Glenn Beck is one of the favorite targets around here. Lord knows I can't stand the guy, and I think he is one of the people most responsible for stirring up hatred of President Obama, inciting racial violence, political violence, and generally making a mockery of the founding principles of this country.
Nonetheless, this is a site that deals in reality, not - as Beck so often does - in fantasy. And the reality is that this morning, on Fox and Friends, Glenn Beck defended the duty of the Obama administration to read accused terrorist Faisal Shahzad his Miranda rights.
You read that correctly. Glenn Beck defended the Constitution. And he should be acknowledged for doing so.
And here are some Beck lines I wrote down as I listened to it:
He has all rights [of a citizen] under the Constitution. ... We don't shred the Constitution when it's popular. We do the right thing.
He is a citizen of the United States. So I say we uphold the law.
The Constitution always must be the basis we stand on.
You don't shred the Constitution. Ever.
One of the other panelists, Judge Andrew Napolitano, listed on the chryon as a Fox legal analyst, was making the same point. But the rest of the panel, which seemed stunned at Beck's stand, kept jumping on Beck. "What about an imminent attack?" "How many [citiznes] have tried to blow up a city block?" Which is why Beck had to repeat himself at least twice: "We don't shred the Constitution."
As Beck himself acknowledged, "it's not a popular answer." Certainly it will not be popular with the Tea Partiers whom Beck helped create - and who already have a reputation for turning on their own when they stray from the orthodoxy of the moment. Beck didn't look happy when he said it, either, suggesting he knows what's coming.
I did take note that Beck made a distinction between this case and prior ones by harping on the fact that Shahzad is a citizen, hinting that the same rights would not apply to non-citizens arrested in the US. That's a distinction without a difference, to my mind, since the Constitution does not distinguish between the rights of citizens and non-citizens in this matter.
But that caveat aside, Glenn Beck needs to be commended for his position. In the interests of honesty, fair play - and most importantly, reality - we need to acknowledge when people we normally disagree with say something with which we agree.