Was our Counstitution Disregaurded by McCarthy?

Taken from the New York Times:
found at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/nyregion/04peress.html?pagewanted=1
The Dentist McCarthy Saw as a Threat to Security
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: April 4, 2005
rving Peress was eating a pastrami sandwich in Katz's deli on the Lower East Side, devouring I. F. Stone's latest screed against McCarthyism, when a stranger leaned over conspiratorially from the next table.
"You're not afraid to read that paper in public?" the man asked, incredulously. A half-century later, the 87-year-old Dr. Peress is still not afraid to reveal most of his political beliefs, but his 85-year-old wife has misgivings. "Call me paranoid," she said.
Her reticence is a testament to the unhealed scars, upended careers and recurring nightmares that linger from an era when "Who promoted Peress?" became the war chant of American anti-Communists and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's performance in a nationally televised showdown over the Army dentist from Queens all but ended the senator's career.
The controversy ultimately claimed the jobs of several top Army officials, cost Dr. Peress (pronounced PE-ress) much of his private practice, and even drove his wife, Elaine, to resign under pressure as editor of the Parent-Teachers Association monthly bulletin at Public School 49 in Middle Village. Now, in several recent interviews with The New York Times, the couple reluctantly talked about the case and its consequences for the first time.
Fifty years ago last month, a Senate investigations subcommittee finally closed the book on the case, identifying three dozen Army officers who investigators said "participated actively" in promoting Dr. Peress from captain to major or in approving his honorable discharge. But the committee concluded that the promotion was the product of bureaucratic bungling and red tape rather than of systemic subversion directed within the military, as McCarthy had claimed, by a "silent master who decreed special treatment for Communists."
The case remains a touchstone, though. "You know who promoted me?" Dr. Peress asked rhetorically. "Somebody was eating lunch or making a telephone call when my promotion passed across their desk. I slipped through."
Another underlying question in the McCarthy inquiry was why Dr. Peress was promoted, since he was already under investigation by Army intelligence for invoking his Fifth Amendment privileges against self-incrimination on several official forms that asked whether he was a member of any subversive group.
Dr. Peress now leaves little doubt what his sympathies were but is still wary about being explicit.
Was he a Communist?
"Not when I was in the Army, not for one minute," he said.
And before that?
"I'm not going to tell you," he replied. "Nothing can accrue to it."
"I never advocated the violent overthrow of the government," he offered.
But was he ever an enrolled member of the Communist Party?
"That's as far as I'll go right now," he said.
"The answer would be," he said with the aplomb he demonstrated before the McCarthy subcommittee, "that's the fourth time you asked me."
Well, did he agree with Communism?
"I'm far from a Marxist scholar," he said, "but from my skimming of Marx, it was always reasonable, appropriate: democratic control by people of their own destinies and in control of the means of production. It's so utopian and mythological it's hard to conceive. Who would be against it? And what the Soviet Union was on its way to was enough to convince me."
Why not just say that to the committee instead of invoking the Fifth Amendment?
"The next thing is, 'Name names,' " he said. "That's the follow-up question. I have a constitutional right not to tell you. Even Oliver North took the Fifth Amendment. The common knowledge according to all of us who were involved was, if you answer one question, you give up your constitutional privileges."
Why not answer now, though, when there are no names to name, nobody empowered to demand them, and, probably, not too many people who care?
"It's an inappropriate question," he replied. "I was a leader of the American Labor Party," he said, referring to a leftist party that had supported Henry Wallace for president in 1948. "We were red-baited. We're far freer than a lot of places, but speech is punishable. I would not face a committee today, there is not that jeopardy, but I have descendants. As long as there is a penalty, to take a principled position to protect the right of people to have their opinion not exposed, you do not expose your own." "Were we Communists?" Elaine Peress chimed in. "I don't see why I would need to answer that question. It's nobody's business. You don't say you pray every morning; you don't have to answer, 'Do you believe in God?' "
Dr. Peress, the son of a tailor, was born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan, where he graduated from George Washington High School. At City College, he enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and he can recall playing box ball on campus while classmates engaged in quiet conversations about the relative merits of Trotskyism. He used to deliver clothing from his father's tailor shop "in my R.O.T.C. uniform," he said.
He was also largely apolitical at New York University dental school, where he graduated in 1940, until he met and married Elaine, an English teacher who became a therapist and psychiatric social worker. "She came from a more politically advanced family," he recalled.
Right after dental school, Dr. Peress sought a commission as an Army dentist, but was rejected because of a hernia. By the time overage doctors and dentists were being drafted in the Korean War, he had established his dental practice, so he fattened up to aggravate his hypertension in hopes of failing his physical. He passed it anyway, though.
When he applied for a commission as an officer in 1952, he signed an oath that he had never belonged to an organization that sought to alter the government by unconstitutional means ("I didn't consider the American Labor Party or the Communist Party subversive organizations," he said). But on subsequent loyalty forms he wrote "federal constitutional privilege" when asked about membership in groups deemed to be subversive.
"A Communist who's trying to infiltrate isn't going to call attention to himself," Dr. Peress mused the other day.
McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican who was chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations in 1954, accused the Army of coddling Communists by promoting Dr. Peress from captain to major in spite of questions about his loyalty, by acceding to Dr. Peress's request not to be assigned to Japan, and for allowing him to be honorably discharged after McCarthy demanded that he be court-martialed. In fact, the promotion, along with hundreds of others, was considered automatic under legislation passed by Congress, and the assignment request was granted because his wife and young daughter were ill and the Red Cross passed along his request for a compassionate reassignment. As for the honorable discharge, the Army argued that invoking the Fifth Amendment was not sufficient grounds for military prosecution.
McCarthy said Dr. Peress represented "the key to the deliberate Communist infiltration of our Armed Forces" and called him a "Fifth Amendment Communist."
Dr. Peress invoked the Fifth Amendment dozens of times at a subcommittee hearing after a New York City policewoman testified that he and his wife were Communists and had attended a leadership class run by the party. (He did say, however, that he would oppose any group that sought a violent or unconstitutional overthrow of the government.) Prompted by his lawyer, he quoted the Book of Psalms: "His mischief shall return upon his own head and his violence shall come down upon his own pate." He also said that anyone, even a senator, who equated the invoking of constitutional privileges against incrimination with automatic guilt was himself guilty of subversion.
McCarthy's bluster during the hearings, his denunciation of a brigadier general as "unfit" to wear his uniform and his pressure on the Army for preferential treatment for a draftee who was working for the committee prompted a showdown with the White House and, later that year, McCarthy's censure by the Senate.
In 1955, after the Republicans lost control of the Senate and, with it, McCarthy's chairmanship, the subcommittee issued its final report. It cited early recommendations by Army intelligence that Dr. Peress be discharged as a possible security risk but said personnel decisions involving him resulted from "a combination of factors," none of them suggesting subversion.
After the hearings, the Peress home in Queens was stoned, someone called leaders of his daughter's Brownie pack and warned them to be wary of possible subversion, and a dentist with whom Dr. Peress practiced persuaded him to take his name off the door. ("I was on the 28th floor; you don't have any drop-ins," Dr. Peress recalled.)
He sold his practice in 1980 and retired two years ago after fading into anonymity. Last year, on the 50th anniversary of his confrontation with McCarthy, "I figured I was going to be besieged, but nobody called. Everybody must have assumed I died," he said.
Because of his wife's concerns, Dr. Peress declined to be photographed for this article.
Has he changed his views about Communism? "I am more and more confused," he replied. "I was a true believer until the not-too-distant past. I have no doubts about the crimes of capitalism, even though it's such an efficient system on paper."
After all these years, does he have any regrets? "Regrets? That I acted appropriately?" he said. "No. None at all. True believers don't have regrets."

