Senator Mitch McConnell On Casey Anthony Trial

From Talking Points Memo, 11 July 2011.  This is a United States Senator, for crying out loud.  I'm flabbergasted.

 McConnell On Casey Anthony Trial: It Means Terrorists Could Win

(by Ryan J. Reilly):

The top Republican in the Senate invoked the high-profile acquittal of Casey Anthony on charges she murdered her daughter as a reason to oppose the use of civilian trials for terrorism suspects.

"These are not American citizens. We just found with the Caylee Anthony case how difficult is to get a conviction in a U.S. court," Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on "Fox News Sunday." McConnell has called on the Obama administration to place suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay and prosecute them in the military justice system.

"I don't think a foreigner is entitled to all the protections of the Bill of Rights. They should not be in U.S. courts. They should be at Guantanamo and before military commissions," McConnell said.

Late update: In an email to TPM, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart writes "the Administration itself has tacitly acknowledged that once a foreign national is brought into this country and into the civilian system, the ability to indefinitely detain them is lost, regardless of whether they are convicted in a civilian court of criminal offenses. Civilian courts have ordered released into this country foreign nationals who have been convicted of violent felonies after the United States has been unable to deport them. That problem does not exist if foreign terrorists are detained at Guantanamo Bay."

Just read that last para again: "...the ability to indefinitely detain them is lost..." and "That problem does not exist if foreign terrorists are detained at Guantanamo Bay." 

Well, duh, a lot of inconveniences like trials and juries and judges and courtrooms would surely go away if justice was dispensed via a quick bullet in the head.  In fact, that's such a good idea that the police really should have just whacked the entire Anthony family--Casey, Mom, Dad, brother--to save the nation the inconvenience of a trial and the circus that became. 

Let's extend the "logic."  Why not--since we KNOW that Iran is the real bad guy in the Middle East--just nuke Tehran right now. And then we won't even have to rassle with those pesky questions about whether to keep Guantanamo open or invoke military tribunals for any Iranians.  They'll be pre-emptively dead and we won't need those messy civilian trials.

Looks like Diane at Cab Drollery on 12 July had similar outrage.