I haven’t talked much about the bombing at the Boston marathon and its aftermath.  Honestly, it’s because just about anything I could say would have been a “Me too!” post after better minds and writers took a whack at the subject. But there are a couple of things that I think I can add to the conversation.

I am sickened that refugee immigrants to our nation would do this.   The animals who perpetrated this atrocity were admitted to our country not because we thought they would be a good addition to our culture, but because we took pity upon them and let them come here for their own safety.  Instead of recognizing what a chance they had been given and making the most of it, as the rest of their family did, the two bombers and their parents spat in our faces.  I hope that when the inevitable trial of the surviving bastard happens, the jury hears about the financial, social, and educational assistance he enjoyed and still decided that blowing the limbs off of innocent people was a good thing.

As for what Alan calls the “non-martial martial law” that happened last week in Boston, it looked eerily like what happened in California when the LAPD was looking for a cop killer earlier this year.  I won’t get into the “Would you let the police onto your property to search for someone you know isn’t there?” question, because, again, others have said done a better job than I could in discussing the slippery slope and constitutional issues.  But the repetition of the tactics to catch a killer, tactics which failed  in both cases, was almost eery.  In both situations, it wasn’t the police that discovered the miscreant, rather it was a private citizen who reported the presence of the fugitive to police.

My question about the house-to-house searches, armored vehicles and men with guns in the street, and everything else that happened last Friday is this:  Would the police have done it if it had been one of us who was gunned down or wounded by those two jerks?  The scenario in Boston was that a police officer was killed and others were hurt during what amounted to a meeting engagement with the bombers, and the police pulled out all the stops to find, fix, and… apprehend them.  This parallels Los Angeles again where a madman killed policemen and members of their families, and the police lost their collective minds for a few days.

If, instead of killing an MIT police officer, those bozos had shot and killed an armed citizen who recognized them and tried to stop them, would the city of Boston have been on lock down and an entire district searched?  Would what amounted to a running gun battle have occurred?  Would we even be discussing police tactics at all if police personnel hadn’t been killed or wounded?

As for the bombers’ family, I suggest you listen to Bryan Suits’ latest podcast, where he plays and discusses the ‘news conference’ their mother held the other day.  In it, she decries the United States, cries on cue, and demands to know why the police had to kill her son.  Mr. Suits’ comments about her are spot-on, and I agree with just about everything he says.

There has been some furor over Miranda rights and enemy combatant status for the surviving bomber, and I think I look at it in a different way.  As for interrogation by the police for a small period of time before being read his Miranda rights, so long as the courts do not allow whatever he said to be used as evidence against him, I don’t have a problem with it.  My caveats are that the questioning has to be for a very limited time, has to do with finding out things that will stop further harm to innocents, and should not include ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques.  You get the guy talking for a few hours to make sure there aren’t other conspirators or bombs scattered around Boston, then you read him is rights and call his lawyer.  I would certainly prefer that video of the interrogation be made available to the public once any prosecution has made its way through the courts, because I think it is vital that the populace knows what is being done in their name.

As for whether or not he should be considered an ‘enemy combatant’, for once I agree with the government on this one.  The guy they caught was an American citizen, albeit an alleged murdering coward child killer of an American citizen.  Even the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre got a lawyer and a trial.  I’m not trying to defend what was done, because there is no moral way to defend it, but if we disregard the rights of the most heinous individuals in our midst, it becomes easy for the rights of the law-abiding to be disregarded.  Was what he is accused of doing an act of war?  Possibly, if he received help from outside enemies of the country.  But making an American citizen disappear into the legal limbo of “enemy combatant” status is wrong, no matter who the president happens to be.  Citizens who are accused of crimes committed here and are caught on our soil should be tried in an open court.  My feeling on this may be different for someone who was caught overseas or has proven aid from a foreign enemy.

So there you have it.  While  we work our way through investigations and trials, we must remember those who lost loved ones and were wounded in this attack, as well as those who ran toward the carnage to help.  I refuse to linger on the filth that did this to our people, and I hope that when they are convicted that they rot in obscurity instead of being made into media darlings.