Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Sen. Kit Bond Doesn’t Think Terrorist Suspects Should Be Entitled to Abortions

“We’ve got to be far less interested in protecting the privacy rights of these terrorists than in collecting information that may lead us to details of broader schemes to carry out attacks in the United States.”
—Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, arguing to a New York Times interviewer that terrorist suspects should not be read their Miranda rights.

Well, we may or may not be interested in protected the privacy rights of terrorist suspects, and of terrorists—although I know of no one who has expressed an opinion one way or the other about the privacy rights of terrorists.

But Miranda warnings concern the Fifth Amendment right to be free of coerced self-incrimination; specifically, Miranda v. Arizona, held that people who are in police custody must be told of their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, i.e., that they are under no obligation to answer questions or to say anything at all.

It is the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause that the Supreme Court has held encompasses the right to undue interference by the government into decisions of a personal, or private, nature.

Good grace, Senator.

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