{"id":19392,"date":"2013-04-22T15:54:04","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T23:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=19392"},"modified":"2013-04-22T15:54:43","modified_gmt":"2013-04-22T23:54:43","slug":"graham-terror-suspects-deserve-2nd-amendment-rights-but-not-5th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/22\/graham-terror-suspects-deserve-2nd-amendment-rights-but-not-5th\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham: Terror Suspects Deserve 2nd Amendment Rights, But Not 5th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lindsey Graham’s predictable argument<\/a> post-Marathon bombing that the suspects should be treated as enemy combatants and tried in military commissions was the sort of role we have come to expect him to play. He is perhaps the foremost jingo in the US Senate and is radically disinclined to even acknowledge constitutional restraints on government.<\/p>\n

\"\"But Alex Seitz-wald at Salon.com<\/a> caught something that is even more revealing of Graham’s impenetrable psychosis: suspected terrorists should be deprived of due process, but their Second Amendment rights should not be infringed.<\/p>\n

At a press conference he set up this afternoon to slam the White House on the enemy combatant decision, he was asked about legislation that would stop people on the Terrorist Watch List from buying guns. Here\u2019s his response:<\/p>\n

GRAHAM: \u201cI think, anyone who\u2019s on the Terrorist Watch List should not lose their Second Amendment right without the ability to challenge that determination. I think, Senator Kennedy was on the Terrorist Watch List. There\u2019ve been people come up on the watch list. I did not want to make that a \u2014 the basis to take someone\u2019s Second Amendment rights away. What I would suggest, is that if you come up on the Terrorist Watch List, you have the ability to say, \u201cNo, I\u2019m not a terrorist.\u201d And that would be the proper way to do that.<\/p>\n

…Contrast his opposition to closing the \u201cterror gap\u201d with this, from a\u00a02011 New York Times article<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Citizens who are suspected of joining Al Qaeda are opening themselves up \u201cto imprisonment and death,\u201d Mr. Graham said, adding, \u201cAnd when they say, \u2018I want my lawyer,\u2019 you tell them: \u2018Shut up. You don\u2019t get a lawyer. You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined Al Qaeda.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you have it. Senator Graham has become the full picture of a self-parody. I cannot tell difference between the Senator’s actual words, and those that might be written for his imitators on Saturday Night Live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lindsey Graham’s predictable argument post-Marathon bombing that the suspects should be treated as enemy combatants and tried in military commissions was the sort of role we have come to expect him to play. He is perhaps the foremost jingo in the US Senate and is radically disinclined to even acknowledge constitutional restraints on government. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-19392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19392"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19394,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19392\/revisions\/19394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19392"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}