EthosEthos: using your street cred to persuade people…more or less.In the portion of the hearings we've been looking at, both sides use ethos to persuade. First, Secretary of the Army Stevens mak...

Legal Document/SpeechAs the transcript of a hearing, this text is hard to classify. No one had this thing scripted beforehand with everyone hitting their marks. McCarthy fell into a trap Welch didn...

Sleazy and WoundedThis exchange has two primary authors: The Joes.McCarthy and Welch had two vastly different tones because they were two vastly different guys.McCarthy's tone was what the country...

It's not common that one line ends an entire political career, especially one like Senator McCarthy's. But Welch's anguished question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you lef...

Let's take a look at the opening lines of the Welch-McCarthy showdown. It's Senator Sleaze who gets the ball rolling:[…] in view of Mr. Welch's request that the information be given once we know...

At the end of the Welch-McCarthy showdown, you can almost see McCarthy desperately trying to salvage his career.Mr. Jenkins, the thing that I think we must remember is that this is a war which a br...

(3) Base CampAs long as you can keep track of who's talking to whom—which…good luck—the text isn't too hard to follow. Even though they're politicians and lawyers, everyone's speaking pretty...

In-Text ReferencesHistorical and Political ReferencesNational Lawyers GuildMcCarthy makes reference to an organization Fred Fisher belonged to that was "obviously" a Communist Front. The group was...

Joe McCarthy claimed to have flown 32 combat missions. It was actually closer to 12. Considering his relationship to numbers later on, that's not too surprising. (Source)Joe McCarthy is only one of...