Tina Smith: “I rise today to right a wrong. I am doing so on behalf of myself and Mr. Wyden, Mr. Allard, Mr. Bayh, Mr. Bond, Mr.…”

“I rise today to right a wrong. I am doing so on behalf of myself and Mr. Wyden, Mr. Allard, Mr. Bayh, Mr. Bond, Mr. Brownback, Mr. Miller, Mr. Nickles, Mr. Santorum, and Mr. Specter. For far too many years, Americans who have been murdered overseas by terrorists have not been receiving the full weight of equal justice under the law, a fundamental principle of our governance. This is happening while we are in the midst of trying to introduce the institutions of democracy, including the notion of a fair judicial system, to a skeptical part of the world. This is happening while we are in the midst of a War on Terrorism. This double standard of justice sends out a pernicious, mixed message to would-be terrorists around the world. It suggests that we are weak in our resolve to prosecute certain terrorists who have murdered certain American citizens. It wrongly sends the message that certain American lives are more valuable and more worthy of justice than others. Or as the mother of Mathew Eisenfeld, a young Yale University graduate who was killed in 1996, together with his young fiance, Sara Ducker, a Barnard College graduate, put it, "it makes me feel that my son's blood is less American than others." When our embassies were attacked in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998, then Secretary of State Albright and President Clinton said, "You can run but you can't hide from the long arm of American justice.…”