The Hypocrisy of the Republican Right

[John Simkin]

One of the most annoying aspects of the Republican Right is their hypocrisy. This is what Gary Younge has to say about the latest examples of politicians getting caught out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Colum...2161250,00.html

In July the Florida Republican state representative Bob Allen was caught offering to pay a black undercover cop $20 so that he could perform oral sex on him in a park. Allen's defence? Blow jobs and cash are to black males what kryptonite is to Superman - the only known means of depleting their superhuman strength. "There was a pretty stocky black guy," he explained to the arresting officer. "And there was nothing but other black guys around in the park." Fearing he "was about to be a statistic", he claimed he would have said anything just to get away. Allen had indeed become a statistic - yet another desperate conservative politician mangling logic to explain his hypocrisy.

Last week it was the turn of the Idaho senator Larry Craig, who in June was caught propositioning an undercover officer in the toilets of Minneapolis airport. Two months later he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct without consulting his lawyer. Then Craig, who finally resigned over the weekend, claimed that he framed himself. "I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously," he explained. "In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty." If he's telling the truth now he's a perjurer; if he was telling the truth then, he's a gay man who legislates against gay people.

There are moments when things really are the way they seem and facts really do speak for themselves. Bad as the facts may appear, attempting to rationalise them only makes matters worse. Trying to convince people otherwise only insults their intelligence.

[Duane Daman]

One of the most annoying aspects of the Republican Right is their hypocrisy. This is what Gary Younge has to say about the latest examples of politicians getting caught out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Colum...2161250,00.html

In July the Florida Republican state representative Bob Allen was caught offering to pay a black undercover cop $20 so that he could perform oral sex on him in a park. Allen's defence? Blow jobs and cash are to black males what kryptonite is to Superman - the only known means of depleting their superhuman strength. "There was a pretty stocky black guy," he explained to the arresting officer. "And there was nothing but other black guys around in the park." Fearing he "was about to be a statistic", he claimed he would have said anything just to get away. Allen had indeed become a statistic - yet another desperate conservative politician mangling logic to explain his hypocrisy.

Last week it was the turn of the Idaho senator Larry Craig, who in June was caught propositioning an undercover officer in the toilets of Minneapolis airport. Two months later he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct without consulting his lawyer. Then Craig, who finally resigned over the weekend, claimed that he framed himself. "I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously," he explained. "In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty." If he's telling the truth now he's a perjurer; if he was telling the truth then, he's a gay man who legislates against gay people.

There are moments when things really are the way they seem and facts really do speak for themselves. Bad as the facts may appear, attempting to rationalise them only makes matters worse. Trying to convince people otherwise only insults their intelligence.

Another very annoying aspect of the Republican right is their determination to turn the United States of America into a fascist police state and steal presidential elections ...Both of which they have accomplished in the past few years .

As for Larry Craig , he got exactly what he deserves for his blatant hypocracy in trying to stop the legal rights of the gay population , when he was in fact , apparently engaging in the worst behavior of that population .... His adament agenda of bashing the gays would have to fall under the catagory of "Me thinks thou dost protest too much ."

[Tim Gratz]

Absolutely, absolutely INCREDIBLE!!!

What are there, close to fifty Republican Senators and one turns out to be a hypocrite on homosexuality and that proves that the entire right-wing of the Republican Party (the only wing left methinks) is hypocritical?

How many conservative Republican state legislators are there throughout the United States? I am sure there are thousands. And one from Florida solicits a "blow job" and that makes the entire Republican right hypocritical?

The fact that Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart committed heterosexual sins does not indict all evangelical Christians.

Alger Hiss was a Communist and a Democrat. His "hypocricy" did not indict the entire Democrat Party as hypocritical in standing against Communism.

The proposition of this thread is beneath contempt. What it demonstrates is that some (not all) leftists will stoop to ANYTHING to make a political point. As Attorney Welch once famously asked Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy: "Have you no decency?"

I would also point out that not a single Republican came to the defense of Sen. Craig. Contrast that with the hundreds of Dems who arose to defend Alger Hiss.

