Liberals fell in love with Elizabeth Warren after she said the “rich” must be taxed, so they elected her to the Senate in 2012. However, the new Massachusetts senator seems to have a problem understanding the Bill of Rights, not unlike many of her colleagues. On Sunday, Warren said federal prosecutors need to ‘‘find the right balance’’ in deciding whether to read Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights – in other words if he will be allowed to exercise, as an American citizen, the Fifth Amendment and be granted due process.
Ms. Warren is apparently confused about the Fifth Amendment. It states that no American shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It doesn’t say this can be ignored in the case of supposed terrorists. It’s truly sad that Warren has decided to give the neocons and serial warmongers a chance to undermine the Bill of Rights and hundreds of years of English common law dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215.
It seems there are scant few champions of due process these days beyond the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of constitutional scholars who get quoited in the New York Times or trotted out to appear alongside former generals and government bureaucrats on CNN.
Public education has done wonders to the American psyche. We were reminded of this after Tsarnaev was arrested and people rushed into the street to wave American flags manufactured in China and lavish praise on the police state. Even the hapless residents of Watertown, Massachusetts, seemed unperturbed when storm troopers showed up at their doors outfitted like combat soldiers and demanded to be allowed to search their homes without bothering to produce search warrants. This article was posted: Sunday, April 21, 2013 at 7:37 pm