Joseph McCarthy, that is. As I was helpfully reminded by the Times’ “On This Day” feature, June 9th 1954 was the day U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch asked that fateful question of the chair of the Un-American Activities Committee: “Sir, have you no sense of decency?”

All of which was wonderfully chronicled by Murray Kempton, one of my favorite World War II vets — who went on to cover the beginnings of the civil rights movement and was a signatory to the ad placed by the American Veterans Committee in December 1965, as the Vietnam War was revving up. I just wish he’d asked that question of LBJ.