Paul Waldman on citizenship, Miranda rights, and American values:
When Faisal Shahzad attempted to explode his absurdly amateurish car bomb in Times Square and was quickly caught, the response was one we’ve come to expect. It didn’t matter how forthcoming Shahzad was — some conservatives were terribly disappointed that he wasn’t being tortured and characterized the whole thing as evidence of the Obama administration’s unconscionable weakness. For some reason, they decided to focus on the Miranda warning we’ve seen recited on television thousands of times. “They Mirandized him, which I always find stupid on the part of our people,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch. For some, the idea that when an American is arrested for a crime in America, we should apply American laws to him is incomprehensible.
A creative solution was soon found: Why not just wave a magic wand and declare him a foreigner, so we could stop worrying about laws and the Constitution? Sen. Joe Lieberman stepped up to the plate, with a proposal to strip citizenship from people who are suspected of being involved in terrorism. A draft of the bill is not available, but Lieberman’s office told The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent that the senator’s proposal would allow the State Department to decide that an American is in cahoots with a terrorist group and then strip that American of his or her citizenship.
