Constitutional Rights don’t Discriminate

I was horrified this morning to read this headline and the accompanying article in the Hill: McCain: ‘Serious mistake’ if car bombing suspect was Mirandized’.

It would have been a serious mistake to have read the suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing his Miranda rights, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday.

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a longtime leading Republican on national security issues, said he expected the suspect in the case could face charges that might warrant a death sentence if convicted.

“Obviously that would be a serious mistake…at least until we find out as much information we have,” McCain said during an appearance on “Imus in the Morning” when asked whether the suspect, 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan.

“Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” McCain added.

From everything I’m reading about the suspect that was arrested this morning for the failed incendiary device left in a car in Saturday’s fail attack on Time’s Square, says he is a U.S. citizen. He may be a horrible one, and traitorous one and a potentially murderous one, but he’s still a U.S. citizen. There was a time in our country when that meant something.

Investigators believe Faisal Shahzad, a recently naturalized U.S. citizen living in Shelton, Conn., paid cash for a Nissan Pathfinder that was found packed with explosives Saturday night on a tourist-crowded block in Midtown Manhattan. The vehicle was set on fire, but a homemade bomb inside failed to detonate.

Investigators located Shahzad after a two-day investigation that yielded what senior White House officials described as a flood of international and domestic clues. It was not immediately clear whether there was any link between Shahzad and videotapes that police circulated widely on Monday, showing men near the site of the attempted bombing who may have been acting suspiciously.

The Constitution grants specific rights because the colonial governments who ruled this part of the world did things to their colonies and their own citizens that were capricious. Many things done to colonists, the colonized natives, and indeed to people not within the power structure or threatening the power structure didn’t even recognize their basic humanity. Our constitution is there to protect every one from the abuses and excesses of a powerful central government. Even the ones we do not like. This is because when government is allowed to run rampantly over one set of citizens, it eventually means it can run over any and all of us. If you’ve ever been hauled of to jail having done absolutely nothing or been shot and killed for standing on your campus during the lunch hour–as was done 40 years ago with Kent State May 4 student killings by the Ohio National Guard–you are fully aware of the capriciousness of a state that has police power.

This just seems to be yet another attack on the rights of individuals to the justice and liberty we’ve established in our constitution and with our rule of law. We’ve just recently seen complete overstep by the Arizona government to deal with crime problems coming from Mexico. If you haven’t read former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s take on the new Arizona round ’em up and document ’em law, please do.

In her first public comments on an issue that has embroiled her state in controversy, Justice O’Connor said she understood why Arizona passed the bill last month allowing local police to question a person’s legal residency. Like California, she said, Arizona is a border state that suffers from smuggling of drugs and people from Mexico.

But she expressed doubt on whether the state had the authority to enact such a law. “It is essentially the job of the federal national government to secure our borders,” Justice O’Connor said Monday at a luncheon here hosted by St. Ignatius College Preparatory, the high school alma mater of her late husband, John. Arizona “may have gone a little too far in its authority,” she said.

The retired justice suggested that one potential issue with the new law, signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23, could be racial profiling by police. Immigration-rights groups have raised concerns the law could result in the targeting of people who look Hispanic.

The question courts may have to decide, she said, is whether the law “does too much to allow officers to arrest people because they look Hispanic. It might not read that way, but it might work that way.”

The justice predicted the law would be the subject of legal challenges, and added: “We will be locked up in court for a long time” over it.

We supposedly have a movement afoot that is mad over the powers wielded by the Federal Government. But what laws are they supporting? This year we’ve had states pass laws that stick the government’s nose squarely in the uterus of pregnant women, laws that allow the police to ask you for papers just because, and now a senator suggesting you don’t read a U.S. citizen his Miranda Rights. What’s next, asking every one with an accent or a slightly foreign look for a portfolio of documents? Perhaps we should just suggest we all get permission slips from the government before we go for plastic surgery now or take an ESL course so they can determine if we might be up to something that goes against certain religions or political mindsets. Maybe they should just barcode us all so the police can figure out which level of constitutional rights we get? Teaparty on dudes!

WTF is going on here?