Whose Side Are They On?

Is our federal government schizophrenic (rhetorical question)?

The surviving Boston Marathon bomber was giving information freely to FBI and anti-terrorism investigators about his and his brother's actions concerning the attack on the Boston Marathon and potential future attacks, one of which, apparently, was to travel to New York City with the rest of their explosive devices (at least one of which was another pressure-cooker bomb) and detonate them at Times Square.

I say he was giving information freely. That was until the arrival of a Magistrate Judge and an official from the U.S. Attorney's Office (unannounced) to Mirandize the SOB.

Let me get this straight.  The U.S. Attorney's Office is a sub-section of the Justice Department, which is headed by Attorney General Eric Holder.  The same Justice Department that invoked the "public safety exception" to Miranda to facilitate information gathering and the intelligence debriefing of the suspect.  Yet, after only 16 hours (there is no official time limit on the exception, but many had expected it to be as long as 30 days) this judge shows up, with an administration official in tow, and effectively shuts down the interrogation at the hospital, bringing the investigation to a temporary halt and infuriating the FBI agents in charge.  Predictably, Tsarnaev has quit cooperating and has refused to answer any further questions.

I'll admit to being a little torn on the question of Miranda for this particular individual.  On the one hand, he is a legalized American citizen.  As such he is legally entitled to the same Constitutional protections afforded to natural-born citizens.  Ironically, he took his Oath of Citizenship on Sept. 11th.  On the other, a terrorist bombing is rightly considered an Act of War, which in my mind should disqualify any consideration of Constitutional protections for the perpetrators.

The drama doesn't end with this particular judge (we'll come back to her in a moment).  It's been revealed that the Tsarnaev brothers, along with their parents, were on welfare for several years.  In effect, the taxpayers, themselves funded the terrorism perpetrated on them.  Any attempt to get information concerning the extent and amount of public assistance has been stonewalled by Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick, citing their "right to privacy".  Your right to privacy can be violated for cause, government employees' and officials' pay is open to public view, the pay of Senators and Congressmen is available online, but the privacy of a terrorist receiving public welfare benefits (and most likely tuition for the college courses he was failing) is, apparently, sacrosanct.  What is the Governor hiding?  He refused to divulge information to Boston papers, but the fact that the Tsarnaevs were receiving welfare payments was given to the New York Times?  There are rumors that Gov. Patrick is considering a run for President in 2016 and wants to keep in the good graces of the Times in order to gain their endorsement.

So, why all this high level activity to shield a terrorist from scrutiny?  Is he one of "my people" that AG Holder once is reported to have said he would not prosecute (this was in reference to the voter intimidation case in Philadelphia in 2010)?  If so, why did his office invoke the exception to Miranda in the first place?  Is it because they didn't anticipate the younger Tsarnaev's being so cooperative with his interrogators and were nervous about what he might say?  Maybe Obama and Holder were concerned with how the prosecution of a Muslim terrorist, sans full Constitutional rights, would be perceived in the Middle East?  Any way you look at it, it smacks of political correctness and bias towards Muslims and Islamic extremists.  Which brings us back to the judge who took it upon herself to bring everything to a screeching halt.

District Court Judge Marianne Bowler is her name.  She arrived at the hospital room to preside over Tsarnaev's hearing and to read him his rights.  Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators’ questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.

Judge Bowler has some interesting tidbits in her background linking her with the Muslim Brotherhood and other pro-Muslim organizations.  She describes herself as "a dedicated international traveler".  To what is she so "dedicated"?  She has, apparently in her capacity as a member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, visited several Muslim countries, where she spoke in front of dignitaries and officials, being the first female granted such status to speak in the country of Kuwait, also speaking to audiences in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.  Her speaking engagement in Egypt was "post Morsi", meaning that she had to receive the permission of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to appear.  Other than a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, these make up the extent of her official overseas visits.  All in Muslim countries.  Has she, like John Brennan, been greatly influenced by her exposure to Muslim culture?

All of this high level interference with the investigation, along with the insistence that it be prosecuted according to civil criminal statute, as opposed to military tribunal with Tsarnaev being treated as an "enemy combatant" seems to me to be carefully calculated to make the prosecution of the case as difficult and lengthy as possible.  The question is, Why?  Why would American government officials go out of their way to shelter a terrorist?  Whose side are they on?

UPDATE:

From theBlaze.com,  Remember the Arab national that was initially apprehended running away from the scene immediately after the blast by an alert bystander?  Whatever happened to him?  According to Glenn Beck, he has gone from “person of interest, to witness, to victim, to nobody.”  How and why was this individual so quickly dismissed, when the suspect was known to security officials as a risk and was on the DHS terrorist watch list and no-fly list?   The FBI has reportedly said that they believe there is yet a 3rd suspect at large, yet there's almost no mention of this in the mainstream media or from the administration.
 

"We Got Him!"

With those three words a block party broke out all over the greater Boston area last night.

Well, my original plan was to regale you with further (hopefully) humorous details of my continuing misadventures with Murphy.  The events in Boston changed all that.

