Waffling Toward Totalitarianism

Eric Holder, speaking for the Obama administration (which is going seriously wobbly in the face of Republican accusations of being soft on terrorism), announced that the administration will consider modifications to the Miranda rule for terrorist suspects:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/09/AR2010050902062.html

Joseph Lieberman would go farther, and strip Americans of their citizenship if they were tied to terrorism: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyregion/05arrest.html

One big problem: who is a "terrorist?"

Is it an art professor in Buffalo, making art with bacteria?
http://rochester.indymedia.org/newswire/display/21161/index.php
http://www.thenation.com/article/terror-hysteria-gone-absurdist

Or is it a Jewish college student, planning to protest the Republican National Convention?
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/14-0

How about a graduate student in Idaho running a website for a Muslim charity?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002097570_sami22m.html

While these may not be the type of people who the change is aimed at, they have all faced terrorism-related criminal charges, and would be subject to the same law.

Anyone who has watched American television, with its plentiful cop shows, probably knows the Miranda warning better than the Pledge of Allegiance, so it seems unlikely that this new erosion of rights would actually accomplish anything, especially since there is already a public safety exception to Miranda. It is scary, however, how willing the Obama administration is to give away (or perhaps take away) even more rights just to appease right-wing attack dogs. But that is what happens when polling comes before principles.

Glenn Beck, of all people, in discussing the suspect in the botched Times Square bombing, actually showed a better grasp of Constitutional law than Holder (Columbia Law School) or Lieberman (Yale Law School): “He has all the rights under the Constitution. We don’t shred the Constitution when it’s popular.”