.

NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Monday, April 22, 2013

McCain: Abolish Bill of Rights and treat Boston bomber as an enemy combatant




GOP Leaders say the Bill of Rights is old fashioned
  • Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, and Rep. Peter King want Americans to be denied their rights under the Constitution.
  • Washington, Franklin, Hamilton.  They were so 18th Century.  They were not smart like McCain and Graham.


Key Republicans are calling on the Obama administration to declare captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspect in the bombings at the Boston Marathon, an enemy combatant subject to the laws of war so intelligence officials can continue to interrogate him for as long as they deem necessary.

A small problem.  The U.S. has not declared war on anyone, any group or any country.  Details, details.  Pesky details just get in the way.

Federal law enforcement officials are invoking the public-safety exception and will pursue their investigation into the Boston bombings for the at least the next 48 without reading Tsarnaev’s his Miranda rights against self-incrimination.

But Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, as well as Rep. Peter King, argue that relying on the public safety exception is a national security mistake reports the Washington Times.
The Joke is on us.
McCain limited freedom of speech under McCain-Feingold,
wants the military to imprison Americans without
a trail under the NDAA and now wants the Bill of Rights
thrown away and make Americans enemy combatants.

The group of GOP lawmakers argues that the blasts at the end of the Monday’s marathon that killed three and injured more than 170 people were clearly an attempt to terrorize a major American city, and the accused perpetrators should be treated as enemy combatants, not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise.

“The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status,” they said in a statement. “We do not want this suspect to remain silent.”

“We are encouraged our High value detainee interrogation team (HIG) is now involved and working to gather intelligence about how these terrible acts were committed and possibility of future attacks,” he said. “A decision to not read Miranda rights to the suspect was sound and in our national security interests.”

“However, we have concerns that limiting this investigation to 48 hours and exclusively relying on the public-safety exception to Miranda, could very well be a national security mistake,” they continued. “It could severely limit our ability to gather critical information about future attacks from this suspect.”

The American Civil Liberties Union quickly weighed in on the opposite side of the Miranda argument Saturday, arguing that invoking the rare public-safety exception triggered by the need to protect the public from immediate danger is only a temporary solution.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told the Boston Globe that the exception applies only when there’s a continued threat to public safety and is not an pen-ended exception to the Miranda rule.

“The public-safety exception to Miranda should be a narrow and limited one, and it would be wholly inappropriate and unconstitutional to use it to create the case against the suspect,” Romero said. “The public safety exception would be meaningless if interrogations are given an open-ended time horizon.”


Read more:  Washington Times


American Concentration Camps.
Declared "enemy" combatants by the State.  The Supreme Court said it was legal for the government to put over 150,000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps without a trial and to confiscate their private property.



"The power under the constitution will always be in the people. It is intrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and, whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can and undoubtedly will be recalled."
.
George Washington
Letter to Bushrod Washington, November 10, 1787

No comments: