Political Quotes

“Simply stated, when the American citizens in question decided to give aid and comfort to the Nazis, I am very glad they were allowed to be held by the military and interrogated about the plot and what they knew, because intelligence gathering is the best way to keep us safe. I would be absolutely devastated if the Senate, for the first time in 2011, denied the ability of our military and intelligence community to interrogate somebody who came back from Pakistan and started killing people on the Mall--that we could no longer hold them as an enemy combatant and find out what they did and why they did it; that we would have to treat them as a common criminal and read them their Miranda rights. That is not the law. If that becomes the law, then we are less safe because I tell you, as we speak, the threat to our homeland is growing. Homegrown terrorists are becoming the threat of the 21st century, and now is not the time to change the law that has been in place for decades. I do hope people understand what this means. It means we would change the law so that if we caught somebody in America who went overseas to train and came back home, an American citizen who turned on the rest of us, no longer could we hold them as an enemy combatant and gather intelligence. That, to me, would be a very dangerous thing to do. I ask the Senator, who determines what the Constitution actually means; is it the Congress or the Supreme Court?”