Of Miranda and Bombs and Those Silly Military Tribunals

Remember how we used to say, “a liberal is only a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet”? That was before Dan Rather went and got himself mugged and proved us wrong.

This week Attorney General (using the term loosely) Eric Holder jumped on board Charles Krauthammer’s Miranda Public Safety Exception train just as it was chugging out of the station.

From time to time I pay homage to Krauthammer here for his stunningly timely fix on current events and his equally level-headed prescriptions for repairing broken government, but this time the good Doctor is wrong.

Miranda should not be amended; it should be trashed, thrown in the incinerator and burned, not only for terrorists, but for anyone stupid enough to put on a ski mask and stick up a convenience store. OH! Excuse me! I don’t have to admit I stuck up the convenience store?

We have a constitution; let them read it.

Which brings me to the Supreme Court and the four – soon-to-be five – learned duffers and hags that make up the New York Times wing of that august body.

What would we ever do without them?

The better question would be how did we do without them for 150 years before they suddenly became indispensible in rendering ridiculous leftwing opinions.

Was SCOTUS on vacation in 1865 when the government tried five of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators by military tribunal and then executed them for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Where were they when FDR tried, fried and imprisoned eight Nazi saboteurs (including two Americans) for attempting to bomb a munitions plants during World War II?

Here’s an idea: Let’s provide Taliban Miranda warning cards in Farsi to Marines in Kandahar Province so terrorists will know they can call Alan Dershowitz anytime they wish to stop talking.

Doctor Krauthammer rightly points out that Miranda is outdated in a 21st century America fighting ideological zealots who believe blowing themselves to bits along with a couple hundred U.S. citizens gets them a pass to lustful bliss. But he fails to see the wacky mindset that created the law in the first place.

Ernesto Arturo Miranda was a repeat kidnapper and rapist who had been in prison on multiple occasions and knew his constitutional right to remain silent better than the cops, when they arrested him in 1963, for (you guessed it) kidnapping and rape.

Now think about that for a minute. Way back in Misdemeanor school, long before one learns to kidnap and rape young women, a future felon learns that admitting a crime is probably the wrong way to stay out of jail. Yet Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall and three other justices saw the need to reassert that right to the worst in our society.

When two fellow upstanding citizens murdered Ernesto Miranda in 1976, the Arizona police read one of them his Miranda warning. The other guy – already wishing to remain silent – fled to Mexico.

Flying airplanes into buildings and planting bombs in Times Square by guys who think burqas make a sexy fashion statement are acts of war. When we catch them in the act of attempting to do these things, we should put them in a military stockade, interrogate them until water is dripping from every pore in their body, convene a snap tribunal, and hustle them off to a firing squad.

Then advise them of their right to remain silent.

Is Elena Kagan Obama’s Chicken Hawk?

SCOTUS Nominee Elena Kagan (Daily News)

I don’t care whether Elena Kagan is gay or not. Suffice to say she is probably a subscriber to the Donna Shalala 10-Day Makeover Program. Hey, a pearl necklace with matching earrings can do wonders for a gal.

What I do care about are her wacko views on everything from the military to speech.

The presses smoked this weekend with editorial articles that quoted born-again Republican Dick Morris saying that Kagan is a moderate. Never mind that Morris didn’t say that. Morris simply commented that in the milieu of the Clinton White House Kagan was moderate. In that orb anyone an inch to right of Friedrich Engels was moderate.

Anyway, what’s the difference between a liberal lawyer and a moderate lawyer? The moderate only feeds on yacht flotsam.

Even beltway conservative politicos have been positively gushing that Barack Obama would skip over the plethora of über-lefties on his Court wish list and reach deep for someone so highly regarded on both sides of the aisle at Washington cocktail parties.

Lindsey Graham and Orrin Hatch have both announced that they are “leaning toward” confirming Kagan. Here is the logic of a statement like that: Well, Democrats have a right to nominate judges that reflect their political philosophy.

No they don’t! They did not have a right to Thurgood Marshall or Harry Blackmun who legislated from the bench and created a holocaust of American unborn. They do not have a right to an associate justice that will rule outside the U.S. Constitution. They do not!

And therein, to loosely paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare, lies the rub. Obama has launched a very clever gambit in nominating Kagan to the High Bench.

Three words: Justice Anthony Kennedy.

If Kennedy were latent homosexual he would now be in the final decision phase of his coming out. To use a shameless metaphor, Kennedy’s been cruising the bathhouse for years but he hasn’t quite gotten up the courage to go inside.

Kennedy is the pivotal vote in determining whether SCOTUS goes liberal or conservative for the next two decades. And Obama has seen what Republicans have known for years—that he can be swayed.

In other words – holding to the metaphor – Obama is bringing in a chicken hawk for Kennedy to seduce the mush brain to the other side. Elena Kagan has the perfect credentials for just such an operation.

Kagan has been the focus of wide-speculation for years as a potential Democratic nominee.

Legal minds, conservative and liberal alike, have ambitions for Kagan as a friend; they will not quibble over her views of the Constitution in that sense. They only care about her ability to think; the rest is academic stuff. In their world Elena is highly qualified.

So is Kagan gay? I would be surprised if both she and Sonia Sotomayor are not both institutionally gay but that is not the point. She is a liberal.

She is the reason gays are now considered a legitimate minority and she is the reason they will be running the country in 20 years. Kagan is a liberal in the most radical sense because she possesses the intellect and prestige to change our direction as a nation.

The Senate will confirm Elena Kagan because idealistic traitors like Lindsey Graham will either give her the nod or not stand in the way when the Democrats on Judiciary win on party lines. Because establishment Republicans in Washington dine with these Constitutional erosionists nightly, and philosophies like originalism a pragmatism mean no more to them than the aperitifs.

Every conservative Republican and Tea Party member in America should let Hatch and Graham know that we will not forget them when they come up for reelection. They need to tell John “Border Hawk” McCain now.

Let’s dump these bums and prevent more Kagens from ascending to the bench.