Remember the Red scare of the 1950s, when Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wisc., was claiming he had a list of known Communists working for the U.S. State Department and other branches of government?

He never did produce that list, and he was later censured by the Senate for his conduct, but not before a lot of innocent people's careers were ruined.

Now comes conservative Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., who told a Birmingham newspaper last week he has a list of 17 Socialists who are members of Congress.

Asked to name who was on said list, he could only come up with one person, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who intellectually may be an unabashed socialist but in reality is a very liberal independent who usually votes with the Democrats.

Sanders, in remarks published by the Politico Web site, is not amused with Bachus' antics.

“Has Spencer released his list yet? Everybody’s waiting with bated breath,” Sanders said. “I think at the very least he has to tell people what his definition of socialism is — and I think, yeah, he should tell us who he was referring to, who’s on the list." he added. For a full look at the Politico piece, click HERE.

It's not the first time that Sanders has been attacked for his socialist leanings, and it probably won't be the last. When he was closing in on defeating then-Rep. Peter Smith, R-Vt., in 1990, Smith tried to hit him with a similar smear, and tumbled to a 16 percentage point defeat.

-- Sam Hemingway