Miranda Rights Did Not Affect Times Square Interrogation Says Senator

By Chingyu Wang-Talk Radio News Service

Senators Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) said that the method the Obama administration is handling terrorist attacks is "exactly the same way as the prior administration regarding miranda rights."

Reed pointed out that when the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, was mirandized, there was no criticism on how that was handled.

"The fact is that Mr. Shahzad cooperated both before and after he was mirandized and there was no hint that those warnings hampered investigations in anyway," said Senator Kaufman.

Kaufman also said that the United States can not solely rely on the federal government to fight against terrorism, the key "is everybody has got to be in the program."

The Senator said that private citizens, along with federal and local law enforcement, played a crucial role in preventing the Times Square attack. He added that there is more the U.S. needs to do to disrupt attacks in the future.

"The key to success in the long run, to frustrate any of these massive attacks is we got to go to the enemy where they are and right now the enemy, as we know, is in the hills of Pakistan," said Kaufman. "This is not something that can be done in some office in Washington."

McCain And Lieberman Propose Legislation For Indefinite Detention

By Laurel Brishel Prichard University of New Mexico/ Talk Radio News Service

Legislation to hold “high value detainees” for a indefinite amount of time was introduced Thursday by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

“This legislation seeks to ensure that the mistakes made during the apprehension of the Christmas Day bomber, such as reading him his Miranda warning, will never happen again and put Americans’ security at risk,” said McCain, referencing the attempted bombing aboard a commercial aircraft by a young Nigerian man last December.

The introduction of the bill has sparked controversy among numerous human rights organizations, with many claiming that the legislation undermines the constitution.

“Our criminal justice system has proved repeatedly that it is capable of obtaining reliable intelligence from terrorism suspects, while that has not always been the case when we throw detainees into secret detentions and discard all the rules,” said Christopher Anders, the American Civil Liberties Union's Senior Legislative Counsel. “The Constitution is not optional despite the efforts of these senators to render it so.”

If enacted, the bill would ask the president to create a interagency task force to examine the suspect and decide within 48 hours if they are ‘unprivileged.' If the suspect is found to be ‘unprivileged,’ they would be held regardless of whether or not criminal charges are filed.

The task force would meet with the Secretary of Defense, Attorney General and the directors of the FBI and CIA to make final determinations as to the detainees' status.

“Under these circumstances, actionable intelligence must be our highest priority and criminal prosecution must be secondary,” according to a statement released by McCain.

Supreme Court Weighs Humanitarian Aid To Terrorist Groups

Today the Supreme Court took up a very difficult question: if a person explains to a terrorist group how to pursue peaceful resolution of their goals, is that constitutionally-protected speech?

Federal law, as amended by the USAPATRIOT Act, makes it a crime to provide “training” and “expert advice or assistance” to designated terrorist groups. The Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) in years past provided advice to groups including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), both groups designated terrorist groups by the State Department. HLP trained the groups on using international law, including petitions to the United Nations, to achieve their goals peacefully. HLP says the groups formed to protect the rights of minority populations that they argue have been marginalized, and HLP sought to help the groups move away from terrorist tactics and achieve their goals through peaceful means.

The Obama administration, however, argues that providing aid—including legal advice—to the groups would run afoul of federal law. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who represents the federal government before the Supreme Court, argued today that aiding these groups helps them achieve legitimacy, and the government not only seeks to stop their terrorist activities, but also wants to dissolve the groups themselves. Moreover, the government argues helping the groups with any one aspect of their operation frees up personnel or gives them more time to pursue terrorism. Thus, any aid to these organizations is in effect helping them carry out terrorism, and since terrorism is an action and not speech, the First Amendment to the Constitution does not protect the aid groups.

Justices subjected both lawyers to tough questioning. Conservative Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy—usually the swing vote in close cases—and Sam Alito all seemed skeptical of the contention that the aid HLP wanted to provide would not help the groups carry out terrorist attacks. They also seemed hesitant to accept the government’s argument that the line between “advice” and “expert advice” was clear; advice is legal, while expert advice is not. One point of agreement seemed to be that there was a problem with any law that might make it illegal to provide legal advice.

The lawsuit was brought as an “as applied” challenge, meaning HLP was asking only for a declaration that its activities were protected, not that the whole law be struck down, but there seemed to be much confusion about how the Court could make such a declaration without imperiling prosecution of anyone under the law. That confusion may provide an out for the Court: it could send the case back to the lower courts for consideration of whether the law is unconstitutional entirely.

The case, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, will be decided before this summer.

Attack On IRS Was Terrorism, Say CAIR Officials

By Laurel Brishel Prichard - University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling on the media and the American people to refer to any politically tinged attack against America, not just incidents involving Muslims, as acts of terrorism.

“Last week’s attack on the IRS office in Texas perfectly fits either legal definition of terrorism, yet it has not been labeled as such. This apparent double standard only serves to render the term “terrorism” meaningless and imbues it with a sense of religious and ethnic bias that is both counterproductive and offensive,” according to a statement released by CAIR Monday.

The use of the word terrorism has been placed on many attacks that have been carried out by Muslims, CAIR argues, and attacks such as those orchestrated by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Texas attacker Joseph Stack should fall under the same category.

“America should identify such acts as terrorism whenever they are committed, wherever they are committed, whoever commits them,” said the statement.

CAIR Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili stressed Monday that American Muslims do not support any act that justifies killing civilians in order to further political or religious agendas at home or abroad.

Republican Hoekstra Strikes Back At Counter-Terrorism Adviser

Hours after John Brennan, the President's top counter-terrorism adviser, lashed out at Republicans for playing "political football" over the handling of Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee accused the Obama administration of trying to "deflect blame."

"The mishandling of this case is the Obama administration's failure, and they have no one to blame but themselves. President Obama failed to respond after the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, and failed to respond immediately after the terrorist attack in Detroit," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) in a statement released by his office.

"Instead of lashing out politically and attempting to deflect blame, Obama and his advisers need to settle on a coherent and rational national security strategy to help secure our homeland," Hoekstra added.

"Quite frankly I'm tiring of politicians using national security issues such as terrorism as political football," said Brennan during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday. "They're going out there, they're unknowing of the facts, and they're making charges and allegations that are not anchored in reality."

Brennan was referring to arguments made by Republicans that charging Abdulmutallab in a criminal court and giving him legal rights had prevented the intelligence community from obtaining information from him on al-Qaeda and possible future U.S. terrorist attacks. The White House responded to those allegations last week by briefing reporters about how Abdulmutallab has so far cooperated with U.S. intelligence officials.

"They were told about the fact of that cooperation as well as some information he was sharing," Brennan said. "None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point. They didn't say, is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized?"

In Hoekstra's view, Brennan should have taken it upon himself to divulge such information when he spoke to the Congressman shortly after the failed attack.

"Contrary to what [Brennan] attempts to imply, he at no time informed Hoekstra that Abdulmutallab had been Mirandized nor did he seek Hoekstra's consultation or provide any sort of meaningful briefing," said the statement.