This actually came after the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes needed for cloture on Sen. Joni Ernst’s stand-alone Planned Parenthood de-fund bill (it had just 53 votes, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell voted against it as a matter of strategy; by voting against it McConnell has the ability to bring it back for a later reconsideration), but it was the highlight of an otherwise miserable performance of Failure Theater in the Senate.

Lee notes, with passionate articulation, that Planned Parenthood’s actions are indefensible by people of goodwill, and he quotes Solzhenitsyn in making the point that the violence Planned Parenthood commits against the unborn is necessarily married to the lies it must tell – and accuses the Democrats of complicity in falsehood by continuing to support the unsupportable.

This might go down as one of the greatest speeches given on the Senate floor in recent years. Mike Lee has emerged as perhaps the most thoughtful orator that body possesses, and we owe him gratitude for putting his talents to the service of such a just cause as that of the lives of the unborn.