Political Quotes

“I will be glad to yield to my friend from Illinois. Let me just try to set the stage the best I can. And I would love to have Senator Levin weigh in and anyone else. The law, as it exists today, to my good friend from Illinois, has long held that when an American citizen collaborates with the enemy, that is an act of war, not a common crime. The constitutional review provided by the Supreme Court in cases involving American citizens collaborating with the enemy has said that we view that as an act of war and we apply the law of war. So our Supreme Court, in the Hamdi case just a few years ago, upheld the ruling in the In re Quirin case, which went back to World War II. In that case, we had American citizens assisting Nazi saboteurs. The Supreme Court ruled that citizenship status does not prevent someone from being treated as part of the enemy force when they choose to join the enemy. Why is this important? My good friend from Illinois is an intel officer. Intelligence gathering is part of war. An enemy combatant can be interrogated by our military intelligence community without Miranda rights. They can be held for an indefinite period of time to be questioned about past, present, and future attacks. The Supreme Court has legitimized that process because the individual in question was an American citizen captured in Afghanistan. He pled to the Court: You cannot hold me as an enemy combatant because I am an American citizen.…”