Via Justin Elliot, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa gives an impassioned defense of Miranda:
Remember this is about prosecuting people before you told them the rights, what they said or did. If this was only about finding the ticking bomb and stopping the bomb, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's about whether they can take what they took from some scared young kid -- or some terrorist, whichever they are -- and use it. Because if we extend this then everybody, everybody, will have the same problem, which is: The police will say, 'Well I thought it was an emergency.' And then the kid will sit in jail.
Of course, as Elliot points out, just last year Issa hissed that "groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union are itching to give constitutional rights to these terrorists. The international law gurus, including those in the White House, don't have the answers."
So I'm not all that sure that Issa has suddenly become a strong defender of civil liberties. Rather, he knows that whatever the White House wants, he's against. But frankly, if other Republicans reacted this way to the Miranda proposal, I'm not sure I'd be disappointed.
-- A. Serwer
