John Kerry: “Well, I may say to the Senator from California--and I know the majority leader is going to point this out to us--we have…”

“Well, I may say to the Senator from California--and I know the majority leader is going to point this out to us--we have a rule here, rule XXVIII, and I am confident he is going to talk about that and he is going to say, well, the Senate created a situation whereby this rule was replaced by a precedent allowing an unfortunate process whereby a piece of legislation like this "can happen." That goes to what the Senator from Nebraska was talking about--the legal authority versus the sense of conscience and the question of what is right and what is wrong. It also goes to the question of how one gets things done. I will readily acknowledge that there is a "precedent" that allows last minute things to happen in the context of a conference. But the precedent and the rectitude with which it might be legitimately used does nothing to wipe away the question of the sort of moral or political legitimacy within the context of this institution or our own politics. When the President of the United States sends a letter and says: Don't do this; I will veto it because it is fundamentally unfair, but nevertheless people go ahead and proceed to do it anyway, that really calls into question motive, purpose, outcome, and why we are here today in this situation. So I am going to readily acknowledge, sure, you can use some technicality of legitimacy to say it, but it is not legitimate in the larger context of what we are trying to get done.”