Chris Dodd for President

On Monday Senator Dodd called for the closure of the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and asked all presidential candidates to support an up-or-down vote on the Restoring the Constitution Act. Senator Dodd was the first person to co-sponsor Senator Dianne Feinstein's bill to close Gitmo, S. 1249. We're happy to see that following Senator Dodd's call for leadership from his presidential colleagues, Senator Clinton added her name as a co-sponsor to Feinstein's bill. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said "the military cannot seize and imprison civilians -- let alone imprison them indefinitely" has gotten a great deal of attention online. Glenn Greenwald writes:

No matter how many times one thinks about it, reads or writes about it, it never ceases to amaze -- literally -- that our government has asserted the power to imprison people, including those on U.S. soil, and keep them locked up for years and years, indefinitely, without so much as charging them with any crime or even allowing them access to lawyers. And that is to say nothing of what is done to them while being held completely incommunicado. That was just a line that one thought the American Government could not cross without enormous backlash. Yet our government has done exactly that for years -- and has spawned a set of presidential candidates vowing to continue doing so at least as aggressively, if not more so -- without much protest at all.

Constitutional scholar Marty Lederman has put forth a number of salient posts about the meaning of the al-Marri decision and the Fourth Circuit's argument that the Bush administration dangerously overreached in its detention, charging, and denial of habeas corpus. Read Lederman's analysis here and here. What all of this speaks to is the need for leadership to restore the Constitution today. The Military Commissions Act is one prominent place where the Bush administration has undermined rule of law and America's standing in the world. But for us to rehabilitate our moral authority and make us more secure, we need to start addressing these issues today. As McJoan of DailyKos said last week, "There really is no greater cause for the rule of law, for our liberty, for the basis of our very government." We need to close Guantanamo Bay's prisons. We need to restore habeas corpus. We need to gut the Military Commissions Act. And most of all, we need those who would wish to lead us in 2009 to step up today and stand with conviction for these critical changes. Senator Dodd is ready to lead - hopefully his colleagues will follow.