This just in on the AP wire:
Closed-Door McCarthy Transcripts Unsealed
The transcripts themselves are available at:
http://govt-aff.senate.gov/psi.htm

The senators who oversaw the project, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Carl Levin, D-Mich., unveiled the transcripts Monday in the very room that McCarthy used to hold some of his hearings.
“We hope that the excesses of McCarthyism will serve as a cautionary tale for future generations,” Collins said. Levin recalled organizing an anti-McCarthy petition as a student at Swarthmore College.
Senate Associate Historian Donald Ritchie, who assembled the volumes, said McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn, used the closed-door sessions like grand jury proceedings.
“Anybody who stood up to McCarthy in closed session, and did so articulately, tended not to get called up into the public session,” Ritchie said. “McCarthy was only interested in the people he could browbeat publicly.”
Copland, brought before the subcommittee because he had been hired by the State Department to lecture overseas, was one of those never called back for a public session.
When McCarthy asked whether he had ever been a communist sympathizer, Copland replied, “I am not sure I would be able to say what you mean by the word ‘sympathizer.”’
…McCarthy was angered when Eslanda Goode Robeson cited the 15th Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, as well as the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer whether she was a member of the Communist Party.
“The 15th Amendment has nothing to do with it,” said McCarthy.
Robeson replied: “(Y)ou see, I am a second-class citizen in this country and, therefore, feel the need of the 15th. … I am not quite equal to the rest of the white people.”
Robeson finally said a truthful answer would incriminate her. McCarthy brought her back to testify in public.
“McCarthy thrived on the Fifth Amendment,” Oshinsky said. “He liked nothing better than to ask people very pointed questions, and they would take the Fifth, so he could call them ‘Fifth Amendment communists’ and talk about a larger conspiracy.”

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There seems to be quite a flurry of activity over the last few weeks.

McCarthyism Watch

So this category was called “NeoMcCarthyism,” but then I realized there was nothing new about this — It’s the same old thing. Perhaps it all happened just long enough ago that many of us don’t remember exactly how or why it happened. And that’s why I’ve decided it’s so important to revisit history a bit, in order to better evaluate the current events of this modern age.
I think I held off on creating this category for the last few weeks because I didn’t want to believe myself that this was really happening.
I first thought I recognized “it” when the Dixie Chicks were banned from all Clear Channel stations for expressing their views. “Gee, isn’t that like being blacklisted?” I thought to myself.
I was sure the stench was present when I learned that the actors and actresses presenting and accepting at the Academy Awards had been instructed to not make comments against the Shrub War at this year’s awards ceremony. Suddenly, there was a time and a place for such discussion — and the Academy Awards wasn’t it. I can remember when I was a little girl and Vanessa Redgrave accepted her award for “Julia.” She sure had a thing or two to say about something that was important to her.
I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I asked my mom what she was saying.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “They always get political in their speeches when they accept their awards. It happens every year.”
Her voice was filled with both distain and acceptance, but the message was clear to me: people can say what they want in their speeches, and this is the case because we live in a free country.
Yesterday morning, I heard two acts of self-censorship that helped to clarify the absoluteness of the whole situation:
KTVU On Madonna and “What A Girl Wants” Censorship (Small – 3 MB)
KTVU On Madonna and “What A Girl Wants” Censorship (Hi-res – 36 MB)