A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family -- one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating (1988) ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet ...

... on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer ... Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the (Swift Boat) group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

... George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage."

What this man was saying was that it was better to have been wrong about Iraq than to have been right. That's the prevailing (though not always conscious) consensus in Washington, and it's completely insane.

My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq. That's an important question and the American people deserve a clear "yes" or "no" answer. I have given my answer. We did the right thing, and the world is better off for it.

Voice Over:
In 1972, there were 40 democracies in the world. Today, 120.

Freedom is spreading throughout the world like a sunrise.

And this Olympics, there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes.

With strength, resolve and courage, democracy will triumph over terror. And hope will defeat hatred.

Graphic:
President Bush. Moving America Forward.

Despite President Bush's goal of a more democratic Mideast, only about a quarter of Americans (24%) believe that promoting democracy in other nations should be a top priority. There has been no increase in support for this objective since October 2001. There is no significant partisan division on this question ­-- just 27% of Republicans and 22% Democrats rate this as a top priority.

If tomorrow's lead story in the New York Times were headlined, "Bush Is Second Coming of Christ," Bozell would say with complete conviction that it showed their blatant liberal bias, because they didn't compliment the color of the President's tie.

Bozell is certainly an idiotic figure, perfect for lampooning by the left. He has come to believe his thesis--that the "liberal" media is biased about everything--to the point where he can't look at the world in any other way.

There are times when media critics on the other end of the political spectrum also seem blinded by their convictions. As much as I enjoy and respect the work of the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby, I feel that he sometimes falls into the same trap. In yesterday's Howler, Somerby laid into Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, who is doing an op/ed stint at the New York Times this month. Lithwick's last column made what seemed to me a quite reasonable point, that liberals' efforts to "characterize Mr. Bush as a not-particularly-smart third grader" are counterproductive. Why? Because it makes liberals look like "snotty know-it-alls", their attacks distract from the "very grown-up machine that stands behind" Bush, and it sets the bar quite low for the President. Writes Lithwick, "If Mr. Bush sees the world in too-stark terms, it's because nuanced reasoning isn't easy for children. With each comparison between the president and a youngster, we subtly lower national expectations and exonerate bad behavior."

This doesn't sit well with Somerby at all:

Lithwick has her shorts in a wad because certain proles—anonymous people she can’t even name—have been too darn tough on poor George....Poor Lithwick! There’s all this “Bush-bashing” going on, and some of it may upset swing voters! Incredibly, she devotes her inaugural New York Times column to worries about this dark theme.
But how much of this “bashing” is really occurring? The volume can’t be all that great if she has to attack the anonymous people who submitted those ads to MoveOn.org—submitted them more than eight months ago!

Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it.

It's bad enough for smart-assed Moore to voice over sarcastically, "Was he wondering if he should have shown up to work more often?" in response to Bush's seeming paralysis on that fateful morning. It's even worse for the Democratic nominee for president to ridicule Bush as a deer-in-headlights child. Do I think this is beyond the pale politically? Certainly not. Bush surrogates (read: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth) have done much worse. However, politically, it makes Kerry look like a smart ass and seems likely to arouse sympathy for Bush from those ever-popular swing voters. Whatever they may think of Bush's tax policies or the war in Iraq, many people continue to admire him for his response in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. For my part, diehard partisan that I am, I initially chuckled at Kerry's comments. But Kerry doesn't need to win me over at this point. He has to convince the undecideds who don't viscerally dislike Bush.

Which brings me to the election of 2000. Somerby is particularly critical of the way in which Lithwick cites Al Gore's "all sighs and eye rolls" performance against Bush in one of the 2000 debates. Somerby writes:

For Lithwick, Gore’s eye-rolling, sighing demeanor is “[o]ne of the most enduring memories from the Bush-Gore debates.” But why is this memory so deep in the brain? For most people, because the press corps planted it there! After that first Bush-Gore debate, news orgs assembled tape of Gore’s occasional sighs—jacking the volume up nice and high—and played the tape on TV for a week. Suggestible folk got it into their heads. It lies there, disturbing them still.

Hate to break it to him, but I watched that debate in real time and I cringed whenever Gore let another sigh rip. This was not a concept introduced into the collective consciousness by the Borg media. Truth is, Gore was being a prick on TV, with a large segment of the population watching. This doesn't mean that Gore didn't have a right to be annoyed with then-candidate Bush's dishonest "fuzzy math" rhetoric (all recounted by Somerby in his post). Nor does it mean that Somerby isn't right to be annoyed that elections are often popularity contests decided by both the media and the voters on the basis of stupid things like sighs and eye rolls. But, it was bad politics on Gore's part and he should have known it. Bill Clinton would never have made such a mistake.

