Word: birching
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reason for the outcry was ethnic. Negroes, Puerto Ricans and other minority groups generally approved of Garelik's promotion, though as the first Jew in memory to become chief inspector, he lacked the Hibernian seal of approval from the top-cop echelon. Another related controversy concerned the John Birch Society. At his first press conference, Leary said that policemen could be Birchers if membership did not conflict with their duties. This horrified the liberal Lindsay, whereupon Leary proclaimed that he was "repelled and nauseated" by Birch dogma and would forbid police membership in the society...
...Grand Old Party," leaves little doubt about the Young Republicans' attitude toward the Party's racist component. Calling for Republicans to uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the report demands expulsion of members of the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society from the G.O.P. "If it was necessary to become `respectable' after Reconstruction by expelling Negroes from the party," the report says, "it is imperative that today's `respectability' involve the rejection of right-wing fanatics and night-riding bigots...
...collects Western relics, including the stagecoach that may have carried President Polk to his inauguration. In July 1963 he learned that the New Mexico Press Association had held a dinner in honor of defeated' California Congressman John Rousselot, who is presently the public relations director of the John Birch Society. McGaw suddenly got excited about current events...
McGaw filed suit in federal court, asking for $1,800,000 from the Birch Society; in state court, he demanded the same sum from Webster. Once the Birch Society won a court order protecting the secrecy of its membership lists, McGaw was unable to prove that Webster was the society's legal agent, and he was forced to withdraw his federal suit. When that happened, the Birch Society, which had filed a countersuit against McGaw, also called off its lawyers. Had the Birch Society gone into court as a plaintiff, it would have faced the difficult task of proving...
...Report that Backfired. In state court, where he sued Webster instead of the Birch Society, the angry editor fared better. The defense tried the classic libel defense of truth. McGaw's editorial, the lawyers said, followed the Communist line, just as Webster had charged. Appearing as a star witness, Far-Right Commentator Dan Smoot agreed that the editorial was Communist lining, and the same point was made in a deposition from Martin Dies, onetime chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee. But then the defense quoted some words of praise for the John Birch Society from a California...