ON BARBARA LEE - AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  One of the things that has outraged me most about the mainstream media is its refusal to correctly identify domestic Marxists.  If you are on the right in American politics, every detail of your past will be examined.  If you are on the left, much is kept vague.  Some "journalists" argue that they don't want to be guilty of "McCarthyism," as if correctly identifying a Marxist as a Marxist is McCarthyism. 

This journalistic disease began during the Vietnam War, when some members of old red groups protesting the war were identified simply as "anti-war activists."  They weren't.  Most were on the other side.  If you dared to say anything, the McCarthyism card was played. 

A few days ago we reported on the trip to Cuba by members of the Congressional Black Caucus.  (Indeed, these patriotic gems won our Pompous Fool Award at the Angel's Corner this week.)  The head of the CBC is Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California, the most left-leaning member of Congress, and the only member to vote against military action after the 9-11 attacks. 

You might be interested in background information on Barbara Lee, and the Washington Times has provided it:

Declassified documents from the National Archives, posted to J. Michael Waller's PoliticalWarfare.org blog, reveal that Ms. Lee has been promoting the cause of Caribbean communism since the early 1980s. According to Mr. Waller, Ms. Lee “provided counterintelligence support to the regime in Grenada in 1980, tipping off the Cuban-backed government to a possible anti-communist spy in the office of Marxist-Leninist Premier Maurice Bishop.” A memo, captured in 1983 after the United States liberated the island from the communist New Jewel Movement, notes that Ms. Lee, then working on the staff of Rep. Ron Dellums, California Democrat, tipped off Grenada's ambassador to the Organization of American States about suspicious counterrevolutionary mailings Mr. Dellums' office had received, postmarked from Grenada.

Ms. Lee, along with Mr. Dellums' Chief of Staff Carlottia Scott, whom Mr. Waller says “was widely rumored to have been romantically involved with [Grenada's communist leader] Bishop,” worked tirelessly to promote the New Jewel agenda in Congress. At every step, they actively opposed the Reagan administration's anti-communist strategy. A 1982 letter from Ms. Scott to Mr. Bishop, typed on House of Representatives letterhead and opening “My Dearest,” details their work for the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on military construction, which Mr. Dellums chaired...

...Decades later, Ms. Lee, now representing Mr. Dellums' district, is still fighting for the same cause she was defending at the height of the Cold War. Sadly, this cause is Marxist totalitarianism in the Western Hemisphere. That's what we call antiquated thinking.

COMMENT:  Nice, huh?  Have you been given that material by any TV network, by any other news organization?  Why not?  Because the automatic exemption given to leftists is in play.  It is a journalistic scandal.

Another scandal is the painful historic fact that the civil rights movement has always had a destructive relationship with American communism.  Robert Kennedy warned Dr. King about that, and King understood.  King began separating himself from some of the more extreme elements.  But King was murdered, and the separation stopped.  The Barbara Lees come from that tradition.   Many of America's labor leaders worked to drive the reds out of the labor movement.  Tragically, that same commitment was never made in the civil rights movement. 

April 10, 2009