Miranda Rights in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Excellent editorial here.

Argues that now is exactly not the time to roll back the rights of the accused.

Egypt, the United States and the Rule of Law

The Egyptian government declared yesterday that it would extend the "emergency law" that has been in place there since 1981, when Anwar Sadat was assassinated, despite Mubarek's repeated promises to rescind it, and the increasingly vocal protests over it.

The Obama State Department expressed "disappointment" over the announcement. It said that

any move to significantly narrow the application of the Emergency Law would be a step forward if it means greater protection of civil liberties for Egyptian citizens in practice. We are confident that Egypt can draft and adopt effective counterterrorism legislation that conforms to international standards for civil liberties and due process. And the United States urges Egypt to complete this legislation on an urgent basis and to rescind the State of Emergency within the coming months.

This is a dicey diplomatic moment, of course, because the US needs Egyptian support in the region, not only because Mubarek has not opposed the US presence in Iraq, but because he has proven to be a fairly consistent partner in the Israel-Palestine mess.

But Mubarek's obvious dismissal of the need to rule democratically reveals Obama's problems as a world leader -- many of them created by Bush the Boy. Egypt receives more foreign aid from the US than any other nation save that other paragon of virtue, Israel. Together, then, these two allies daily trample the basic human and civil rights of their inhabitants and give the lie to the idea that the US hopes to democratize the region. It's hard to call for reform in Iraq (much less Afghanistan) when reform is nearly as badly needed in the places most supported by the US.

Things might be easier, of course, had Bush the Boy not invaded Iraq, thereby trampling international law in practice and theory. Iraq might, in that case, still be ruled by Saddam Hussein, but the US government would have the clout, the money and the good will to make more significant changes where it matters most.

The Times Square Bomber and the Law

Ordinarily I read The National Review the way some people stare at car wrecks - with a mixture of prurient curiosity and horror. This week, though, Andrew McCarthy made some very useful observations about the Obama Administration's handling of the bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad.

Essentially, his position is this:

The Obama administration strongly prefers the law-enforcement model, and that is how the Times Square case is being handled. Though I believe the military process should be our default choice during wartime, the administration should be cut some slack in this case. There are things to criticize, and the case bears close watching. Knee-jerk derision, though, would be a mistake.

The "slack" comes, he says, primarily from the fact that Shahzad is a US citizen who has not been found conducting actual operations against the United States on the field of battle, not matter how metaphorical we make that field. That is, not everyone guilty of a heinous act with political motives is an "enemy combatant." As is clear from his many caveats and half-apolgies, National Review types do not always accept this basic proposition.

McCarthy also points out that the nature of the case against Shahzad is not yet public, so we do not know for sure that the suspect is a terrorist. In fact, the only evidence tying him to the car bomb appears to be his confession. (Which, by the way, was obtained without torture, in the custody of law enforcement, not the military.)

His willingness to be patient, to argue explicitly that we may disagree with the Obama Administration without name-calling and accusations of insanity of stupidity, stands out not only for his publication but for the tone of political discourse in general in this country of late. I applaud him

Still, the implications of his position are a little weird at times. He seems to indicate that when we do have what we think is iron-clad evidence, the military court system is more appropriate than the civilian one. I'm not sure why that would be. Is it just that we do not want a suspect to have the chance to make his case, even when ewe know he will be locked up forever right after making it? The lack of trust in our courts continues to puzzle me when it comes from conservatives. I would have thought that to be "conservative" would be to lean more heavily on the constitution as it is set up rather than allowing for ad hoc adjustments by whatever person happens to be in office at the time.