All right! McCarthyism is back! The
San Francsico Chronicle reports that Republicans have stopped a Berkeley library from being named after someone who may have once visited a library that had a socialist book or two in it.
God forbid, she might have READ about Socialism! Uh-oh, I've read
The Communist Manifesto myself. No library named after me then!
Washington -- House Republicans rejected an effort Tuesday to name a post office in Berkeley after longtime Berkeley Councilwoman Maudelle Shirek after a conservative lawmaker questioned whether the 94-year-old activist represents American values.
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has been trying for more than two years to name the city's main post office on Allston Way for Shirek, a civil rights leader and peace activist who served on the Berkeley City Council for 20 years.
But House Republicans have sought to block the effort, mostly through a whisper campaign about her reported past ties to communist leaders and left-wing causes. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, objected Tuesday to Lee's proposal and rallied Republicans to defeat the measure in an unusual roll call vote.
Lee, who said Shirek helped inspire her to run for elected office, was furious after the House defeated her measure on a mostly party line vote of 215 to 190. The measure needed two-thirds support for passage.
"Maudelle Shirek is a woman whose leadership, service and commitment to our community are a testament to what is great about our nation, and she deserves to be honored," Lee said.
"That a Republican from Iowa could launch a campaign to deny naming a local post office after this 94-year-old civil rights leader, who until recently was the oldest and one of the longest-serving elected officials in California, is just shameful."
[...]
In an interview with the Associated Press, King said Shirek had an "affiliation with the Communist Party" because she was involved with the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Berkeley.
The library's Web site says it was named for Karl Niebyl, a San Jose State professor of economics who escaped Nazi Germany and donated his collection after his death, and Roscoe Proctor, a teacher and African American activist. The research library provides information on "progressive alternatives" and says its stated mission is to "support emerging struggles for racial and gender equality, and for Socialism.''
Here's the friggin' kicker, though:
Lee, in a statement after the vote, blasted King, saying his "campaign of innuendo and unsubstantiated 'concern' is better suited to the era of Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover than today's House of Representatives."
To which King responded: "I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy, she would realize that he was a hero for America."
Doinggg! Way to go, Representative King. Take up valuable House time debating paranoid wacko nonsense like this. Clearly the 'Communist threat' should be foremost in our minds. The country's got nothing better to do right now.