Edited September 4, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

Mark Steyn on hypocricy:

A measure of hypocrisy is necessary to a functioning society. It’s quite possible, on the one hand, to be opposed to the legalization of prostitution yet, on the other, to pull your hat down over your brow every other Tuesday and sneak off to the cat house on the other side of town. Your inability to live up to your own standards does not, in and of itself, nullify them. The Left gives the impression that a Republican senator caught in a whorehouse ought immediately to say, “You’re right. I should have supported earmarks for hookers in the 2005 appropriations bill.” That’s the reason why sex scandals take down Republicans but not Democrats: Sex-wise, the Left’s standards are that whatever’s your bag is cool — which is the equivalent of no standards. Thus, Monica Lewinsky was a “grown woman” free to make her own decisions on the carpet of the Oval Office. Without agreed “moral standards”, all you have is the law. When it’s no longer clear something is wrong, all you can do is make it illegal.

Most (probably all) members of the Republican right would condemn adulterous sex. But as we all (well, most of us I would think) understand, the sexual drive is quite powerful and unfortunately from time to time a conservative person will fall into sexual sin. That, IMO, is not even hypocricy. Now if that person regularly engages in such activity on an ongoing basis while publicly decrying it he then is indeed a hypocrite who deserves censure. But the fact that a few sin and a few are hypocrites does not condemn an entire movement which believes that defending the sanctity of marriage is important to the health of our society.

Let's not try to make political hay from the misfortunes and trouble of Sen. Larry Craig. How many of you leftists jumped all over the Republican right for trying to make political hay from President Clinton's sexual problems! Talk about hypocricy!

[Tim Gratz]

A very interesting essay, IMO. I am quite sure the author is Jewish and not a Christian.

Oh, the Humanity!

What’s really “disgusting” and “disgraceful.”

By David Klinghoffer

Republicans have been racing to decry Idaho senator Larry Craig as “disgusting,” “disgraceful” — the words chosen respectively by Mitt Romney and John McCain. In the competition to appear utterly pitiless, Romney pulled ahead fast. The Massachusetts Adonis himself seems perfect in every way, inhumanly so — except for precisely this same vaguely inhuman quality that, I predict, will prove to be the Achilles heel of Romney’s candidacy.

Though Craig had served as one of Romney’s chief cheerleaders in the Senate and co-chairman of his Idaho campaign, the candidate dropped him without giving the slightest hint of compassion or concern for the man, commenting “He’s no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine… I’m sorry to see that he has fallen short.” But wait, are there really grounds to feel compassion for Larry Craig, in this pathetic situation that he brought on himself and refuses to acknowledge?

I think so, and based on precisely the moral code that he evidently trampled on with that tapping foot, the code of the Ten Commandments.

Where in the Decalogue does it say it is a sin to conduct yourself in a disorderly fashion in the Minneapolis airport men’s room? What’s fascinating and important about the Ten Commandments is that, according to tradition, they summarize the totality of God’s law. Every moral truth expressed anywhere in the Bible is alluded to in some fashion by one of the Ten Commandments. In Craig’s case, the relevant legislation is the Seventh Commandment, against “adultery.”

I put adultery in quote marks because the Hebrew term that appears in the text, niuf, actually has a much wider range of meaning than the English word. It includes a variety of sexual sins including sleeping with your neighbor’s wife, certainly, but ranging from the less serious, premarital sex, up to far more egregious acts.

One of the classical commentators on the text, Saadia Gaon (882-942 C.E.), explained the common-sense criterion for determining the relative seriousness of each of these. It has to do with the ease or difficulty of making a forbidden sexual combination legitimate through a change of personal status. An unmarried heterosexual couple can easily make their union acceptable, by getting married. The union of Senator Craig and a guy in the next restroom stall can never be rendered fitting or appropriate.

But another critically important thing to realize about the Ten Commandments is that they are arranged on two tablets in order to juxtapose the Commandments on the first tablet with those on the second. A very old interpretive tradition, going back almost 2,000 years, intimates that the Commandments that line up horizontally, from tablet to tablet, bear a causal relationship to one another. That is, a society that ignores a particular commandment on the first tablet will likely fall afoul of the matching Commandment on the opposite tablet.

The Commandment on the first tablet matching the Seventh Commandment would be the Second Commandment, “You shall not recognize the gods of others in My presence…”

Again, the English translation is lacking. We think of the Second Commandment as forbidding idolatry, but the great medieval commentator Rashi explains that the Hebrew word conventionally translated as “gods” (elohim) really has a far broader meaning. It doesn’t merely denote the false deities of old — Zeus, Apollo, and the rest — but any source of authority (marut) other than God.

While the worship of statues depicting the ancient pagan pantheons is no longer a feature of modern life, the recognition of other sources of authority than God is, of course, pervasive. This is what secularism is all about, and many Republicans play their role in abetting it by fearing to make their arguments against Biblically forbidden institutions — gay marriage, abortion, etc. — in Biblical terms.

Almost as pervasive are the range of sexual perversities to which men (mostly) and women in our secularized society feel increasingly drawn, without the moral strength or character to resist their temptations. The Ten Commandments, a moral diagnostic tool of unequaled usefulness, inform us that a culture that embraces alternate sources of moral authority will naturally fall prey to perverse sexual temptations.

Larry Craig is only the latest and most prominent citizen to be toppled by this dynamic.

Was it hypocritical of him, as liberals are saying, to support a Federal Marriage Amendment or a similar constitutional amendment in Idaho, which respectively would bar the recognition of same-sex marriage at the federal level and in his home state? Hardly. If you were a man addicted to same-sex encounters, very likely a man who hates himself for his addiction, then shoring up traditional marriage precisely as a bulwark against your predilection makes all the sense in the world.

It is what the Ten Commandments would recommend. Far from demonstrating the bankruptcy of social conservatism, Craig’s story, correctly understood, makes clear how urgent the need is for a Biblically informed critique of our culture. [Emphasis supplied.]

Now that Craig has been caught, he should resign from the Senate — and don’t worry, he will. But righteous indignation from the Right is a shallow response to his humiliation.

We’ll all forget about the Idaho senator, while the moral dynamic that caught him — like seaweed lurking to drown the unwary swimmer — will not go away. Far better to use the event as an occasion to bring to public awareness the costs of the secular culture that wraps itself around the souls of Republicans and Democrats alike.

— David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of the just releasedShattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril.

[Pat Speer]

I would also point out that not a single Republican came to the defense of Sen. Craig. Contrast that with the hundreds of Dems who arose to defend Alger Hiss.

You mention that as if you're proud of the fact that the spineless leaders of the Repubs turned on one of their own just when he needed them most. These men all depended on Craig, but now that it seems he's infected with the homo-virus they're all running for the hills. Pathetic. He claimed he did nothing wrong and that he had pled guilty to try and avoid a scandal. Why didn't ANY of his "friends' believe him?

BECAUSE THEY"D ALL KNOWN HE WAS GAY FOR A LONG LONG TIME!

The real scandal isn't that one closeted gay man reached out (literally) in a public bathroom, it's that his fellow Repubs all knew he was gay, and pretended he wasn't, so their party could position itself as the party of family values blah blah blah.

The Republican party at this point in time has become a party without a soul. It lies to the middle-class to get their vote. It cuts deals with the wealthy to get their cash. It represents little beyond power, corruption, and the idolatry of incompetence.

I hope either Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee get the nomination. While I don't agree with their views, I get the feeling they actually believe what they say, and are willing to stand by it.

[Len Colby]

I would also point out that not a single Republican came to the defense of Sen. Craig. Contrast that with the hundreds of Dems who arose to defend Alger Hiss.

Hiss are you kidding can you cite anything that has happened during let's say the life time of most members of the forum? Can you back your claim that "hundreds of Dems...arose to defend" him? You do know that his guilt has yet to he proven.]Craig's offense was reletively minor he was hung out to dry by his party for 2 reasons:

- He's gay

- He was up for reelection and Idaho has GOP governor. His replacement will be a Republican and will have a definite advantage over whomever the Dems pick to run against him.

[Tim Gratz]

To Len:

Re the guilt of Alger Hiss (from Wikipedia):

In 1978, Allen Weinstein, then a professor of history at Smith College, published Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. The book, in which Weinstein argues that Hiss was guilty, has been cited by many historians as the "most important" and the "most thorough and convincing" book on the Hiss-Chambers case.[63] Weinstein drew upon 30,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, the files of the Hiss defense attorneys, over 80 interviews with involved parties and six interviews with Hiss himself.[64] In 1997, Weinstein published an updated and revised edition of Perjury, which incorporated recent evidence from Venona decrypted cables, released documents from Soviet intelligence archives and information from former Soviet intelligence operatives.

