Terrorists getting 'Miranda' rights read, citizenship revoked?

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I already posted something on this in the video thread, but there is something that really annoys me at the core of the US 'debate' on terrorists having rights at all, including Miranda rights. Just because it was so silly, the video again:

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• What is it that John Mr. McCain doesn't like about reading a criminal or terrorist suspects his rights? Judging by him saying that reading a terrorist his rights was a 'serious mistake', one gets the idea that by saying 'Miranda' the cops cast 'cone of silence' over the suspect, who will then be physically incapable of speaking. Or that criminals are so dumb that they need the pointer (my hunch is that those guys are not the people one is concerned about in a terrorism case), or that they will 'lawyer up' and create all sort of hassle for the police (like having to give people their constitutional right to legal counsel when accused of a crime). I mean, what is wrong about the right of not having to incriminate oneself? Silly discussion, all that.
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• Mr. Liebermann had the harebrained idea to propose revoking the citizenship of accused terrorists. Mere accusation of a crime as sufficient reason to revoke citizenship? Liebermann's proposal would allow to strip an accused terrorist and US citizen of his citizenship, and in case he is then found, heaven forbid, to have been innocent, he will have lost his US citizenship anyway. Oopsie.
  
  US law already provides for the possibility to strip people of their citizenship. The Immigration and Nationality Act lays out conditions under which a person may be deprived of citizenship, for instance by committing "...any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States..." If Liebermann wants to revoke Faisal Shahzad’s citizenship, there already is away: just convict him of one of those offences. But no, pesky due process, begone! Who needs reasonable cause anyway. Liebermann sure knows a terrorist when he sees one, and that's all the law he needs.

My beef with these two morons is simply this: There’s not much point to having a Bill of Rights if the government gets to revoke those rights at its whim. Not to say anything about the idiotic posturing of two senators, who are beginning to show their age.

 

For once, we're in 100% agreement. If that doesn't mean the end is near, I don't know what it does mean. Well, except that they're wrong. Dead wrong. Violently, burning the corpse and nuking the ashes dead wrong.

I'm sorry, but I'm allergic to stupidity, and that was a pretty massive dose. You need to be careful with that stuff, Ragusa!

 

I found this little blurb ... it may not be accurate but appears to be correct (and in layman's terms):

I guess you could take his citizenship away due to "fraudently ... misrepresenting" himself, and we have set precedents by revoking the citizenship of suspected Nazi war criminals. I really don't see how this is much different.

I don't think a new law need be introduced and really don't care if they do. As far as the Miranda rights ... if terrorism is a crime then Miranda rights are required, if instead it is an act of war then no such rights are necessary unless the country will prosecute the terrorist in a civilian court.

 

Terrorism is a crime, thus Miranda Rights. Interestingly, I did notice something mentioned in a news video recently. The federal investigators decided at a certain point (after 10 hrs of interrogation, I think) to Mirandize the suspect so that all further communication could be used against him in court. That suggests that they recognized that anything they got beforehand wouldn't be admissible in court, but deemed the potential use of the information outside of court (i.e. stopping follow-up attacks) to be worth the effort.

 

Possibly. Barring the somewhat unlikely - and quite unprofessional - possibility that they just didn't care to do so before then, I think the most likely reason is that until then they were just "working on him", preparing him to get him in the right frame of mind to speak freely (and, hopefully, truthfully). The FBI probably has a few decent psychologists on its payroll, they may as well earn their pay.

 

In Germany you get your rights read in the first formal interrogation by police, not at your arrest (when many arrestees are either agitated, drunk, stoned, distracted, or all of that).

 

The thing I find odd is that they are throwing the citizenship card around at all. Some people seem to think that getting your Miranda rights read is only applicable to citizens. That's not the case - everyone arrested get their Miranda rights read to them - and even if it were, Shahzad actually IS a citizen of the US and was at the time the crime was committed. So even if he does end up losing his citizenship - which itself is moot as he will likely be spending the rest of his life in prison - you'd still have to read him his Miranda rights in order to convict him and as a result send him to jail for the rest of his life.