"The fault . . . is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

David Luban at Balkinization compares Liz Cheney's Keep America Safe television ad and the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy:

Liz Cheney and her group "Keep America Safe" is after the lawyers who work for the government but (her ad disgustingly insinuates) are secret sympathizers with Al Qaeda. "Whose values do they share?" appears in bold white letters across the black screen, as the voiceover intones the same words against a background of ominous music. The slanders against government lawyers who represented detainees is an uncanny repetition of Senator Joseph McCarthy's hunt for Communists in government 60 years ago. In one of the most dramatic moments, McCarthy went after a lawyer.

It is easy to see the parallel between the accusation that Department of Justice lawyers are Al Qaeda sympathizers and the accustation that certain lawyers 60 years ago were communist sympathizers. Luban suggests that what Cheney and McCarthy also have in common is that they both seized on an opportunity to take advantage of our fear of an enemy for political gain. Read the entire entry here.