AFP: US senator: No US citizenship rights for terrorists and it looks like even Chuck Shumer is interested. That means that the government would declare someone like Shahzad as an enemy combatant at the beginning, strip him of his American citizenship, and then not Mirandize or otherwise apply the Constitution.
This seems like a monumental over-reaction and a racist over-reaction. When everyone thought it might be a middle-aged white guy, there was no such talk. Find out the guy emigrated from Pakistan and the crazy starts.
Was there any talk about revoking Scott Roeder's constitutional protections because his murder was overtly political and meant to terrorize abortion providers, to say nothing of George Tiller's church body who had to deal with a maniac coming into their sanctuary and murdering one of their fellow parishioners? You think they were terrorized?
It amazes me how quickly conservatives and even liberals can fall prey to this fear, and in doing so jettison long held principles. We can do better than this. Our system has lasted long enough to have a sense of continuity and stability, but we should trust it. Lieberman and Shumer should be ashamed of doubting it.
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This is one of those situations where it pisses me off so much that I temporarily run out of anger.
This is absolute garbage. Where does it end? If we allow this happen, then the State could, by the same logic, revoke anyone's citizenship and declare them enemy combatants. Scott Roeder? Enemy combatant. Hutaree militia? Enemy combatants.
This is just a very bad road to start heading down. I have never liked Schumer, and this just confirms why. I once thought Lieberman was a decent moderate, but he has proven me wrong many times.
Read last night that Schumer is not on board at all. Lieberman is moving forward with the bill, but not with Schumer's support.
I still have plenty of other reasons to dislike Schumer, but good for him for not supporting this.
Has anyone even the slightest idea of the repercussions of such a bill?
To deny citizenship – especially before due process can prove them guilty of anything – is a slap in the face of the Constitution and the very ideals that make us American.
The possibility of abuse is paramount: If anyone can be accused of being a terrorist by an executive body without trial or evidence, then for that person the Bill of Rights - the Constitution itself - ceases to exist. This bill could single-handedly relegate any American citizen to the status of a foreign terrorist at a whim.
The bill is the most un-American piece of garbage that has ever crossed my ears since the Patriot Act, and the people who came up with it ought to be ridiculed out of office. Thomas Jefferson would be rolling in his grave.
I fear for the future of America. I fear her own children, not the terrorist threat, will be her undoing.
God have mercy on her soul.
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