Don't get me wrong. As a general rule, Somerby does an excellent job of attacking the media's eagerness to swallow RNC talking points whole. (I visit his incomparable archives whenever canards like Gore's "inventing the Internet" or "discovering Love Canal" again rear their ugly heads.) He can criticize reporters for being gullible, but he shouldn't be so blinded by his own rhetoric that he cries fowl when those same reporters make valid points.

But Sudan's director of the national authority for communications, Al-Tayyib Mustafa, called the entrance of the Rwanda troops a "provocative act" and said the Rwandans may be carrying AIDS.

Baby burnt in Darfur bombing raid, December, 2003

… (Bush) harshly criticized Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and said the senator from Massachusetts took a "blame America" approach to terrorism.

"He says that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts," Bush said, adding: "It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back."

Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

"Falsely believing that Iraq had a supply of weapons of mass destruction has resulted in a dramatic loss of U.S. credibility, as anti-Americanism spreads around the world. Al Qaeda recruitment, sadly, has been dramatically increased."

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), speech on the House floor, March 17, 2004


"In the process of winning the (Iraq) war, we'll provide Al Qaeda with propaganda footage sufficient to recruit the next generation of jihadis."

Gene Healy, Cato Institute, Jan. 1, 2003


"... you have a few things you need to do (in Iraq). One is, of course, to develop very good intelligence on who the guerrillas are inside this sea of civilian population in which they're hiding. Secondly, you have to make sure you don't make it easy for the guerrillas to recruit more sympathetic people to their cause."

Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, speaking on CNN, June 27, 2003


"... our strategy for now seems to be entirely focused on the 'supply side' of terrorism. One certainly must confront the merchants of death, who exploit hopelessness for their own ends, and who hijack causes in which they may not even believe. But this does not change the fact that there is a 'demand side' to terrorism which enables terror groups to recruit more members, raise more funds, and appeal to public opinion. "

Shibley Telhami, professor at Univ. of Maryland, Feb. 17, 2002

... Journalists and relief organizations have thrown around the term genocide to overcome that ingrained Western apathy, even though the conflict is both more complex and more basic than that trigger word suggests. Conflicts in the remote wastelands of the Sudan-Chad frontier region center more often on land and water than on religion or race.

... an alert reader in Minneapolis named Dan Israel (asked me): Didn't Darfur refugees deserve protection as much as the Kurds and others I championed in the past?

"Yes" is the simple answer, Dan.

But historical and strategic circumstances argue against the United States leading a humanitarian military intervention in Sudan. Successive administrations took on grave moral responsibility in Iraq by supporting and then betraying the Kurds in their struggle against Saddam Hussein, then supporting that dictator against Iran before going to war against him in 1991 ...

Sudan possesses neither that history nor the strategic position of Iraq in regional politics and conflict. The United States should be ready to play a supporting role in Darfur by helping African Union troops and leaders protect the dispossessed and endangered there.

... there aren't enough excellent teachers. Teaching pays poorly compared to other professions that require a similar level of educational attainment. And many intelligent young people who might otherwise go into teaching in spite of the low pay are put off by the mind-numbing credentialing process.

Indeed, teaching disproportionately draws those with lesser prospects, who often haven't done particularly well in school themselves .... Far too few of my classmates at Cal State-Los Angeles, California's largest teacher factory, fit the mold of great educators. They had no great passion to teach ... But faced with a grim job market, they knew what every college graduate knows: They could always teach.

It's a disservice to children, and to the dedicated teachers who comprise most of the profession, that shortages force us to bring in folks who aren't up to the job or don't really want it in the first place.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that only a small number of the outstanding teachers who do enter the profession wind up at the worst schools. Thanks in part to uneven pay scales and a seniority system that allows tenured educators to pick their schools, the best teachers often start at -- or move to -- schools dominated by wealthier kids.

The toughest schools, as you'd expect, too often get stuck with the worst teachers -- those who view their jobs as little more than babysitting .... even the worst schools have teachers who are brilliant, inspired, and effective. But our system does little to support such educators in those settings so they'll stay. This is why Kerry's plan to use pay incentives to encourage good teachers to stay in failing schools takes on precisely the right issue.

The plan also has the potential to fill perhaps the most gaping hole in Bush's No Child Left Behind Act .... turning around thousands of failing schools.

And [Kerry's] plan ought to resonate with a lot of (low-income) parents like Lillian Lopez, who know from experience that better teachers are the key to truly improving schools.

