To normal Americans, Senator Rand Paul is a taxpayer hero.   But an amazing editorial in the New York Times by Rachael Bedard, a geriatrician, accuses Rand Paul of McCarthyism for his take-down of Fauci:

Senate hearings are always theatrical. Even still, Wednesday morning’s Senate committee hearing to interrogate Dr. Anthony Fauci on, among other things, the origins of Covid-19 was a shocking performance: Dr. Fauci barely spoke, while everyone else spent some three hours projecting their emotions onto him.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee chair, has cast himself as a contemporary Joe McCarthy intent on ferreting out the truth about one man’s supposed crimes against his country. The Covid lockdown “could never have been inflicted without you aiding and abetting the crime,” he said to Dr. Fauci during his opening statement. And “you have for years avoided responsibility.” …

On the advice of his lawyers, the 85-year-old Dr. Fauci made the extraordinary choice during Wednesday’s hearing to plead the Fifth Amendment. As Republican senators peppered him with often hostile questions, he repeated over and over again that he respectfully declined to answer.

By doing so, Dr. Fauci became the speechless cipher to whom committee Republicans and Democrats argued their irreconcilable stories  –  about the pandemic, but also more broadly about science and public health in America. The effect was a useless drama that offered zero insights to a public desperate for them.