In arguing for Hiss's guilt, Weinstein presented no major new revelations about the case. Rather, he noted a great many points at which Chambers's story, or an assumption of Hiss's guilt, seemed to be a better fit to documented facts than did Hiss's accounts of events. In his review of Perjury, George Will wrote "the myth of Hiss's innocence suffers the death of a thousand cuts."[65]

Among the points where Weinstein found Hiss's defense questionable were the following:

Hiss's disclosure of the history of the Woodstock typewriter appeared to be "secretive and improvised," and that he seemed at times to deliberately mislead investigators about the probable current whereabouts of the typewriter.[66]

Hiss stated that he had given an old car to Chambers, whereas Chambers said that Hiss had donated it to the Communist party. Documents show that Hiss transfered title for the car to a dealer who immediately resold the car to a known Communist party member.[67]

Chambers testified that in 1937 he had given Oriental rugs to four of his espionage sources, including Hiss, in appreciation for their work. Hiss responded that he had received the rug from Chambers in 1935 as payment for a debt. Evidence indicates that Chambers had in fact given rugs to three other known Communist agents, and that he had bought them in late 1936.[68]

The evidence seems to favor Chambers's description of a close working relationship between himself and Hiss during the 1930s more than Hiss's account of a casual acquaintanceship. This included Hiss subletting his apartment to Chambers without a formal lease, Hiss giving Chambers use of his car without transferring the title, and evidence that Chambers was in the Hiss home in 1937, a year after Hiss said he broke off contact with Chambers.[69]

Weinstein also devotes an appendix to examining and dismissing various "conspiracies" that Hiss defenders have proposed to explain the evidence against Hiss.[70]

In his conclusion, Weinstein writes "the body of available evidence proves that Hiss perjured himself when describing his secret dealings with Chambers, so that the jury in his second trial made no mistake in finding Alger Hiss guilty as charged."[71]

Criticism

Some authors have been critical of Perjury. Victor Navasky reported that he wrote to seven of Weinstein's "key sources" and six of the seven "responded that they had been misquoted, quoted out of context, misrepresented, misconstrued, or misunderstood." Weinstein countered that the sources were only recanting their previous statements. One of Weinstein's sources, Samuel Krieger, sued Weinstein for libel in 1979. Weinstein settled out of court by promising to correct future editions of Perjury and paying Krieger an undisclosed sum.[72] Although he has said several times that he would make his files and interview tapes available to other investigators, to date Weinstein has not done so.[73]

In the late 1990s, Weinstein conducted research into Soviet intelligence files with former KGB operative Alexander Vassiliev. This research was primarily for the 1999 book The Haunted Wood, but the material Vassiliev and Weinstein found that related to the Hiss case was added to the 1997 edition of Perjury. It was later revealed that some scholarly friction existed between the two coauthors. Vassiliev stated, "I never saw a document where Hiss would be called ALES or ALES may be called Hiss. I made a point of that to Allen." Weinstein was "sloppy almost every time he quoted documents relating to Alger Hiss."[74] However, in a 2002 episode of PBS's NOVA, Vassiliev said, "The Rosenbergs, Theodore Hall and Alger Hiss did spy for the Soviets, and I saw their real names in the documents, their code names... How you judge them is up to you. To me, they're heroes."[75]

Wikipedia also notes that:

In 1997, the bipartisan Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, chaired by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, stated in its findings: "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department."[44] In his 1998 book Secrecy: The American Experience, Moynihan wrote, "Belief in the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss became a defining issue in American intellectual life. Parts of the American government had conclusive evidence of his guilt, but they never told."[45]

Weinstein wrote that the evidence against Hiss was "persuasive but not conclusive." I guess the same thing can be said about the evidence against Sen. Craig. The best judgment is that Hiss was guilty and could based on the new evidence be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, but not perhaps beyond any doubt.

Fair enough?

[Tim Gratz]

Peter wrote:

I can't thnk of ONE thing the Republican Party of today stands for that isn't pure evil. [

What a totally ridiculous statement.

What about the "No Child Left Behind" program? Is that totally evil?

I assume the opposite of pure evil is morally correct.

I know from my work on the anti-modern day slavery issue that the Bush administration has been effective in involvement against modern-day sex trafficking. If that is "pure evil" it must only be assumed, Peter, that you condone the sexual slavery of little five year old girls.

The more tolerant explanation, which I will accept, is that you just don't know what you are talking about as demonstrated by that absurd statement.

[Don Jeffries]

What is really ironic is how willing Craig and his fellow representatives in Congress were to continue creating what is increasingly turning into a real police state in America, and how that turned out to sting him quite literally. How pathetic is it when a government employee is assigned to sit on a toilet in a restroom stall, fishing for gays all around him? How pitiful is it when a man of Craig's age and stature in life feels compelled to seek out strange sex partners in an atmosphere that most of us would consider extremely unenticing? Yes, Craig is a hypocrite, but what he (or any other person) does in public restrooms, is really none of my concern. I do, however, object to having police officers stationed there, looking out for feet tapping or other alleged indications of guilt.

