I got tired of wading through all the polemic on the McCarthy thread, and I'm not going to waste my time arguing with DougR or anyone else more interested in demagoguery than shedding light.

Alger Hiss (and if you are going to dis a martyr at least spell his name right) got access to his whole file under the Freedom of Information Act (God Bless It) and the information therein proved beyond a doubt (to a reasonable person, that it) that Tricky Dick framed him from start to finish. In spite of *Advise and Consent* and other liberal anticommunist movies of the period, he never was more Left than a New Deal Democrat, and he went to his grave saying so.

First, the infamous typewriter used in the trial -- on which certain letters were typed -- was NOT his typewriter. He went through the trial himself thinking it was his typewriter that someone else used. The serial numbers did not match and TD knew it the whole time. So did Roy Cohn and everybody else who cooked up this travesty.

Then, there was Whittaker Chambers, that sad little megalomaniac. The issue with him was motive. Why would he make all this up? Why indeed. During the trial, Hiss' lawyer made a joke about "too bad he isn't homosexual."

Well, guess what? He was. His rambling "testimony" to the government conspirators went on for pages and pages about that life which he now renounced. Sorry, W.C., it's not a choice. The government blackmailed him, and he cooperated out of rejection vengeance.

These are the facts. Facts are stubborn things, as Marx once said. (Karl, that is.)

You have just pushed my buttons with the complete lack of critical thinking here. Information illiteracy is something I face every day in every way. It is the great mind pollution of our new century. It lets demagogues like Rush Limbaugh spout their rhetoric with only the lone voice crying in the wilderness, "But that's just not true ..."

OK. Off my soapbox.

MAG

Not a red diaper baby, but definitely an unreconstructed 60's peacenik.

PS: Pete Seeger long ago repudiated the gross excesses of the Communist Party. The man is a saint, which you would know, if you listened to the NPR interview on Monday.