How Bush and his speeches are reminiscent of the fifties and the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rode the Communist menace to power and impugned the patriotism of anyone who dared to disagree with him.  

This tactic was so successful that Richard Nixon established sufficient momentum through smearing political rivals in California all the way to the vice presidency under President Dwight Eisenhower.

With the current popularity and frequent showings of the sixties' political chiller "The Manchurian Candidate" the specter of McCarthyism has become all the more vivid.  James Gregory portrays a senator manipulated by ruthless wife Angela Lansbury, who in some ways makes Sherlock Holmes' perpetual nemesis Dr. Moriarty look like a naïve schoolboy.  

Gregory's penchant is to deliver numbers to the press of the number of Communists in the U.S. State Department at that time.  The number perpetually varies, as was the case with Senator McCarthy.  

"Who would Jesus bomb?" has become the battle cry for those wishing to expose the dense hypocrisy of the fanatic right's militant brand of Christianity. They hate. They kill. They disregard -- and all in the name of Jesus.

Sweet Jesus, they would have you believe, was some kind of monster -- a homicidal, pathological and delusional figure bent on the destruction of all those unlike him.

Why would they make him the fall guy for their incalculable evil? Is it because he was such an unabashed liberal?

During my staunch Christian upbringing, Jesus taught me many things. Strangely, none of those teachings directed me to kill in his name, or in the name of God. Nothing I read instructed me to bash gays, subordinate women, destroy nature, convert heathens, or start wars. Nothing!

But apparently I missed some sort of biblical memo... one received by some pretty creepy characters. And here's the proof:

Remember this time two years ago?  Howard Dean was running for president, Bush was defending the loss of liberties spelled out in the Patriot Act, and Iraq sucked.  Times have really changed...well, except for Bush.  And Iraq.

But two years ago, Howard Dean was taking grief over this statement:

"I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials."

What did the NRO's Andrew McCarthy have to say about Dean's statement?

Howard Dean's mistletoe buss for Osama bin Laden would, in sane times, disqualify him from serious contention for a major party's presidential nomination. If what he says is what he thinks, he is unfit. Case closed.

And about Bin Laden?

Americans (other than, evidently, Dr. Dean) know and expect that his fate, should he emerge from the catacombs, is death, either in battle or by execution at the conclusion of the most summary of military tribunals -- the just dessert of unlawful combatants who commit crimes against humanity.

But this little jaunt into history doesn't stop with 2003.  Come along and see what twists await us sixty years in the past...