As I Recall From My History Lessons Sen. Joe McCarthy Was Censure By The Senate...

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1. Noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizer

inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.

The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. . .

he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department.[4] McCarthy was never able to prove his sensational charge.

In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the United States Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or homosexuality to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

You decide.

Not as widely known as McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade, were his various attempts to intimidate, and expel from government positions, persons whom he accused, or threatened to publicly accuse, of homosexuality. Former U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson has written: "The so-called 'Red Scare' has been the main focus of most historians of that period of time. A lesser-known element…and one that harmed far more people was the witch-hunt McCarthy and others conducted against homosexuals."[6] This anti-homosexual witch-hunt McCarthy and others waged along with their "Red Scare" tactics, has been referred to by some as the "Lavender Scare".[7]

With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the death of Senator Lester Hunt of Wyoming by suicide that same year,[8] McCarthy's support and popularity faded. And, on December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion.