<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Mark Udall lost his seat on Tuesday to a smiling, well-camouflaged ball of nuts named Cory Gardner, who already has demonstrated his affection for compromise and reasoned debate by declaring himself to be &amp;quot;the tip of the spear.&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;Oh, Cory. You are so...rugged!&amp;quot;) This was a particularly unpleasant result for me for a number of reasons, the primary one being that, nearly 40 years ago, I was standing outside of the old Allis Chalmers plant in Milwaukee as a February dawn congealed over Lake Michigan, trying to get Mark Udall&amp;#039;s father elected president. By any reasonable measure, Mark Udall upheld as a senator the same level of honor and decency in public service that his father had brought to it. One way he did that was to be one of the loudest and most stubborn voices in Congress on behalf of representative self-government against the malignant power of the deep state, an issue that too many of his colleagues --and, I would argue, the president of the United States and his administration -- were tragically loath to touch. Specifically, Udall agitated relentlessly for the release of the CIA report on how the previous administration committed itself to a wide-ranging program of torturing people, reversing two centuries of American policy, shredding this country&amp;#039;s moral authority, and turning the United States government into a stench in the nostrils of the world. In April of 2013, for example, Udall pointedly celebrated the 25th anniversary of Ronald Reagan&amp;#039;s signing of the International Convention Against Torture treaty by calling on the administration to release the report, both to demonstrate to the American people what was done in their name, and also to submarine the efforts of the former members of the Avignon Presidency, who were running around saying how sorry they were that they had to become barbarians in order to keep the country safe. Last March, he wrote a letter to the White House, hinting that the CIA had taken &amp;quot;unprecedented action&amp;quot; against the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (Speaking of the SSCI, with the results of Tuesday&amp;#039;s elections, its new chairman probably will be Richard Burr of North Carolina, often described as the CIA&amp;#039;s best friend in the Congress. Burr loves him some euphemized torture, but would rather we not bother the children with all those silly details. Some people think outgoing chairman Dianne Feinstein will do something to make sure that Burr doesn&amp;#039;t bury the entire report forever. I&amp;#039;m less optimistic, and I don&amp;#039;t think releasing an &amp;quot;executive summary&amp;quot; with so many black streaks through it that it looks like Turn 4 at Daytona is going to cut it, either. But in any case, thanks a lot, America!) There&amp;#039;s little question that Udall believes that the report should be shared with the people on whose behalf the torturers and their enablers did their work, and from whose tax dollars the torturers and their enablers drew their salaries. Now that Udall already has lost his bid for re-election, an interesting proposal popped up in the Guardian It was suggested that Udall use his lame-duck status to read into the Congressional Record the entire report, without redaction. There seems little question that he could do it without being penalized or prosecuted. Members of Congress have a constitutional guarantee of immunity concerning whatever they say on the floor of the House or the Senate. The precedent cited is Mike Gravel&amp;#039;s heroic attempt to read the entire texts of the Pentagon Papers on the floor of the Senate in 1972. Gravel eventually collapsed from exhaustion, but he got the entire collection of documents into the record. Prior to that, however, a federal grand jury subpoenaed one of Gravel&amp;#039;s aides to testify as to his role in obtaining the archive for Gravel. Gravel fought the subpoena and, in 1971, the Supreme Court ruled that the subpoena violated the Constitution&amp;#039;s free speech and debate clause, and also ruled that the clause protected the work of aides and of staffers because, as the Court said, those aides functioned as the legislator&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;alter egos.&amp;quot; So Udall and his staff are covered, legally at least. I&amp;#039;d like to see him do this. I understand completely why he probably won&amp;#039;t. Who would have the guy&amp;#039;s back? When Gravel did what he did, he had the support of a vast antiwar community, and of a substantial portion of the Democratic party. For example, old Sam Ervin filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on Gravel&amp;#039;s behalf. Can you imagine Feinstein doing the same thing? Or any of the other shellshocked Democrats who are staggering around in the wake of what happened on Tuesday? The administration would hide in a closet, if it did not actively oppose him. The Republicans would go utterly mad. (And, yes, I believe this would include brogressive superstar Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky, too. He&amp;#039;d sit it out, at the very least. He wants to be president and there are no Republican primary votes to be had here.) The professional anti-Snowden crowd would be at best lukewarm, probably because Glenn Greenwald is a big dweeb. And as for the folks on the left who proclaim themselves as pure as the driven Snowden, check out the comments on that Guardian column. Udall&amp;#039;s already condemned for not having done yet what the column suggests that he do now. And the country would be sold a bill of goods on how Udall had made it less safe which, judging by the people it elected the other night, it would buy completely. Tuesday was a very good day for America&amp;#039;s spies, and the people who love them. I wish Mark Udall would do what the Guardian suggests, but I do not propose he martyr himself in the process. It is long past time for the country to know the horrors perpetrated in its name, and the people who committed them on the country&amp;#039;s dime. It is long past time to show the American fingerprints on the Egyptian electrodes, and for the blood in the Polish jail cells to seep across the Atlantic. I also wish the country was mature enough, and sure enough of its fundamental values, to cope with the knowledge and to use it in order to inform its politics going forward as regards the &amp;quot;war&amp;quot; on terror. I wish it still had some self-respect. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30703/mark-udall-and-his-choice/>