Americans absolutely adore police officers, and are willing to grant them unlimited powers. In the quest to capture potential pedophiles, drunk drivers and other enemies of the state, we are willing to put up with totally unconstitutional highway checkpoints and give shows like "To Catch A Predator" top ratings. Let me state quite clearly that I am not a supporter of pedophiles or drunk drivers (or hypocritical closet gay politicians). However, much as I have never understood the legality of undercover police officers enticing men into what they think are assignations with prostitutes, only to arrest them for solicitiation, or of "narcs" posing as friends to some drug user and then arresting him/her after they've talked him into selling them drugs, I feel uncomfortable with undercover police officers posing as little girls and boys on the internet, in an attempt to set up imagined trysts with middle-aged men, or with undercover police officers sitting in public restrooms, looking for the supposed signals of the gay-sex-in-restrooms-world. But, as our heroic president has said, "we are at war." Anything is fair, I suppose, in our quest to defeat the terrorists.

Seriously, this is a sad case all around. Larry Craig has been publicly humiliated and will regret his toe-tapping in that bathroom stall for the rest of his life. I feel a great deal of sympathy for his wife and children. Craig is a typical Republicrat; the state of Idaho will elect another, who will differ little from him. What we really need are some of the aging hippies to start ranting about the "pigs" again. Our police have WAY too much power.

[Tim Gratz]

Peter wrote:

I can't thnk [sic] of ONE thing the Republican Party of today stands for that isn't pure evil. [

Peter, perhaps the sloppiness of your posts is a reflection of the sloppiness of your reasoning.

I bet you have not even read the Republican Party platform and have no idea about half of the MANY things the Republican Party stands for.

For instance, in its 2004 Party Platform, the GOP endorsed legislation allowing small employers to pool together to offer health insurance for their employees.

According to your stated viewpoint, this legislation must be "pure evil".

Please correct me if I am wrong and you did indeed read the 2004 Republican Party platform before making your charge.

Edited September 5, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Guest David Guyatt]

Peter wrote:

I can't thnk [sic] of ONE thing the Republican Party of today stands for that isn't pure evil. [

Peter, perhaps the sloppiness of your posts is a reflection of the sloppiness of your reasoning.

I bet you have not even read the Republican Party platform and have no idea about half of the MANY things the Republican Party stands for.

For instance, in its 2004 Party Platform, the GOP endorsed legislation allowing small employers to pool together to offer health insurance for their employees.

According to your stated viewpoint, this legislation must be "pure evil".

Please correct me if I am wrong and you did indeed read the 2004 Republican Party platform before making your charge.

Good grief, Tim! Are you suggesting that we should believe words uttered by a politician and/or a political party campaigning for office?

Whatever next --- Golem for President?

Whoops, my mistake, seems he's already been elected.

Oh well, onwards and upwards with the spin - the show must go on don't ya' know...

David

[John Simkin]

To Len:

Re the guilt of Alger Hiss (from Wikipedia):

In 1978, Allen Weinstein, then a professor of history at Smith College, published Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. The book, in which Weinstein argues that Hiss was guilty, has been cited by many historians as the "most important" and the "most thorough and convincing" book on the Hiss-Chambers case.[63] Weinstein drew upon 30,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, the files of the Hiss defense attorneys, over 80 interviews with involved parties and six interviews with Hiss himself.[64] In 1997, Weinstein published an updated and revised edition of Perjury, which incorporated recent evidence from Venona decrypted cables, released documents from Soviet intelligence archives and information from former Soviet intelligence operatives.

In arguing for Hiss's guilt, Weinstein presented no major new revelations about the case. Rather, he noted a great many points at which Chambers's story, or an assumption of Hiss's guilt, seemed to be a better fit to documented facts than did Hiss's accounts of events. In his review of Perjury, George Will wrote "the myth of Hiss's innocence suffers the death of a thousand cuts."[65]

Among the points where Weinstein found Hiss's defense questionable were the following:

Hiss's disclosure of the history of the Woodstock typewriter appeared to be "secretive and improvised," and that he seemed at times to deliberately mislead investigators about the probable current whereabouts of the typewriter.[66]

Hiss stated that he had given an old car to Chambers, whereas Chambers said that Hiss had donated it to the Communist party. Documents show that Hiss transfered title for the car to a dealer who immediately resold the car to a known Communist party member.[67]

