Another example of the Obama regime’s fatuous inability to tell the difference between a civilian criminal and a wartime enemy combatant. During a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, Eric Holder, the incompetent moron that heads the Department of Justice, stated that Osama bin Laden is comparable to a mass murderer like Charles Manson, and therefore, should get the same Constitutional rights afforded to the average American.
Holder: …The comparison to…so are they getting more rights than the average American citizen is not an apt one. The question is, are they being treated as murderers would be treated, and the answer to that question is yes. They have the same rights that a Charles Manson would have; any other kind of mass murderer. Those are the comparisons that people should be making when trying to make the determination about how terrorists are being treated, and not compare them to average citizens who create no harm, who have committed no crimes.”
John Culberson (R-TX): “You said that terrorists have the same rights as Charles Manson, correct?”
Holder: “I said that murderers have the same rights as Charles Manson, and if these people are charged with murder, in essence that’s..those are the kinds of rights that they would get”
Culberson: “And terrorists who have murdered US citizens in the approach of your department — they have the same rights as Charles Manson?”
Holder: “In the sense that a murderer has the right to go before a jury…and get the acts that he’s charged with proven beyond a reasonable doubt, yes.”
Culberson: “So therefore Osama Bin Laden, in your opinion, has the same rights as Charles Manson”.
Holder: “In some ways I think they’re comperable people, in some ways….”
Culberson: “That’s incredible. This is where the disconnect between this administration and your mindset is so completely opposite that of where the vast majority the American people are. Where my constituents and I just have deep seated and profound philosophical difference with the Obama administration, the Department of Justice, the leadership of this congress. This is war. And in time of war, we as a nation have never given constitutional rights to foreign nationals; enemy soldiers, certainly captured overseas. This is where the profound disconnect comes between where America is and where you are in this administration and where this leadership of the congress is…..Even the voters of Massachusetts as liberal and and different in their philosophical views as they are from my constituents in Texas, even the voters of Massachusetts, understand that Osama bin Laden does not have the same rights as Charles Manson as you have just stated.”
Holder: “I only said they have the same rights within a courtroom…”
Culberson: “By granting Osama Bin Laden the right to appear in a U.S. courtroom, you are clothing Osama Bin Laden with the protections of the U.S. constitution. That’s unavoidable and something that you’ve skipped right past….”
Holder: “You are talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is that we will be reading the Miranda Rights to the corpse of Osama Bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.”
http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/29842591/holder-bin-laden-has-same-rights-as-charles-manson.htm
The video of the exchange is at the link.
Well shit, if someone like Bin Laden will “never appear in an American courtroom”, then why even worry about Miranda Rights in the first goddamned place? Charles Manson is a wacked-out hippie who murdered people in the hopes of starting a race war; even though his victims were white. What he and his followers did was a heinous act, but not as part of a war against the United States by a foreign enemy.
The trouble is, and I know Holder just doesn’t get it, is that enemy combatants have no business being protected under the constitution, given a civilian trial, or treated like a civilian mass murderer. We are at war and Islamic terrorists are enemy combatants. They belong in front of a military tribunal, not a civilian court of law.
Yep, the country’s in the best of hands.
We’re screwed.
9/11 was an inside job. Manson was framed for Polanski’s crime.
Peter,
Yeah, right. I don’t know if your comment is serious or tongue in cheek, but if you’re serious, you have a shit factory for a brain.
SFC MAC