Joseph McCarthy
Born in Wisconsin in 1908, Joseph McCarthy became an attorney and judge, and eventually a Republican senator from Wisconsin.  He became nationally-known in 1950 when he made a speech saying that communists had infested the State Department, and he had their names on the piece of paper in his hand.  A Senate committee later found his charges baseless.  But that did not stop him.  He mounted an anti-communist crusade that relied not on facts, but on slander, hearsay and the tarnishing of reputations.  In 1954 people around the country saw him in action when his hearings were televised.  He was publicly discredited soon after, and died in 1957 of complications due to alcoholism.
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