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As Dodd Goes By

By Philip Klein on 12.10.09 @ 11:17AM

There are a lot of reasons to have a low opinion of Sen. Chris Dodd -- his liberal agenda, general smugness, and sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide, just to name a few. But he may have reached a new low today.

Responding to Republican criticism about Democrats' crafting the health care bill in closed door meetings, Dodd tried to reference the film Casablanca. He started off by referring to the main setting of the film as "Nick's Café." (I'm sorry Sen. Dodd, but Bogart wasn't running a Greek diner.) Then he badly mangled his attempt to quote Claude Rains' famous line.

Here was Dodd, on the Senate floor moments ago:

“It’s that old line of Claude Rains, from the famous movie of Casablanca, walking into Nick’s Café. He looked around with Humphrey Bogart standing there and said, ‘Is there gambling going on in here?’ Shocked to believe such a thing. Is politics going on in the Senate? Yes it is.”

In the interest of redeeming the memory of Rains, here's the actual clip from the movie: