KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Courtesy of the AP and ABC news: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mass-police-bomb-suspects-gun-permit-19011300#.UXSn2cpu_j8

A Massachusetts police official say the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon before having shootouts with authorities didn't have gun permits.

Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas tells The Associated Press in an interview Sunday that neither Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) nor his brother Dzhokhar had permission to carry firearms.

He says it's unclear whether either ever applied and the applications aren't considered public records.

But he says the 19-year-old Dzhokhar (joh-KHAR') would have been denied a permit because of his age. Only people 21 or older are allowed gun licenses in Massachusetts.

The suspects were also accused of hijacking a Mercedes on Thursday night.

Haas says the pair didn't release the driver, but he escaped when he was left alone while the two men entered a convenience store.

 Seaward wrote:
I think the guns are pretty irrelevant.

I think they should stay pretty irrelevant.

Unfortunately, now that the fervent hope that this was someone left-wing nutbags could link to the Tea Party or the KKK or Ronald Reagan has died, I suspect they're going to take center stage at some of the screechier outlets.

 d-usa wrote:
Look: X was against the law, and people still did X!

What's the point of outlawing home-made bombs!

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Look: X was against the law, and people still did X!

What's the point of outlawing home-made bombs!

Yah, I know... before you know it, we'd all done things that can land us in jail...

Did ya know that certain states, the non-missionary sex is still illegal on the books?

 d-usa wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
I think the guns are pretty irrelevant.

I think they should stay pretty irrelevant.

Unfortunately, now that the fervent hope that this was someone left-wing nutbags could link to the Tea Party or the KKK or Ronald Reagan has died, I suspect they're going to take center stage at some of the screechier outlets.

You know who else was crossing their fingers really hard and wishing on a star?

It wasn't just the people going "please let it be one of them..."

There were also plenty on the other side of the political spectrum wishing really hard "please, don't let it be one of ours." There is a reason the right kept quiet.

 d-usa wrote:

You know who else was crossing their fingers really hard and wishing on a star?

It wasn't just the people going "please let it be one of them..."

There were also plenty on the other side of the political spectrum wishing really hard "please, don't let it be one of ours." There is a reason the right kept quiet.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
I think the guns are pretty irrelevant.

I think they should stay pretty irrelevant.

Unfortunately, now that the fervent hope that this was someone left-wing nutbags could link to the Tea Party or the KKK or Ronald Reagan has died, I suspect they're going to take center stage at some of the screechier outlets.

You know who else was crossing their fingers really hard and wishing on a star?

It wasn't just the people going "please let it be one of them..."

There were also plenty on the other side of the political spectrum wishing really hard "please, don't let it be one of ours." There is a reason the right kept quiet.

Honestly... do you really believe that?

That one person, or a group of people can damn a ideology like the right? or the left? or the socialist? or the Ever-Love'n-Dachshund?

The true simple matter is that there are donkey-caves who will do some fething heinous things because they are reprehensible donkey-caves... using whatever flimsy justification to support their endeavors.

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

You know who else was crossing their fingers really hard and wishing on a star?

It wasn't just the people going "please let it be one of them..."

There were also plenty on the other side of the political spectrum wishing really hard "please, don't let it be one of ours." There is a reason the right kept quiet.

I believe we've made that point on each of the last six or seven pages of the thread so far.

 d-usa wrote:

I am sorry, I was thinking that your post was implying that the left was stupid for thinking it might have been somebody on the right.

 d-usa wrote:


I don't believe that.

But people are pretending that the left was sitting around going "I hope it was a tea party nutjob" while pretending that the right was not worried about it being somebody crazy from their side of the political spectrum. They were worried, there was a reason they didn't do too much finger pointing because they didn't want to point it towards potential allies.

The right found themselves in a position that most Muslims in the USA are all to familiar with. Thinking "crap, I hope it wasn't one of us..."

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

I am sorry, I was thinking that your post was implying that the left was stupid for thinking it might have been somebody on the right.

No, it was pretty clearly saying that the left is likely to be stupid and make this about their pet issue du jour now that their pet theory du jour didn't pan out.

And I didn't get any worry from the right. I did get a lot of, "This is clearly Muslims, feth immigration, guys," though. Anyone drawing conclusions - or hoping - about the identity of the bomber(s) was an idiot, left or right.

 whembly wrote:

That one person, or a group of people can damn a ideology like the right? or the left? or the socialist? or the Ever-Love'n-Dachshund?

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

That one person, or a group of people can damn a ideology like the right? or the left? or the socialist? or the Ever-Love'n-Dachshund?

It happens all the time.

Spoiler:

edited...

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
I think the guns are pretty irrelevant.

I think they should stay pretty irrelevant.

Unfortunately, now that the fervent hope that this was someone left-wing nutbags could link to the Tea Party or the KKK or Ronald Reagan has died, I suspect they're going to take center stage at some of the screechier outlets.

You know who else was crossing their fingers really hard and wishing on a star?

