REMEMBERING THE NEW DEAL WITCH HUNT:

Watergate has become the default historical template for the Obama scandals, as charges about enemies lists, executive-agency politicization, and high-handed federal snooping dominate the discussion. But those hunting for historical analogies would do well to consider the even closer parallels between these events and occurrences during the New Deal and Fair Deal.

Franklin D. Roosevelt routinely audited the income taxes of such critics as Representative Hamilton Fish, a Republican who represented the president’s hometown of Hyde Park, N.Y. Democrats of that era not only found creative ways to intimidate conservative and libertarian organizations, but also, like their modern counterparts, eventually attracted charges of witch-hunting.

The modern Tea Party, however, has yet to find a more effective symbol of defiance than Edward A. Rumely. Though he is largely forgotten today, the publisher’s appearance in June 1950 before a special House committee to investigate lobbying was a defining moment.

When Rumely showed up to testify, nobody was quite sure what he would say. For the most part, he answered the committee’s questions, but he stood his ground on one issue: He refused to name the Americans who had purchased a book critical of the New Deal. Pointing to the First Amendment, he asserted that the committee had “no power to go into a newspaper publisher and say, ‘Give me your subscription list.’ And you have no power to come to us.” If the House wanted to cite him for contempt, then he promised to give it “an education on the Bill of Rights.” Chairman Frank Buchanan warned that the unfriendly witness risked a contempt resolution, and vowed not to “divert this hearing into an argument over constitutional rights.” . . .

Rumely had the last laugh in his legal case. In 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned the contempt-of-Congress resolution. In a concurring opinion, the Court’s most liberal members, William O. Douglas and Hugo Black, endorsed Rumely’s free-speech and privacy rights in no uncertain terms. They described the Buchanan committee’s demands as “the beginning of surveillance of the press.”

Somebody should write a book on this kind of thing.

UPDATE: Response? Tea Partiers should visit the homes of government officials and leave copies of the Constitution.