I appreciate the theme of the piece but maybe you didn't get the memo, Hiss was just exonerated.

Or at least possibly exonerated. So he probably wasn't a witch. Because witches aren't real. And neither was anything McCarthy said about communism and his lists. And thinking that the democratic party's "reputation" for appeasement is the fault of those who tried to stand up to McCarthy and Nixon's attempted pogrom is ridiculous.

Or is this "satire" again?

I thought it was Hiss that was just "exonerated", but now I can't seem to find the news piece. I heart irony.

Public school administrators, who usually are Democrats, keep doing silly things. Not murder-a-couple-hundred-thousand-Iraquis silly, but this is one of those areas we need to learn to live with.

Like when some first-grader draws a picture of Jesus, they pull the picture from the first grade art show, and expell the kid from school.

I met Alger Hiss about 1974. He may be the most famous guy I ever have met. He was polite and moderately well-groomed. Compared to Nixon. he was a poofter. Compared to G.W. Bush, he was King Arthur.

It creeps out over the footlights like a San Francisco fog. It's Kiellor's muse.

Smell it?

Pwew!

He needs a change, and so do we.

Is great. I wish more people could ignore the smoke and mirrors and look just at the policies, proposals, and facts on the ground. But you're preaching to the choir here at salon. Most everybody here, in spite of different opinions, arrives at them thoughtfully and with a viable set of facts.

Kai Bird is a Pulitzer prize winning author and a contributing eitor for "The Nation". He won the Pulitzer for a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

His most recent research has led him to conclude that the American spy identified in the Venona Papers as "Ales" was not Alger Hiss, but another American Diplomat, Wilder Foote.

Like when some first-grader draws a picture of Jesus, they pull the picture from the first grade art show, and expell the kid from school

timbuktom

`

Have you been watching Bill O'Reilly again? Did this really happen or is it another tall tale from The War On Christmas?

Hi, Garrison--

I've been a fan for quite a few years now -- well, off and on :) But I've certainly been an admirer of long-standing.

I've never heard you utter a harsh or unreasonable word. Unless someone really deserves it.

But today is the first time I read something you said which is outrageous, and I think requires an apology.

My father was a radio writer and actor with a contract from CBS to move on to television in his pocket. It was 1951. He was hauled before HUAC. He questioned the Committee's right to question him under the Constitution. His testimony was so offensive to the Committee, it was stricken from the record.

The next day, his contract with CBS was shredded. His career was over.

He was 26.

For many years, he wrote plays. He had once, early on, said that his worst nightmare was to be writing for no one, and have all his work wind up in a trunk somewhere. All his many plays wound up in a trunk somewhere.

Finally, in the mid-sixties he began finding work again. In 1966, he won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Television Drama, Episodic.

It was too late. He had committed suicide before he was ever notified of the award.

Years later, as I entered my own writing career in film, total strangers would approach me. I'd be in some agent's office, and they'd hear my last name and grab me excitedly, say they never knew my father, but they loved him, had become a writer because of him. Twenty years after he died.

Ah, well. He hears those words from another place. And smiles wanly. Or weeps. For what might have been.

Joe McCarthy tried -- and almost succeeded -- in creating a police state in America. Someone in America is always trying to do that somehow. One where even someone who had a relation to someone else who had a subscription to the Daily Worker, the guy who pumped your gas, or your daughter's fifth grade teacher, was blacklisted, lost their job, was investigated by the FBI, who would canvas your neighborhood with questions about your "Communist activities".

They made sure you couldn't work anywhere, not even taking out the trash after being a college professor, or cleaning up someone else's dirty dishes. After awhile, they'd hunt you down. They'd find you. They'd have a little chat with your boss. This would go on for years.

Many lives never recovered.

And for what? Joe McCarthy's inhuman, ruthless, heartless, soulless quest for personal power and raw greed. Nothing more. He had the tiny little idea in his brain that that was what you needed to get ahead in the world. That was all that occupied him. He cared nothing for ruined lives, for our ruined Constitution and laws, nothing for Liberty, human rights, or simple decency towards his fellow men.

Perhaps you're right. Maybe Tailgunner Joe wasn't really so bad. Maybe it's an exaggeration to call him evil.

But if he's not in Hell right now... give him a call.

Who knows? Maybe he's Home.

When Garrison Keillor seems to be revising his opinion on Alger Hiss, Joe McCarthy, and "Democratic appeasers" based on his reading of recent history books but doesn't tell us which books. As other letter writers note he should get a second opinion. There is a slew of conservative bad history books out now.

You say an attack on Iran would be a military venture which this country cannot afford. What about the Iranians?? An attack on Iran is not an attack on their president . It would be an attack on Iranians who, this would suprise many Americans, go to school, have their hair highlighted, enjoy an afternoon in the park, take their kids for icecream, attend college . The president of Iran no more represents the people of Iran than Bush represents the people of America. Why oh why is a war on Iran only presented as a costly enterprise for our military? Think about the catastrophic results to the Iranian people. Please. This is mind numbing.