( - promoted by Jennifer Daler)
The former Attorney General has a new radio ad up, in which she engages in the current Republican talking points about how terrorists should not be read Miranda rights, should not have access to the criminal courts, yada yada yada.
I was only going to roll my eyes over it and not write about it, but this morning I attended a presentation by Egil "Bud" Krogh, Jr. to the NH Bar annual meeting. As a young Nixon White House lawyer, he authorized the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's doctor's office. He told how he forgot that his duty and loyalty weren't supposed to be to Richard Nixon, but to the country, and the Constitution. He forgot that, and engaged in an act that violated the constitutional right of the people to be secure in their persons and houses. They did it, he said, under the mistaken idea that national security trumped the Constitution.
When he realized how wrong that was, he pled guilty and served jail time.
That talk reminded me of how people in all branches of government, or people who want to hold elective office, should read the Constitution from time to time. Given Ms. Ayotte's desire to represent us in the United States Senate, she should pay particular attention to the 5th and 6th Amendments.
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The Fifth Amendment, like the rest of the Constitution, is pretty plainly written. "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, uness on a presentmnet or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of waror public danger." It does not say any citizen, it does not say any person who we think committed a particular kind of crime, it says any person. And, note how it refers to a capital or "otherwise infamous crime".
The Sixth Amendment also is plainly written, and gives rights to the accused in criminal prosecutions, including speedy trials, being informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, etc. It also does not say citizens, it also does not exclude any category of crime.
Terrorists who blow up buildings, or who blow up planes, or commit other heinous crimes, should be held accountable. Our Constitution provides the framework to hold them accountable - our criminal justice system. As a lawyer, it offends me that a former state Attorney General is campaigning on a platform of tossing the Constitution aside like a candy wrapper because she thinks it will help her get elected. It would offend me if anyone did it, but when a lawyer, especially one who was an attorney general, does it, it is doubly offensive. It is an anti-constitutional platform.
There have been terrorist acts in the United States in other periods in our country's history, both domestic and otherwise. Our Constitution, and our criminal justice system, handled them. For example, terrorists tried to assassinate President Harry Truman in Washington; they murdered one policeman and wounded two others in an unsuccessful attempt to invade the Blair House, where Truman was lving at the time. One shooter died in the attack; the other was convicted of murder in the United States District Court in DC. Interestingly, he was sentenced to death, but President Truman commuted the sentence a week before the scheduled execution. In 1954, terrorists actually opened fire from the gallery of the House of Representatives, wounding five. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death; President Eisenhower commuted the death sentences.
No one thinks of Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower as weak kneed guys who didn't protect our national security.
Campaigning on a platform to set aside over 200 years of constitutional history, using the excuse of national security, because you think it will make you look tough, and will help you get elected, shows a lack of loyalty to the constitutional principles on which our country is based.
I wonder where Kelly Ayotte would draw the line? That is another question the anti-constitutionalists like Ms. Ayotte do not answer. Once you start down the path of putting the Constitution aside, when do you stop? Who makes the decision as to what crime should be taken outside the constitutional system? Who gets to decide which persons aren't "person enough" to be tried in the criminal justice system?
I like and respect our Constitution; I wish everyone running for office liked it and respected it as well.
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