From Right Side News: Libertarian extremists, who purport to be the face of the tea party movement, and their pals on the Lawyer Left, whose obsession is more rights for mass-murderers, are again making common cause. Their target, once more, is the detention procedure codified in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This time the ringleaders are Representatives Justin Amash (R., MI) and Adam Smith (D., WA). With a new NDAA up for consideration, these congressmen are reprising the starring role played a few months back by Sen. Rand Paul (R., KY). I argued in opposition to Sen. Paul’s gambit here and here.
Under the Smith-Amash amendment, if al Qaeda were to dispatch the second coming of Mohamed Atta & Co. to execute another 9/11-style atrocity in the United States, but this time the FBI managed to apprehend them, they would be given the full rights of American civilian defendants. They could not be detained under the laws of war, they could not be held at Guantanamo Bay for trial by military commission. Instead, they would be treated like garden variety crooks: given Miranda warnings, quickly assigned counsel, held in a civilian prison, eligible for prompt bail hearings, entitled to the full breadth of discovery mandated by civilian due process, and given a full-blown, Grade-A civilian trial in a civilian federal court – just like the trial the Obama administration tried to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other surviving 9/11 plotters until public outrage and congressional opposition induced the administration to back down.
Read more here.