Chambers testified that in 1937 he had given Oriental rugs to four of his espionage sources, including Hiss, in appreciation for their work. Hiss responded that he had received the rug from Chambers in 1935 as payment for a debt. Evidence indicates that Chambers had in fact given rugs to three other known Communist agents, and that he had bought them in late 1936.[68]

The evidence seems to favor Chambers's description of a close working relationship between himself and Hiss during the 1930s more than Hiss's account of a casual acquaintanceship. This included Hiss subletting his apartment to Chambers without a formal lease, Hiss giving Chambers use of his car without transferring the title, and evidence that Chambers was in the Hiss home in 1937, a year after Hiss said he broke off contact with Chambers.[69]

Weinstein also devotes an appendix to examining and dismissing various "conspiracies" that Hiss defenders have proposed to explain the evidence against Hiss.[70]

In his conclusion, Weinstein writes "the body of available evidence proves that Hiss perjured himself when describing his secret dealings with Chambers, so that the jury in his second trial made no mistake in finding Alger Hiss guilty as charged."[71]

Criticism

Some authors have been critical of Perjury. Victor Navasky reported that he wrote to seven of Weinstein's "key sources" and six of the seven "responded that they had been misquoted, quoted out of context, misrepresented, misconstrued, or misunderstood." Weinstein countered that the sources were only recanting their previous statements. One of Weinstein's sources, Samuel Krieger, sued Weinstein for libel in 1979. Weinstein settled out of court by promising to correct future editions of Perjury and paying Krieger an undisclosed sum.[72] Although he has said several times that he would make his files and interview tapes available to other investigators, to date Weinstein has not done so.[73]

In the late 1990s, Weinstein conducted research into Soviet intelligence files with former KGB operative Alexander Vassiliev. This research was primarily for the 1999 book The Haunted Wood, but the material Vassiliev and Weinstein found that related to the Hiss case was added to the 1997 edition of Perjury. It was later revealed that some scholarly friction existed between the two coauthors. Vassiliev stated, "I never saw a document where Hiss would be called ALES or ALES may be called Hiss. I made a point of that to Allen." Weinstein was "sloppy almost every time he quoted documents relating to Alger Hiss."[74] However, in a 2002 episode of PBS's NOVA, Vassiliev said, "The Rosenbergs, Theodore Hall and Alger Hiss did spy for the Soviets, and I saw their real names in the documents, their code names... How you judge them is up to you. To me, they're heroes."[75]

Wikipedia also notes that:

In 1997, the bipartisan Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, chaired by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, stated in its findings: "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department."[44] In his 1998 book Secrecy: The American Experience, Moynihan wrote, "Belief in the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss became a defining issue in American intellectual life. Parts of the American government had conclusive evidence of his guilt, but they never told."[45]

Weinstein wrote that the evidence against Hiss was "persuasive but not conclusive." I guess the same thing can be said about the evidence against Sen. Craig. The best judgment is that Hiss was guilty and could based on the new evidence be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt, but not perhaps beyond any doubt.

Fair enough?

Why don't you use this information to start a thread on Hiss. I will then give it a link to my web page on Hiss. We can then discuss the issue. I know from my emails that the far-right in the USA take a keen interest in the Hiss case because they believe it justified McCarthyism.

[Tim Gratz]

I agree the Hiss case is of great interest. It may or may not have "justified" or even "led to" McCarthyism but it certainly started RMN on his rise to power. I don't even think the Watergate scandal (without minimizing its legal-political importance) is as fascinating as Hiss, the pumpkin papers and the Nixon "Checkers" speech. In what other country has what turned out to be a most important political career been saved by reference to a dog? Or have there been spy papers hidden in a pumpkin? Or a possible spy story been vindicated by a bird-watcher?

[Len Colby]

To Len:

Re the guilt of Alger Hiss (from Wikipedia):

I read that Tim it was quite interesting and well documented. It seems that I underestimated the evidence of Hiss' guilt but as even Weinstein said the evidence isn't conclusive. Perhaps you'd like to take up John's challenge and debate him about it.

Whether of not he was guilty was tangental to my main points which were

1) you brought up an incident that transpired almost 60 years ago, if you have to go that far back to find exmples of dirt on the Democrats you've lost your case.

2) you failed to back your claim that "hundreds of Dems...arose to defend Alger Hiss"

3)Craig's party mates failure to stick up for him is probably due to prejudice and political considerations