There is a predictably partisan "debate" raging over the arrest of the American citizen who reportedly "made statements implicating himself" in the attempted Times Square car bombing. Because investigators read suspect Faisal Shahzad his rights (eventually), Republicans like John McCain and Joe Lieberman have jumped at the opportunity to paint the Obama administration as terrorist-huggers. On the other hand, Democrats like Rep. Adam Smith say you don't need to toss out Constitutional protections to pursue terrorists. Then there's Glenn Beck, who has just shocked the world by saying something rational:
He is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens. If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution. We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular. We do the right thing.
After arresting Shahzad, interrogating him, and deciding there was no imminent threat to be prevented, investigators informed Shahzad of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney, but he waived them and continued talking. They charged him as a civilian on Tuesday, but John McCain thinks that should frighten you, telling Sean Hannity, "When we detain terrorism suspects, our top priority should be finding out what intelligence they have that could prevent future attacks and save American lives. Our priority should not be telling them they have a right to remain silent."
Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, piles on: "In these kinds of cases, the first preference should be a military commission because you can get more information." But there's that annoying Constitution, which guarantees American citizens the right to trial by a jury of their peers. Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, only noncitizens can be tried in a military commission. But can't we just tweak the 7th Amendment or something? Senator Joseph Lieberman went on Fox News to propose legislation that would strip the citizenship of Americans tied to terrorism:
It’s time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act.
For a rebuttal, let's turn to Megan McArdle at the Altantic: "Can someone explain to me—hopefully using graphs, and small words—why Joe Lieberman is willing to share the precious blessing of American citizenship with Charles Manson, Gary Ridgeway, and David Berkowitz, but wants citizenship stripped from a guy who strapped some firecrackers to a bag of non-explosive fertilizer?"
And her Atlantic colleague Andrew Sullivan gets sober: "Now recall that McCain and Lieberman were celebrated in Washington for their alleged maturity, wisdom, and elder statesmen experience. They are in fact adolescent hysterics, whose terrorized Manichean view of the world sees nothing but an existential struggle and the imperative to win it. We would have been electing Cheney to a third term. And we barely knew it."