It wasn't just the people going "please let it be one of them..."

There were also plenty on the other side of the political spectrum wishing really hard "please, don't let it be one of ours." There is a reason the right kept quiet.

Honestly... do you really believe that?

That one person, or a group of people can damn a ideology like the right? or the left? or the socialist? or the Ever-Love'n-Dachshund?

The true simple matter is that there are donkey-caves who will do some fething heinous things because they are reprehensible donkey-caves... using whatever flimsy justification to support their endeavors.

 dogma wrote:
Maybe take down the picture of the guy without legs.

 master of ordinance wrote:
New update, Vehicle seen at about 13.00 yesterday, no keys in it.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Depends on how reputable you consider Republicans.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Please site one conspiracy theory I've posted. Other than my suggestion that Putin was morally capable of ordering such an act if he thought he had something to gain.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Since I don't know how big they were, or what quantity of explosive they contained, or how many were expended, I can't say for sure, but it sounds like about 20 min work, a little longer if they screwed up the first few. As I pointed out to Fraz, you can buy ten pounds of explosives legally, in a lot of places, over the counter. Wal Mart carries them around here.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
True, but in this case the 'impromptu' part screams 'amateur'. If you put thought into an attack, and it's not a suicide attack, then most people would put the same amount of thought into their exit strategy, because even if you're going to carry out more attacks, you need to have a plan to get away from the initial attack and you have to assume that you will be ID'd. If these are our guys, they put near zero thought into even evading capture long enough to set up their next attack.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
The sheer tinfoil hat stupidity in this thready is ridiculous.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Courtesy of the AP and ABC news: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mass-police-bomb-suspects-gun-permit-19011300#.UXSn2cpu_j8

 whembly wrote:

Sorry dude...

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Don't dodge the question, who was it who made the accusation, and are they reputable. I didn't ask what party they belonged to.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

You mean other than claiming that the suspect was going to be disappeared, placed before a military court, how the police "disappeared" evidence of a murder. You know, those things that I posted earlier from you. Then we have your Nazi Germany comparisons and posts about how a country doesn't become totalitarian overnight.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

But then again you don't trust the FBI or the police so I'm not sure exactly what you expect when your own prejudices and sympathies lie with the suspect.

 Frazzled wrote:
You mean other than
1. pics of them at the bombing shortly before it occurred.

 Frazzled wrote:

2. an eye witness at the bombing identifying one as dropping the backpack that went off.

 Frazzled wrote:

3. incriminating call and conversation with the person who's vehicle they hijacked (who managed to escape).

 Frazzled wrote:

4. a running gun battle with the police where they used a grenade, pipe bomb, and tried to use a pressure cooker bomb.

 Frazzled wrote:

5. Discovery of multiple IEDs at their residence?

 Frazzled wrote:

Dude, if I am ever on trial I want you on the jury.

I glossed over this in my last post, but I would like to reiterate something I said over a decade ago when the World Trade Center was still smoldering. I was in a class with Gary Hart of all people. Yes, that Gary Hart.

And the debate was about whether we can declare war on what is in essence a terrorist organization. I was in favor and I made many legalistic arguments, but you always make policy arguments after the legal arguments, especially at this school, and I made this point I am about to make now.

When you try to treat something that is best treated as war as a matter of criminal law, you inevitably warp the criminal law, too. After all, treating it as a matter of criminal law is less efficient, less effective.

And so the temptation is to stretch the law to be more efficient. For instance, right now we believe we have killed or captured all the men who left the bombs at the Boston Marathon. But are we sure we have gotten all the bombs? Are we sure we have all the co-conspirators? Well, obviously, we must find out, and if we read him those pesky Miranda rights, which tell him that he has a right to remain silent, then he just might shut up!

Indeed under the Miranda regime, once he says he wants a lawyer, all questioning must stop until they get him one. And then who knows how that lawyer might interfere. Plus, lawyers create their own problems, such as intelligence leaks. The Lynne Stewart case comes to mind.

So today we find out that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has not been Mirandized. Now of course the Miranda rights represent one of the more brazen creations of judicial activism. I mean the Supreme Court came up with a script the cops have to say when they arrest him. Where is this script written in the Constitution? It isn’t there. But on top of it, virtually all of it informs the defendant of rights he doesn’t actually have under the original constitution. For instance, you have a right against self-incrimination, but only as a witness. It says nothing about talking under questioning. And you have a right to an attorney, but not a right to a free one. That is a right they pulled out of their keisters on another day. So they pulled out of their keisters a right to be informed of two other rights that they previously pulled out of their keisters.

You want to know how radical this is? Prior to Miranda, telling a person they had a right to remain silent and anything they said could be used against you in trial would probably be considered unauthorized practice of law by the police. They could literally have gotten in trouble for saying it depending on how broadly state authorities interpreted the term “practice of law.” But because they didn’t say it to Ernesto Miranda, even though no court had previously required them to say it, Mr. Miranda got his get-out-of-jail free card.

