WASHINGTON -- Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann, never one to miss an opportunity to promote conservative boilerplate, is now claiming that offering a federal court trial to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks is a "slap in the face" to not only victims of the tragedy -- but all Americans everywhere.
The right to a fair trial, Bachmann said in a press release Wednesday, is one of the "benefits and perks reserved for American citizens."
Bachmann's words echo the claims made by a number of others at a recent rally in New York, where protesters lamented that 9/11 perpetrators had "the same rights as U.S. citizens" and argued that due process was "reserved for U.S. citizens."
The Washington Independent counters:
In fact, the “right” to be prosecuted in a U.S. federal court has never been “reserved” for U.S. citizens at all. It’s historically been a “right” accorded to anyone who commits a crime on U.S. soil. Thus everyone from a U.S.-born citizen to an illegal alien who commits a federal crime in the United States gets tried in federal court. Although the government has just recently created special military commissions to try some crimes against U.S. military targets abroad, we don’t normally create new courts or legal systems to try non-citizens who commit mass murder, mail fraud, or any other crimes that might land them in federal court.
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