Free Republic

It was health care that nationalized the special election for what we now know is the people’s Senate seat. But it was national security that put real distance between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley. “People talk about the potency of the health-care issue,” Brown’s top strategist, Eric Fehrnstrom, told National Review’s Robert Costa, “but from our own internal polling, the more potent issue here in Massachusetts was terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants.” There is a powerful lesson here for Republicans, and here’s hoping they learn it. One of the great frustrations of the Bush years was the fact...

It's a new school year, but an old fight is brewing in American classrooms. Teachers and administrators around the country are scratching their heads once again over the Pledge of Allegiance. The courts have consistently ruled that students have the right not to recite the pledge in public schools. But now some First Amendment advocates are taking it one step further, arguing that the law compels educators to inform kids at the beginning of school that the decision is entirely up to them. They're advocating a "Miranda warning" for the Pledge... See the rest of article posted at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,550063,00.html.

Another Victory in Congress!! Senate Votes to Prohibit Reading Miranda Rights to Terrorists Captured in Afghanistan. by Guy Rodgers, Executive Director Dear AMERICA, Every victory we win in the struggle against radical Islam brings us one step closer to our ultimate goal of protecting America’s security and freedoms from this evil threat. On June 11th we emailed you the Weekly Standard article that reported the following disturbing news: “…the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on...

Reading Miranda Rights to Captured Terrorists 'Most Outrageous Notion I Have Ever Heard,' Says Republican Senator (CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s policy of having the FBI read the Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan is “outrageous,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told CNSNews.com. “To me, this is the most outrageous notion I have ever heard,” said Inhofe. “These people are terrorists, they don’t have rights, they don’t belong to a country that is identifiable.” “The longer you do that, the more difficult you make it for us to pick up detainees that we need to interrogate because...

Court to tackle clarity of Miranda warnings againBy Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 22, 5:36 pm ET WASHINGTON – "You have the right to remain silent." Most people only hear those words while watching cop shows on TV. They usually zone out for the rest of the now familiar Miranda warning to people under arrest. But in the real world, the Supreme Court is still listening to the words that follow. It agreed Monday to hear another case over just how explicit that phrasing must be. In its landmark 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling, the high court...

McCain explicitly included the Fifth Amendment in his legislation because it addresses his target, coercive interrogation. As we’ve seen, in Dickerson, the Supreme Court held that Miranda was now considered part of the Fifth Amendment’s core. In the al-Owhali case, Judge Sand ruled that Miranda imposes daunting burdens on American agents overseas — burdens far more challenging than the rote reading of an advice-of-rights card that typically happens in domestic policing. With the Supreme Court, beginning in 2004, imposing more and more criminal-justice procedure on the battlefield, the McCain Amendment would almost certainly be used by courts or a Democratic...

Very quickly after the Nairobi bombing, FBI agents and their Kenyan counterparts picked up and questioned Mohamed Rasheed Daoud al-Owhali, a Saudi national pretending to be a Yemeni of a different name. Though the lead that had prompted their desire to question al-Owhali was only one of hundreds, agents became increasingly convinced — over two weeks of intermittent questioning — that he was a college-educated al-Qaeda operative, well-schooled in counter-interrogation techniques, who was complicit in the atrocity. In fact, he had been the main bomber, helping drive the explosives-laden truck to the detonation site at the embassy. Finally he confessed,...

Oh. Before we begin today's "Bashing Barack," remember that on Wednesday I invited you to create your own Catchy Caption to the photo of Michelle Obama and France's First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. I am sad to report that an overwhelming number had the "B" word involved and, therefore, cannot be repeated here. The best usable caption was: "I'm just glad she's not looking at me." On to the really amusing stuff: An article in the Weekly Standard maintains that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is being given a broader role in interrogating prisoners taken during raids on terrorist dens in...

Osama bin Laden, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford one, an attorney will be provided. Do you understand these rights? Well, we don't.

Giving foreign killers Constitutional Rights will lead to the deaths of innocent Americans!Khalid Sheik MohammedYesterday, Curt posted the extraordinary news that the Obama Administration will now treat terrorists captured on the battlefield the same way we treat criminals apprehened in this country. An excerpt from the Weekly Standard report: When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. “I’ll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer,” he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet. Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later,...

A June 10th posting by Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard brought to light a very interesting happenstance, which seems to be going on with increasing regularity among FBI agents working alongside CIA officers and American troops in Afghanistan. Hayes highlights remarks made by Mike Rogers, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, about his recent visit to the troops working in and around the region of Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan. Rogers’ remarks seem to indicate that a change in FBI and Justice Department policies as they relate to the interrogation of people suspected of being terrorists...

Weekly Standard: The Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. But, in March 2009, Obama told '60 Minutes' the following: "Now, do these folks deserve Miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not."

Unbelievable! [T]he Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a...

In a story by Stephen F. Hayes in the Weekly Standard, The Obama Administration has ordered the FBI and CIA to give terrorists anywhere in the world the Rights of an American Citizen, they must be read their Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense. 1) They have no Rights...

Leahy: No worries, Sotomayor told me she’d follow the law posted at 4:25 pm on June 2, 2009 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly Small comfort that she’s unwilling to admit outright she’ll be applying The One’s “empathy” standard in close cases. Even those who profess a belief in forms of racial superiority have a limit to what they’ll say publicly, I guess. As for whether The One was correct in insisting that she misspoke when she made her “wise Latina” comment or whether, as anyone who’s thought about it for five seconds would...

A.M. Mora y Leon Barack Obama's original political sponsor Wiliam Ayers has ties to the Hugo Chavez regime that apparently continue today. Here's how Hugo Chavez advertises Ayers as a member of the directorate of the Miranda International Center, a think tank funded by the Venezuelan government. There is zero doubt he approved of this description of who he is below on the Venezuelan government Web site. I translated it into English for you: Bill Ayers USA bayers@uic.edu 212-576-8274 William Ayers was the leader of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist group The Weather Underground which initiated armed struggle against the government...

There is a myth about our country circulating mainly in conservative circles that we are a good, solid, can-do type of nation. We see a problem, and by-gum, we fix it. Well, our crime problem has been spiraling out of control for years, and by-gum, we haven’t done a thing to fix it. Judge Cornelius starts his excellent book by citing the terrible crime statistics that show the United States to be the most violent, crime-ridden nation in the world. And we are, so the good Judge says, because American justice is neither swift nor sure. If justice were swift...

Excerpt - GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba, July 24 (Reuters) - A driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday. "Our policy at the time was not to read Miranda rights," FBI special agent Robert Fuller said in testimony at the U.S. military commission trial of Salim Hamdan on charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Fuller was referring to the Miranda v. Arizona U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1966, which held that potential criminal suspects in custody...

... The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence. The rule applies whether the misconduct is slight or serious, and without regard to the gravity of the crime or the power of the evidence. “Foreign countries have flatly rejected our approach,” said Craig M. Bradley, an expert in comparative criminal law at Indiana University. “In every other country, it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence.” But there are signs...

For today's lesson in "How to Lose a War," let's consider the case of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in World War II and compare it to the case of Nawab Buntangyar in what some consider to be World War III today. But first, consider this all-too-common report in the New York Times this week out of Nad Ali, Afghanistan: "A suicide bomber wrapped in explosives walked into a crowded government building.and blew himself up, killing at least seven people, four of them police officers. Six people were wounded." OK, back to the lesson. Admiral Yamamoto commanded the Japanese Navy and...