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Doctor Krauthammer rightly points out that Miranda is outdated in a 21st century America fighting ideological zealots who believe blowing themselves to bits along with a couple hundred U.S. citizens gets them a pass to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.

Jihadist’s Three Mistakes Saved American Lives

Sure, New York dodged a bullet this week, big time, but through no fault of the US government. Ironically it was Faisal Shahzad’s own mistakes that foiled the bomb plot that could have cost the lives of hundreds of people in Time Square Saturday night.

First, the terrorist obviously hadn’t mastered the simple art of lighting the candle. A few simple, common sense tweaks in his bomb construction could have made him the most infamous jihadist since the 9-11 terrorists.

Shahzad’s second mistake, keeping in mind that he wasn’t dedicated enough to Bad God to swap his life for 70 virgins and a one-way trip to the Great Brothel in the sky, he didn’t preplan his exit from the US. If he had left the country immediately he would likely have made it.

And finally, he was in the country legally, and, as every undocumented worker in Arizona knows, that is no way to break the law in the United States. We love our illegals here. Okay, that one was a joke.

But it is the government’s mistakes that should really concern us.

Faisal Shahzad’s ten years in the US and his eventual citizenship a year ago should have screamed “jihadist.” He followed a prototypical plan put in place by Muslim extremists decades ago for the insertion of terrorists into this country.

The government’s first mistake was that this 7th century throwback was even in the country to begin with, as are thousands just like him. Drop into your local liquor store and meet one today. If you live in New York take a cab.

Shahzad married into his legal resident status.

FBI files are chock-full with Muslim terrorists who have in the past gained legal status and, in not a few cases, citizenship in the US using the marriage scam. They include bombers in the first World Trade Center attack, African US Embassy bombers, aids to Osama bin Laden, the Hezbollah cigarette-smugglers, and nearly a dozen failed New York bombers.

Americans have long shared a corporate guilt over the internment of Japanese Americans at the beginning of World War II. But Roosevelt’s reasoning in rounding up the Japanese was sound. He had to quickly secure the nation’s West Coast, the most vulnerable location for an invasion.

One can argue his methodology, thousands of good Japanese Americans should have been screened and returned to their homes within a couple of months, but the threat was real and he had no choice other than to ignore that threat.

I have complained for years now that the Bush administration is the real culprit in the failed War of Terror. In the first place we are not at war with terror, we are at war with Islamists, and he should have sought a formal declaration of war against them.

Secondly he should have immediately interred US Muslims and rapidly screened them for ties to subversive groups, and if necessary declared marshal law do it. After quick screening, 90% of them should have been returned to their homes and businesses.

Without a doubt the interment of legal residents, not to mention citizens, violates the Constitution, but it was necessary if the administration was to identify resident enemies. FDR did this by executive order.

The government of course will not do this again, regardless of the fact that it is the only sane way to conduct a war against covert enemies within a broad group of our society. However, if we don’t do something fast, one of these guys is going to get lucky.

There are things the government can do:

1) Cancel all student, tourist and work visas

2) Pass Joe Lieberman’s new legislation revoking citizenship to anyone joining a terrorist organization

3) Tighten qualifications for citizenship to 15 years

4) Revoke marriage as a pathway to legal residency

5) And, since we have a No Fly List, we might actually try using it.

BOMB IN TIMES SQUARE

Evacuation In Times Square - Daily News

While President Obama was busy bombing at the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight, someone was apparently planting a potentially devastating explosive device in Times Square.

Reuters – An apparent failed car bomb in a vehicle that was smoking and emitted a small “flash” caused police to evacuate New York’s Times Square as bomb specialists worked to dismantle the device on Saturday night, Broadway’s busiest night. (Read Story)

How many does this make on Obama’s watch?

June 1, 2009: Little Rock, AR – Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim, with ‘religious motives’ shoots a local soldier to death inside a recruiting center.

November 5, 2009: Ft. Hood, TX – An Army Muslim psychiatrist, Nidal Malik Hasan, guns down thirteen unarmed soldiers and wounds over 40 more while yelling praises to Allah.

December 25, 2009: Detroit, MI – An Algerian Muslim trained in Yemen gains entrance into US and attempts to detonate a bomb onboard a trans-Atlantic flight and is subdued by passengers and crew.

February 19, 2010: Fort Jackson Five; South Carolina Five Muslims were arrested in an alleged plot to poison food supplies at Fort Jackson. The Army was quick to do containment on this story and little is knows about what actually transpired.

Between the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon and the end of Bush’s final term, his administration thwarted 19 terrorist attacks on US soil. Not one attack was successful in taking human life.

It is not known at this hour if this most recent act was a hoax, a domestic attack carried out by non-Muslim, or another attempt by Islamic jihadists. What is known is that by the grace of God the device didn’t detonate.

Whether it was domestic non-Muslim or a failed Islamic attack, does it matter? Just how many passes does this President give Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano?

And, Barack, don’t let us down. When you catch these guys, let’s try them in New York City.