President Bush has gone "under the radar" and around the Congress to spread his faith-based initiative throughout the federal government, according to a new study released Monday.

The study, compiled by researchers at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., is one of the first comprehensive looks at the Bush administration's efforts to redirect government grants to churches and other faith-based groups.

. . .

Taken together, the report finds that the Bush programs "mark a major shift in the constitutional separation of church and state."

"Few if any presidents in recent history have reached as deeply into or as broadly across the government to implement a presidential initiative administratively,'' said institute director Richard Nathan.

It was the first lawsuit challenging extended military service following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

... The soldier's complaint comes as the Army struggles to find fresh units to serve in Iraq. Almost every combat unit has faced or will face duty there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the Iraq region. The Army says its stop-loss program is necessary for a cohesive military with seasoned personnel, although it has been criticized as contrary to the concept of an all-volunteer military force.

The soldier's attorneys did not release his name, age or hometown to protect his family's privacy. "It's not that John Doe is a coward by any means," said the sergeant's San Francisco attorney, Michael Sorgen. He said his client, who was also ordered to stay in Iraq last year beyond his enlisted commitment, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, and his deployment has been put on hold. According to the lawsuit, the soldier has more than a decade of service with the Marines, including combat in Iraq and Somalia.

Last year, after returning from Iraq, [John Doe] agreed to resign with a one-year commitment to the National Guard. But he recently was notified that his service had been extended by as much as two years, and that he could soon be heading to Iraq for another combat tour .... Sorgen said the soldier could be involuntarily retained in the military during a time of war or national emergency, but "Congress has not declared war or a national emergency."

The lawsuit notes the Sept. 11 commission's report said there was no "collaborative operational relationship" between terrorists and Iraq plotting attacks against the United States.

Lt. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman, said stop-loss is vital for a strong military. "When soldiers consider serving next to one that they've known, they know the person's strengths," she said. "It's much safer and comforting to know you are serving a war with someone you can count on."

A Louisiana judge who appeared at a Halloween party in shackles, an afro wig and blackface makeup last year should be suspended for a year without pay, a state commission said Tuesday. The recommendation by the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana goes to the state Supreme Court, which will make the final decision on the punishment for Timothy Ellender, a state district judge in Terrebonne Parish, southwest of New Orleans.

"Judge Ellender's integrity and his ability to be fair and impartial towards African-Americans who appear before his court as defendants in criminal and other proceedings will be forever in doubt," the commission said.

The commission said Ellender made it clear in testimony "that he will take great care not to exhibit racial bias or to promote racial stereotypes in the future."

Ellender, who is white, was not immediately available for comment when The Associated Press called his office. The judge showed up at the party last Halloween accompanied by his wife, who was dressed as a police officer.

Of course, it's quite possible that both costumes were her idea.

"John Kerry on Tuesday condemned a television ad that criticizes President Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, even as prominent veterans linked to the Democratic presidential campaign echoed the commercial's accusations."
...
The White House has declined to denounce [the ad that attacks Kerry's military service.]

During breakfast we meet the (Sudanese) commissioner from Zalingei, who is very concerned that the international community only focuses on the [Darfur refugees] and forgets about the development of the country as a whole.

The commissioner is afraid that if we "spoil" the [refugees] with schools, clinics, water and food they will have no reason to return to their villages. Unicef is in Sudan to support all vulnerable women and children, regardless of ethnic background, colour and religion. The issue of reconstruction, rehabilitation and repatriation, I reassure him, will definitively be taken into account.

The rest of they day I spend in the hospital in Zalingei where I see many ill and malnourished children and have a long talk with a woman with four gunshot wounds. .... We then left for Nertiti, where we had planned to stay. Some 25,000 [refugees] stay here and we wanted to see the team that runs the newly opened clinic. But unfortunately our pass only indicated clearance to travel from Zalingei to Nyala and not our stop-over in Nertiti.

Without permission from the government we are not allowed to stop. The authorities in Nertiti understand that a mistake has been made, but only allow us to stay for 10 minutes.

Berger Cleared of Withholding Material from 9/11 Commission

Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

... Daniel Marcus, general counsel of the 9/11 Commission, said the panel had been assured twice by the Justice Department that no originals were missing and that all of the material Mr. Berger had access to had been turned over to the commission. "We are told that the Justice Department is satisfied that we've seen everything that the archives saw," and "nothing was missing," he said.

We now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Is Bush suggesting that despite this knowledge he would still have concluded that Iraq constituted a "grave and gathering threat" that required an immediate, preventive war? Please. Even if Bush had come to this strange conclusion, no one would have listened to him. Without the threat of those weapons, there would have been no case to make to the American people or to world nations.

There were good reasons to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, but it was the threat of those weapons that created the international, legal, strategic and urgent rationale for a war.

... Bush's position is that if Kerry agrees with him that Hussein was a problem, then Kerry agrees with his Iraq policy. Doing something about Iraq meant doing what Bush did. But is that true?

Did the United States have to go to war before the weapons inspectors had finished their job? Did it have to junk the U.N. process? Did it have to invade with insufficient troops to provide order and stability in Iraq? Did it have to occupy a foreign country with no cover of legitimacy from the world community? Did it have to ignore the State Department's postwar planning? Did it have to pack the Iraqi Governing Council with unpopular exiles, disband the army and engage in radical de-Baathification? Did it have to spend a fraction of the money allocated for Iraqi reconstruction -- and have that be mired in charges of corruption and favoritism?

Was all this an inevitable consequence of dealing with the problem of Saddam Hussein?

When an American icon passes away, the last thing a political campaign ought to be doing is using the beloved icon's signature line in a deragatory fashion to insult a political opponent.

... No such grace from the Bush campaign, though, which on Friday took the late, great Julia Child's signature sign-off "Bon appetit!" and used it to mock Sen. John Kerry on the very day of her death ... Adding insult to injury, they also spelled it wrong.

Wrote the Bushies in a sarcastic Friday e-mail cataloging Kerry's daily activities:

Friday, July 30: After leaving Boston, everyman John Kerry stopped in a Wendy's for a much publicized bowl of chili and a Frosty. Interestingly, this caloric juggernaut didn't seem to suppress his appetite. Why else would he have a boxed lunch of shrimp vindaloo prepared by a local yacht club waiting for him back on the campaign bus?....

Monday, August 2: Working to dispel the notion that he is an urbane foodie, Kerry states during a Wisconsin visit that he'd be in trouble if he didn't "find some baby backs over there at Speed Queen Bar-B-Q and a double dip vanilla at Leon's." True to form, Kerry skipped both eateries and chose instead to dine on filet mignon and asparagus at a lakeside restaurant. Bon appetite!

... several of [Kerry's] allies attacked the plan vigorously. The Democratic National Committee organized a conference call with retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's former supreme allied commander, who said the plan "will significantly undermine U.S. national security."

"As we face a global war on terror with al Qaeda active in more than 60 countries, now is not the time to pull back our forces," Clark said.

... (Holbrooke) accused Bush of trying to deflect attention from the strain on the military by prolonged deployments in Iraq. He criticized Bush for slipping a "historic announcement" into essentially a campaign speech.

"It's not good diplomacy," said Holbrooke ... "It's a mistake, driven by the fact that we're stretched too thin in Iraq and the presidential election."

The cabinet also praised the "great efforts of the Sudanese government to contain the crisis in Darfur and its persistent effort to reinstall stability."

It also hailed Khartoum's "cooperation with various parties and humanitarian organisations in dealing with the crisis," the (official Riyadh) statement said.

The Rwandan government deserves praise for deploying troops to Darfur and pledging to protect civilians. Now the international community should increase pressure on Sudan to accept peacekeepers with a mandate for protecting civilians, and it should provide the support that’s urgently needed for this mission.

The U.S., to its credit, is taking a more proactive stand than much of the world. It prodded the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution giving the Sudanese government until Aug. 30 to disarm the Janjaweed, stop hampering aid agencies and start credibly protecting the victims.

But those good intentions have only created a breathing space for the Sudanese government to find ways to pretend to comply. It's handing out police uniforms to disguise many of the Janjaweed members, for example. Plus Sudan's leaders have reason to believe the "measures" the U.N. is threatening won't mean much.

Security Council members China and France are likely to oppose oil sanctions because of involvement in Sudan's oil production worth up to $1 billion a year. Russia wants to keep selling Sudan fighter planes. The Europeans have even refused to label the killing "genocide," which would trigger convention obligations.

Meanwhile, 1,000 victims are dying each day, many of starvation and disease. And the atrocities continue.

"Secondly, the tactics of our—as you know, we don't have relationships with Iran. I mean, that's—ever since the late '70s, we have no contacts with them, and we've totally sanctioned them. In other words, there's no sanctions—you can't—we're out of sanctions."

President Bush, speaking in Annandale, Va., Aug. 9, 2004

Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we thought we would find, Saddam Hussein had the capability to make weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on to our enemy, to the terrorists. It is not a risk, after September the 11th, that we could afford to take.

Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action. America and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell.

