What Am I Missing Here?

Okay, if Duke can talk again, I'll make a stab at it. What the hell is up with people right now? I'm not particularly political but what the hell is going on with people blatantly ignoring the Constitution? Yes Arizona, I mean you. I do accept that there are some real issues you're dealing with, but you can't just decide to pre-emptively detain people who may not have papers when there's no actual requirement to carry papers. Now, if you change the law so that it's a requirement for all people - citizens or not -- to carry ID, then you have something. I'm not actually entirely opposed to the idea of people needing identity cards (I'll get the libertarians on my ass for that), but that's neither here nor there because it's not the law now. And as long as it's not, Arizona are a bunch of idiots. I'm so used to finding out that whenever MSNBC goes off on a rant about something that there's more sides to the story or something is being taken out of context, that I went to go read the proposed Arizona law and find out what I was missing. I did look at it, and I wasn't missing anything -- the law is just flat out wrong.

And then there's the "debate" on whether the bombing idiot should have had his Miranda rights read to him. In a word, yes. Even scarier, I find myself in total agreement with....Glenn Beck (how did that happen?) when he was discussion whether the bombing idiot should have had his Miranda rights read to him. Beck said:

"He is a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens," the bombastic Fox News host said to the stunned co-hosts of "Fox and Friends". "If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. [Shahzad] has all the rights under the Constitution." "We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular," Beck added. "We do the right thing."

John McCain (yes, from Arizona again, what's UP with them lately?) went all populist weird and now merits a big "shut up" for:

"Don't give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it's all about,"

And even Joe Lieberman, with whom I agree more often than not, said something really stunning to me:

I think it's time for us to look at whether we want to amend that law to apply it to American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorist organizations, whether they should not also be deprived automatically of their citizenship, and therefore be deprived of rights that come with that citizenship when they are apprehended and charged with a terrorist act.

See, you can't strip their citizenship until they're proven guilty. And if they're proven guilty, then they can be punished under a million varieties of laws, even treason ones. So how do you 'automatically' just strip people of their citizenship before you find them guilty?

Let's go over this again. US citizen, arrested on US soil. Miranda rights. Now, I do have a feeling I"m going to HATE all the crap his lawyer pulls out when it comes to trial time, but that's the way our system works. If this guy is as much of an idiot as he appears to be, this will be a pretty open and shut case. So don't eff it up by not observing the technicalities.