist subversion. Republican President Dwight
D. Eisenhower pushed for an investigation of McCarthy's charges, and the
televised hearings exposed the senator as a reckless and excessive tyrant who
never produced proper documentation for any of his claims.A climax of the
hearings came on June 9, when Joseph N. Welch, special attorney for the army,
responded to a McCarthy attack on a member of his law firm by facing the senator
and tearfully declaring, "Until this moment, senator, I think I never really
gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad
further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At
long last, have you no sense of decency?" The crowded hearing room burst into
spontaneous applause.On December 2, after a heated debate, the Senate voted to
condemn McCarthy for conduct "contrary to senatorial traditions." By the time of
his death from alcoholism in 1957, the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy in
Congress was negligible.