On Monday the Boston Marathon, an American--even worldwide--tradition of more than a century, was forever changed by two brothers engaged in Jihad.  Whether their actions were simply their own, or if they had received training and/or support from larger terrorist organizations is yet to be fully determined.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and his younger brother Dzhokhar plotted and carried out the only successful terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11/01, killing 3 and injuring nearly 200 runners and bystanders near the finish line of the Boston Marathon using IEDs made out of pressure cookers, a technique common to Islamic terrorists in Europe and throughout the Middle East.

The immediate aftermath resulted in dozens of square blocks being taped off and locked down as a crime scene.  Later in the week authorities released surveillance photos of the two suspects and asked citizens to come forward with any information.  After the photos were released, it appears that the brothers reacted to the pressure of possibly being identified and attempted to flee the area, carjacking an individual and robbing him of several hundred dollars before, inexplicably, letting him go.  The victim said that they were bragging about being the "Boston Bombers".

The two also allegedly murdered a young MIT police officer who was responding to a disturbance on campus.  The 26 year old officer leaves behind a young wife and child.

The stolen SUV was identified and the police engaged in a rolling firefight during a 5 mile chase during which they exchanged dozens of gunshots and the two fugitives lobbed homemade grenades and pipe bombs at the officers.  When they were brought to bay, so to speak, they engaged in a shootout with police during which the older brother, Tamerlan, charged the police carrying another one of the pressure cooker bombs.  Thankfully, he was taken down and killed by the officers before he could deliver the bomb and the bomb also failed to explode, giving investigators invaluable evidence to compare with the remnants of the two bombs set off at the race.

After seeing his brother go down, and wounded himself, Dzhokhar left his brother lying in the street and attempted to escape.  The police responded by locking down the entire neighborhood and much of the greater Boston area, shutting down all mass transit, telling people to stay in their homes and off the street, telling businesses to remain closed until further notice and conducting a house-to-house search that resulted in the eventual discovery and apprehension of the second terrorist, thanks in large part to a civilian who called in to report suspicious activity in their back yard.  They found him wounded and hiding in a boat.  After confirming his presence with a remote controlled robot, police used a "flash/bang grenade" lobbed into the stern of the boat to stun him and then took him into custody.  He is currently in the hospital undergoing surgery and is in critical condition.

The immediate threat is, hopefully, over.  Authorities will need to wait until the suspect recovers before they can begin to interrogate him about potential associates.  Three individuals have been picked up and questioned in connection with the activities of the two brothers, but have not been named as suspects or arrested.

There is no way to know the number of lives saved by the swift resolution of this attack.  A search of the brother's apartment revealed an "arsenal" of weapons and IEDs.  It's obvious that at least one additional attack was planned.

Reaction from the family was a contrast of two extremes, with an uncle stating they brought disgrace to the family and to the Chechen ethnicity as a whole, and that he thought they were "losers" and were motivated by resentment and hatred for others who had come to America and were able to integrate themselves in the society and succeed, something they didn't/couldn't do, while their father, in a statement from Russia, said they were "angels" and that they were obviously framed and that the police were "cowards" who shot his son rather than attempt to take him under arrest.

It's not clear where/when exactly the brothers became radicalized into Islam and Jihad.  School mates said that they weren't especially religious, although the older brother in particular had shown an increased interest in his religion over the last couple of years and his social media accounts showed disturbing images, including uploads of pro-terrorist videos and anti-American screeds.

I wonder when we're going to get apologies from our own radical elements on the left?  The ones who said that they hoped the bombers would be "white American males" and perhaps "elements of radical Tea Party Patriot extremist groups" and "right-wing extremists"?  It turns out, as it usually does, that the perpetrators of mass violence such as the Boston bombing were young, radicalized Islamist males.  It wasn't some right-wing nutcase with a beef against the government, it was young Muslim males who had made the decision to engage in Jihad against the "infidels" of the West.

If we don't all of us, left and right, get on the same page in regards to the battle against terrorism and terrorist groups and their plots and get rid of all of the political correctness nonsense that declares that we can't call a spade a spade, can't identify terrorism and terrorists for what they are; that we have to refer to terrorist activities by euphemisms such as "workplace violence" and "man-caused disasters", and that we can't take the steps necessary to protect ourselves out of a fear of being labeled "intolerant bigots" and "profiling", the post-9/11 environment in America won't simply be the "new normal" but will only be the beginning of a dark age of violence usually associated with societies in Iraq, Syria, Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East, where such sudden deathly violence has become an accepted way of life and personal liberty and freedom no longer exists.

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UPDATE:

Late news reports have revealed that the FBI, acting on an advisory from a foreign government (assumed to be either Russian Intelligence or Israel) that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was a potential threat had questioned him back in 2011 then released him after determining there was no terrorist threat or involvement in terrorist activity, or any association with known terrorist groups.  Was this a failure to "connect the dots"?  Or was it the result of this administration's desire to avoid antagonizing Muslims and Islamists?