Barry Lynn is the top guy at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a cartoonish presence on talking head television, ever-ready to declare the imminent threat of theocracy in the land. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that the organization Lynn leads last week leveled a series of very serious charges against almost everyone at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The report, available here in PDF, is among the worst examples of McCarthyism since Joe McCarthy stood up on February 9, 1950, and declared that “I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”

Lynn and his gang of wreckers are not rooting out Reds, of course, but something far more dangerous in their eyes: evangelical Christians, from the Commandant of Cadets General Johnny Weida to the head football coach Fisher DeBerry to Air Force “Chaplain of the Year” Major Warren Watties.