Senator Dodd’s Speech at the U.S. Senate

Suggested reading, just so you can keep everything in proper perspective:

But when you’re through, the facts will still be waiting for you. Controlled death. Outsourced torture. Secret prisons. Month-long sleep deprivations. The president’s personal power to hold whomever he likes for as long as he’d like. It is as if we woke up in the middle of some Kafka-esque nightmare.

Have I gone wildly off-topic, Mr. President? Have I brought up a dozen unrelated issues?

I wish I had, Mr. President. I wish that none of these stories were true.

But, we are deceiving ourselves when we talk about the U.S. attorneys issue, the habeas issue, the torture issue, the rendition issue, or the secrecy issue as if each were an isolated case! As if each one were an accident! When we speak of them as isolated, we are keeping our politics cripplingly small; and as long as we keep this small, the rule of men is winning.

There is only one issue here. Only one: the law issue.

Does the president serve the law, or does the law serve the president? Each insult to our Constitution comes from the same source; each springs from the same mindset; and if we attack this contempt for the law at any point, we will wound it at all points. Senator Dodd Speaks Out