Rachel Maddow calls out Dick Cheney and the Republicans who are parroting him for criticizing the Obama administration for reading terrorists their Miranda rights when every single person that was arrested on terrorism charges under the Bush administration was read their Miranda rights as well.
Frankly I'm tired of the glib nature of almost everyone on cable news and the politicians when talking about this issue and not getting to the underbelly of what this debate is all about, and that is whether it is acceptable to torture prisoners or not and whether we should respect our Constitution or not when it comes to anyone who is arrested for anything. It really just speaks to what road we want to go down when it comes to our system of justice. Are we a nation of laws and think that our system of justice works pretty well, or do we torture people and think it's okay to force confessions out of prisoners with no regard to whether we're getting the truth out of them or not if it makes the public feel better?
BlueGal and Driftglass were talking about this on their podcast from last week, and Driftglass made a really great point. No one can blame the public for wanting revenge on people that they feel want to do America harm. And it's human nature to want revenge on someone, but that's not how our criminal justice system is set up. It's why as Driftglass noted we don't allow the family of someone who has been the victim of a violent crime to decide what happens to the person charged with that crime, no matter how sure they might think they are about whether the person charged is guilty or not.
Those family members are not thinking rationally. They want revenge. The cable news industry and right wing hate radio has allowed the public to think that it's okay to want that same sort of cowboy system of justice instead of our system of justice which was put in place to stop the lynch mob mentality the media is propagating now. I thought we didn't want to be a country where a king or a queen decided to exact revenge on someone with no trial. I thought we were still supposed to be a country where everyone, no matter who you are is presumed innocent until you have your day in court.
It's really just disgusting to watch the national dialog deteriorate into that. We used to be better than that before the media decided it was more important to cover up the crimes of the Bush administration and a good portion of the country seemed to lose their minds after the attacks on 9-11. We need to quit being afraid to allow our criminal justice system to work as much as the Cheney's and the Hannity's and the Limbaugh's and the rest of the yappers out there want to keep us afraid and throwing our own system of justice down the toilet out of revenge, spite and fear.
