Rehabilitating McCarthy

I know the Wingnuts have long tried to salvage the unsalvagable reputation of ol' Joe ever since he drank himself to death, but this is ridiculous.

In an editorial defending its news department's decision to publish the details of the terrorist finance surveillance system, the NY Times obliquely raises the specter of McCarthyism:

A half-century ago, the country endured a long period of amorphous, global vigilance against an enemy who was suspected of boring from within, and history suggests that under those conditions, it is easy to err on the side of security and secrecy.

In fact, while the left still doesn't like to admit it, the enemy was boring from within. Alger Hiss really was a Soviet spy. The Rosenbergs really were traitors. I certainly agree with the Times that we cannot sacrifice civil liberties on the altar of security, but in this case they've made two mistakes: (1) Disclosing a program that by all accounts is both useful and lawful and (2) making a bogus defense for having done so. The Times ought simply to admit that they made a mistake.

Please. Is the perfesser gonna start waving pieces of paper claiming that he holds the names of dozens in the State Department who are Islamofascists?

Regardless of whether you think the executed Ethel Rosenberg was a "traitor," McCarthy exposed no one who was convicted of espionage.