Obama tells off McCain-Palin and tells them to stop mocking the
Constitution.  He also notes that, thanks to the failed policies of
Bush-McCain, we first need to catch OBL before we worry about reading
them their rights.

McCain-Palin, as usual, look like ignorant buffoons.

-------------------------

Obama to Palin: ‘Don’t Mock the Constitution’
September 9, 2008 by willpen

>From The Washington Post: www.washingtonpost.com


By Peter Slevin
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — Sen. Barack Obama delivered an impassioned
defense of the Constitution and the rights of terrorism suspects
tonight, striking back at one of the biggest applause lines in
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech to the GOP
convention.

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she
delivered this put-down of Obama: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to
inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone
won’t read them their rights.”

Obama had a few problems with that.

“First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you
catch ‘em,” Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a
high school gymnasium. “They should spend more time trying to catch
Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later.”

If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government’s
sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed.

“My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take
him out,” Obama said. “Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em
out.”

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago
for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs
of habeus corpus.

Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the
principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you
have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe
you’ve got the wrong person.’”

The safeguard is essential, Obama continued, “because we don’t always
have the right person.”

“We don’t always catch the right person,” he said. “We may think it’s
Mohammed the terrorist, but it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You
might think it’s Barack the bomb-thrower, but it might be Barack the
guy running for president.”

Obama turned back to Palin’s comment, although he said he was not sure
whether Palin or Rudy Giuliani said it.

“The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on
terrorism. It’s because that’s who we are. That’s what we’re
protecting,” Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising
to its feet to cheer. “Don’t mock the Constitution. Don’t make fun of
it. Don’t suggest that it’s not American to abide by what the founding
fathers set up. It’s worked pretty well for over 200 years.”

------------------

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