Depoliticizing Debate on Miranda: Amen

Philip Mudd, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote a compelling op-ed in the Washington Post today, calling out the excesses of the debate around Miranda rights. Human Rights First couldn’t agree more:

Our goals in these situations are to protect lives and guard American civil liberties. These goals are not at odds. The law allows us to ask a detainee questions that can save lives…

Mudd calls out the politicizing of the issue:

The issue of Miranda may offer great political theater and great dramatic
theater on TV, but theater isn’t real life. Somehow in the wonderland of
Washington, we have transformed what should be a conversation on a national
security issue into a politicized prize fight, replete with the suggestion that
whoever’s on the other side is against the national interest. I ain’t buying it.

We aren’t buying it either. That’s why we’re in Philadelphia today. Human Rights First is working with retired military leaders, who are discussing these issues with congressional candidates, urging them to think about Miranda and the investigation and prosecution of terrorism in terms of national security and not politics.