Uh...Constitutional rights are for CITIZENS (inform Democraps of this also).
I don’t know where this meme that Constitutional Rights are for CITIZENS started but its patently untrue.
The First Amendment refers to the rights of the people not citizens.
The Second Amendment refers to the rights of the people not citizens.
The Fourth Amendment refers to the rights of persons.
The Fifth Amendment refers to the rights of persons.
Now the Fourteenth Amendments speaks of both citizens and persons.
“...No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Because the Privileges and Immunities clause refers to citizens, Congress and the President can make laws which treats citizens and non-citizens differently, such as Medicaid, welfare, or any government benefits whatsoever.
But since the second half speaks of persons and not citizens, no one may be deprived of their Due Process and Equal Protection protections.
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The issue here isn’t whether non-citizens have constitutional rights, the issue here is whether unlawful enemy combatants are to have constitutional rights.
Under the Geneva Convention, before an enemy combatant may be punish, he must have a hearing before a “regularly constituted court”, but it is clear that enemy combatants don’t enjoy all the rights accorded to non-combatants.
The Supreme Court have stated, on every occasion when this issue has been presented to them, that enemy combatants do not enjoy the full spectrum of Constitutional rights.
In “Hamdi v. Rumsfeld”, the Supreme Court in a plurality found that the US government has the right to hold indefinitely unlawful combatants but did find that detainee who were US citizens have the right to have a hearing before an impartial judge.
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What’s amazing here is that the Obama Administration has granted these unlawful/enemy combatants full due process and equal protection rights, when the law clearly find that they shouldn’t.
And what is really frightening is that yes if these terrorist are given full rights they should have their cases dismissed since their rights have been clearly violated.