Some say the (Iraq) war was justified even if WMDs are not found nor their destruction explained, because the world is “better off” without Saddam. Of course it is better off. But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny -- on to Burma? -- it is unacceptable to argue that Saddam's mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications for pre-emptive war.

"[Kerry's] wife says she's an African American. While technically true, I don't believe a white woman, raised in Africa, surrounded by servants, qualifies."

"I have a long history of involvement with and support of the black community. For 21 years I have gone to an all-black church. They finally elected me over other black people to their church board. I'm one of them. I don't know what it has to do with health savings accounts."

While Rwanda President Paul Kagame has said his country's troops would use force if necessary to protect civilians in danger, Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail made clear that such action would not be acceptable.

So far, not a single black and African leader has visited any part of the western Sudan where those disguised as Arab militias, but who in fact are sponsored and financed by the Khartoum government, have been spreading mayhem. Neither has an African reporter from any of the African news organisations, shown sufficient interest to visit the Darfur region in western Sudan.

While leaders represented in the African Union have been doing what they know best how to do -- that is chatter away and prattle seemingly without end, others outside African have been taking relevant and concrete action.

The secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has visited the Darfur region ... At about the same period, US secretary of state, Mr. Colin Powell, had visited some refugee camps in the western Sudan ... The visit to the Darfur region by the US Secretary of State is turning out to be very useful.

To those people at the northern tip of the African continent, their claim to Arab nationality is more real to them than any nebulous connection with black Africa.

... What the so-called civil war in the Sudan is about is that the so-called Arabs in the north of the Sudan, have no wish to live in peace and harmony with the black people in the south of the country and who do not claim to be Arabs.

Most of the people in the Darfur region of western Sudan are Moslems. But that has not helped their situation. The fact is that racially they are black and racial difference is at the bottom of the civil conflict in the Sudan.

The children of Darfur have seen awful things: burning, looting, rape and death. They have been the targets of violence as well. Aid workers say that sex has been forced on girls as young as 8. Other children have been shot or otherwise brutalized ... Take the case of Mubarak, who had been a typical 15-year-old in this part of the world, which meant he worked the fields with his father during the planting and harvesting seasons but ran off with his friends whenever he could.

... Playing is the furthest thing from his mind these days, says Mubarak, who looks young but speaks of things that make him seem far more like a man than a boy.

Mubarak's village, Kudum, a tiny place with 200 families in southern Darfur, was overrun last August by members of these militias, called Janjaweed. Mubarak recalls the chaos as the men, on horses and camels and shooting in the air, moved in fast, and he and his family and the other villagers ran for their lives. Behind him, he says, he remembers fire.

Mubarak's father and mother and his four siblings took refuge in a wooded area nearby. But when his father left to scout out their escape route, the Janjaweed reappeared.

... in a throwback to McCarthyism, the Bush-Cheney campaign is threatening to warp gay nuptials into weaponry for drawing Democratic blood. This strategy brings to life the story of a little-known U.S. senator from Wyoming named Lester Hunt. His death 50 years ago speaks volumes about the sadism that lurks beneath appeals to family values.

Hunt, a Democrat elected in 1948, faced a tough fight to keep his seat in 1954. Republicans held only a one-vote majority in the Senate and saw the incumbent as a prime target. So avid were top GOP strategists to oust him that they fastened onto the arrest of his son. "Arrested, soliciting as a queer," noted New Hampshire Sen. Styles Bridges, chair of the GOP campaign committee, when informed of the arrest by inside sources at the Morals Division of the D.C.
police.

Bridges and another Senate colleague pressured police to bind the younger Hunt over for a fast-track trial, threatening to lambaste police as obstructionists if they refused. What followed, according to historian Rick Ewig, was a fervent effort to shame the elder Hunt into resigning from the Senate and withdrawing from the race.

Like today’s far-right fringe, these demagogues were mimicking a politics of fear they had seen a peer use to win office and attract a national following. Indeed, the attempt to oust Hunt was fueled by his criticism of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the loudest-roaring right-wing lion of his day. "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it often enough, someone is bound to believe it," Hunt told the
Wyoming Eagle in 1952 in reference to McCarthy.

Hunt’s son was found guilty and paid a small fine. And Hunt himself at first appeared to bow to the GOP bullying, citing his own health as reason for leaving the race. But his resistance to vacating the seat stiffened amid counsel from friend and fellow Wyoming Democrat Sen. Joseph O’Mahoney.

In June 1954, just as a lazy summer was beginning in the capital, Hunt put an end to the jockeying. He took a shotgun under his coat to his Senate office and killed himself, leaving a letter to his son denying any tie between the arrest and the suicide and another letter asking a friend to help get his son a job.