But there are lots of people who think it is good policy. Maybe so, but they know this policy is built on a foundation of sand. It was something imposed upon the people by the courts, rather than something we agreed to and voted on. It is not even something that our hallowed founders passed down. It’s just something a bunch of old men in robes imposed on us because they thought it was a good idea.

The point is if you like Miranda, you know it is not robust. You know it’s sandy foundation would be in danger of eroding. And the War on Terror will apply a firehose to it.

So the FBI has got Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the hospital. And the FBI says they are not mirandizing him that they are invoking the public safety exception.

The ACLU is horrified. From their website:

Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights. The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule. Additionally, every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions.

The public safety exception comes from New York v. Quarles. In that case a woman claimed to have been raped by a man with a gun. She said when he left her, she saw him enter a market. The cops went in there, tracked him down and in the chase lost sight of him for a moment. When they found him and cuffed him, they saw he had an empty shoulder holster. The arresting officer asked him where the gun was, and the defendant indicated it was in some empty cartons where it was recovered. The question was whether his statement indicating where the gun was, and the gun itself would be admitted into evidence at trial. If Miranda applied ordinarily, it wouldn’t.

In that case, the Supreme Court recognized that the danger to public justified the exception. As the Court observed:

So long as the gun was concealed somewhere in the supermarket, with its actual whereabouts unknown, it obviously posed more than one danger to the public safety: an accomplice might make use of it, a customer or employee might later come upon it.

It is far from clear that the public safety exception would apply in this case. First, that was a pretty short period of time for the exception and the evidence that there was a danger was pretty solid. His alleged victim said he had a gun. He had an empty holster. It seems utterly reasonable to think there might have been a gun in it recently.

By comparison the public safety concern is real but less urgent in this case. There might be additional conspirators we don’t know about yet. There might even be additional bombs. But I doubt we can have any certainty about that. I mean I suppose if they found ten boxes that used to hold pressure cookers and they could only account for six of them, that would be similar to an “empty holster” situation, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine that the FBI will have good reason to believe there are more bombs or conspirators unless Dzhokhar tell them about them.

But there is reason to think that the courts might expand the exception. Examine this reasoning in Quarles:

Here, had Miranda warnings deterred Quarles from responding to Officer Kraft's question about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting Quarles. Officer Kraft needed an answer to his question not simply to make his case against Quarles but to insure that further danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area.

We conclude that the need for answers to questions in a situation posing a threat to the public safety outweighs the need for the prophylactic rule protecting the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination.

In other words, if the only issue was conviction at trial, Miranda would apply. But given that there was this additional concern for public safety, Miranda does not apply. And thus you can see exactly how the Supreme Court might write an opinion further expanding Quarles to apply to this situation. It is explicit policy making. It is explicit balancing. And the temptation to give the officers more leeway may be overwhelming.

“Ah, so what?” you might say. And if you don’t like Miranda and other criminal rights then this outcome won’t bother you overly much. But the problem criminal rights advocates will have is that this precedent will be applied to all cases, not just to terrorism cases. As one justice wrote in a wholly different context:

The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes. All who observe the work of courts are familiar with what Judge Cardozo described as “the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.”

So if you care about Miranda, the last thing you should want is for it to apply to men like Dzhokhar. Barack Obama will want a conviction. He will want to prove that criminal trials for terrorists can work. Nothing would undermine that goal more than if the defendant “lawyered up” right now so he or Holder almost certainly ordered the agents not to Mirandize him and maybe even deny him access to counsel. We can be reasonably sure these agents are not doing a thing without cabinet-level, if not Presidential, approval. So he is not getting his Miranda rights, and it is uncertain whether he will at any time in the future.

And who knows what other forms of duress might be applied. Threats to deport family members perhaps? Threats to place the defendant in a prison where his life would be in danger, or he would just be regularly violated? Who knows? The temptation will be to get results and due process be damned.

And then after they do whatever they did, they will go to the court and ask them not to throw out the evidence. And the courts will be tempted not to let this guy go. He (allegedly) killed four people and wounded dozens of others. He terrorized an entire city. So they will be tempted to rationalize the constitution or the case law to allow whatever the FBI did to be treated as legal, or at least not as a fatal impediment to the case.

And the precedent would be set, and applied next not to a terrorist but some guy merely charged with robbery.

So if you care about criminal rights, the answer is to treat him as an enemy combatant. American citizens can be treated as combatants. Ask Robert E. Lee or the thousands of Confederates held in POW camps without any trial. Treat him as an enemy combatant and interrogate him as the dishonorable combatant he is. You don’t want to waterboard him? Fine, but don’t give him a lawyer during the interrogation, either. Isolate him away from the criminal justice system and then the way he is treated sets no precedent for ordinary criminal law.

For if we keep this in the criminal justice system, it will be a cancer that will inevitably erode the rights affording to criminals. While I am highly critical of Miranda, there are criminal rights I do care about. And someday this process will endanger them, too.