A white sheet covered an object at the front of the courtroom in Nuremberg. On cue from the prosecutor, Thomas J. Dodd, a guard lifted the sheet and revealed a shrunken human head. The Nazis, Dodd told the shocked courtroom, had created this ornament. They had hanged a Polish man for fraternizing with a German woman, removed his skull and shrunk, stuffed and preserved his head.
It was December 1945. Adolf Hitler's regime had killed millions of innocents. The Nuremberg trials convened in the rubble of Hitler's defeat. Their purpose was to impose the order of civilized society on the chaos of war, to show that the Nazis had not just waged war but also committed crimes. Using a single stolen life, Dodd's dramatic gesture crystallized the issues before the court.
Dodd's son, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, is running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Often on the campaign trail he brings up his late father's service as the No. 2 American prosecutor at Nuremberg. . . .
chris dodd
Four Democratic presidential candidates are now confirmed to participate in the first-ever televised debate about LGBT issues, sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign HRC and Logo. Senators Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, and Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards will attend the event, to be held August 9 in Los Angeles. But one candidate, former senator Mike Gravel, was not invited to the debate because he didn't meet the fund-raising threshold for participants.
“The precondition we set before those forums could be confirmed was that two out of the three leading candidates would have to confirm their attendance,” Luna said. On the Republican side, Mitt Romney declined the invitation, and Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain never responded, so the GOP forum never got off the ground. . . .
After following the coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, you could not be faulted for concluding that the race is about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the remaining baker's dozen of declared candidates. You could not be faulted, but you would be wrong.
In spite of the worst efforts of those of us with press passes, political campaigns — most especially presidential campaigns — are not about the candidates. Presidential campaigns are really about the voters, the country and the future.
One candidate who understands that fundamental truth about politics is the talented senior U.S. senator from Connecticut and declared Democratic presidential candidate, Chris Dodd. After last week's Washington meeting of the firefighters' union, where 11 presidential candidates appeared and where nobody won more cheers and standing ovations from the firefighters in the hall than he did, Dodd put it this way: "Candidates always think elections are about them. They're wrong. Elections are about people."
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