The hosts of Morning Joe turn to Chris Hayes to debate the merits
of a Wall Street Journal editorial called “Cheney’s Revenge,” which
suggests that the American people prefer the way Bush and Cheney dealt
with terrorists by skipping over the Miranda rights that are normally
afforded to criminals. Hayes and host Joe Scarborough disagree on
whether most Americans want Miranda rights to be applied to foreign
terrorist suspects.

Hayes argues that no matter what people want, due process of law is in
the Constitution and applies to foreign criminals and illegal
immigrants. “This is a really important point to hammer home,” Hayes
says. “The Constitution does not…simply apply to citizens. This is
absolutely 1,000 percent settled law and the 14th amendment means that
it [applies] to anyone who’s picked up and arrested.”

Scarborough counters that the Miranda rights were not applied to Nazi
prisoners of war and so do not need to be applied to those captured in
the war on terror. He also points out that war criminals have different
rights than regular criminals. Hayes counters by saying that, “you
cannot just…prior to the actual constitutional due process, dub
someone a war criminal and then deny them the due process that’s
required of the Constitution.”

—Morgan Ashenfelter

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