This Article sticks out to me for many reasons. One reason is the very Questions McCarthy asked this man because During this time of History answering the question Are You A Communsit pretty much condemed yourself and yet he still recived Incredible amonts of critisism from not only McCarthy and his supporters but also from the public in general in fact even after the Peress Case the call "Who Promoted Peress" became the rally cry of the Anti-Communist. another thing that stood out to me was McCarthy's target through independant resarch i discovered that Irving Peress was a dentist living in New York, his military Credentials include that he was mearly a draftie in 1952 and was promoted to major in 1953; now I'll be the first to admit that spies prefer to remain unseen but is Mr. Peress was indeed a spy i highly doubt that he would be a dentist in New York unless he a senator dentist who he would only see about once a year. also he was drafted a spy for the military would most likly voulunter. i also noticed in my research how many times he was investigated first he was noted by the bureaucrats in the military after he refused to answer the questions on the political afilliations form, he was supporting the American Labor Party at this time, and was discharged from the army because of this, McCarthy then subpeonaed him and asked him the questions seen in the story above. After citing the 5th amendmant in his defence he was Court-Marshalled by the Secratary of the Army Robert Stevens, and the very people who McCarthy had Accused of Babying communist. to tie it all together this story is a very good exprestion of the unhealthy increase in state power for three reasons, one is the lack of evedence that was presented at the case, not once did McCarthy offer any kind of Concusive evedence to the hearing. The second is Peress's discharge from the army because he refused to answer to his political afilliation, i find it highly unConstitutional to base someones loyalty off of there political background as well as to demend them to answer to the question and then to remove them from the Armed service because of this. The final reasoning is the blatant Disregaurd and Disrespect for the Constituional rights granted to the citizens of our country and even though Mr. Peress was able to recongnize it there is no doubt in my mind that others fell for McCarthy's trap and the worse part is that nobody did anything about it.

Reagan a Racist?

When Reagan Spoke of States' Rights
Published: November 12, 2007 in the opinion section
To the Editor:
David Brooks (''History and Calumny,'' column, Nov. 9) takes unnamed liberal commentators to task for willfully misrepresenting as evidence of the G.O.P.'s racist platform Ronald Reagan's 1980 speech in Philadelphia, Miss., in which Mr. Reagan uttered the now famous -- or should we say ''infamous'' -- claim ''I believe in states' rights.''
However sincere Mr. Reagan may have been in his approach to the economic problems of black America, there can be no doubt that ''states' rights'' is a racist doctrine, and one that the G.O.P. continues to embrace.
With all the major G.O.P. presidential hopefuls clinging both to Ronald Reagan's legacy and the old Southern strategy of Richard M. Nixon, the issue is as real and cogent today as when Mr. Reagan and the nascent neoconservative sect of the G.O.P. tried to woo black voters by repackaging racism as ''states' rights.''
Cynically, the righteously indignant advocates of states' rights today try to turn the discussion away from the fundamental question of civil rights into a cheap accusation of calumny. As the Marx Brothers said, ''Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?''
Craig Hanoch Highland Park, N.J. Nov. 9, 2007

Mr. Hanoch does ideed have a valid argument, if he was writing in the 1860s or at the beginnings of black sufferage, but Mr. Reagan was not at all racist, infact his idealology of States Rights was olny ment to be used in his ecomonic theory to help all Americans not only the Whites or Blacks. one part of Reagan's economic plans, now known as Reaganomics, was to reduce the growth Government Spending. States Rights is defined in America as a theory that the states should have more Legislative power than the Central Government and by reducing the size and power of the government he can help his economic theory take root and grow to save the nations economic ressesion at the time

Ronald Reagan's wit and "assassination"

Although loved for his wit and Humour President Ronald Reagan was the victim of and assassins bullet that peirced his lung just missing his heart these videos from YouTube.com help to elaborate both points