A gay, boozing, child-molesting U.S. Senator who presided over a Communist witch-hunt during the 1950s, ruining many innocent peoples' lives in the process. Anyone left of Hitler was potentially a "Communist" to McCarthy. In fact, if your brother's friend's cousin's ex-wife's roomate happened to attend a Communist meeting in the 1930s, you probably would've been accused of being a Soviet spy and then would have to kiss your job and reputation goodbye.

Republicans have tried to resurrect this pathetic man as some kind of hero who saved us from the tide of communism (historical revionism is popular with the GOP), but the truth is most of Senator McCarthy's "intelligence" was based on little more than his vivid imagination, rumors, half-truths or gossip. He even admitted to J. Edgar Hoover that he made up the numbers on his infamous list as he went along, forcing the FBI to account for them (his office was an FBI front, he hired so many ex-FBI agents on his staff it was known as "the little FBI").

Despite all of Joe's wild claims about a vast communist conspiracy bent on subverting America, the third in command at the Bureau admitted there wasn't enough evidence to prove there was even a single Communist in the State Department. That didn't stop ol' Joe, however, he just got more reckless and bizarre in his accusations. He even started attacking President Eisenhower and the Army. This scared Hoover away and the FBI stopped helping McCarthy, setting in motion his eventual downfall. In December 1954, he became the fourth member in history to be censured by the U.S. Senate. He died in disgrace in May 1957 from his own alcoholism.