This senator says “due process is what’s killing us right now”—he couldn’t be more wrong

Speaking on MSNBC on Thursday, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, argued that due process is to blame for mass shootings like this week’s horrific attack in Orlando:

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The problem we have—and really, the firewall we have right now, is due process. It’s all due process.

So we can all say, ‘Yeah, we want the same thing,’ but how do we get there? If a person is on a terrorist watch list like the gentleman—the shooter—in Orlando, he was, twice by the FBI, we were briefed yesterday about what happened. But that man was brought in twice. They did everything they could. The FBI did everything they were supposed to do. But there was no way for them to keep him on the nix list or keep him off the gun buy list. There was no way to do that.

So can’t we say that if a person is under suspicion, there should be a five-year period of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits? Maybe we can come to that type of an agreement.

But due process is what’s killing us right now.

Manchin couldn’t be more wrong: due process is not a threat to Americans; it’s a vital protection of our lives and liberty.

Constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute explains:

With all due respect, due process is the essential basis of America. The Constitution was established to “secure the blessings of liberty”—that’s the whole purpose of our government—and that government can’t deny us our life, liberty, or property without due process of law. If the government wants to deny someone’s liberty, it better have an awfully good reason and it better be ready to defend itself in court immediately—akin to what happens when someone is arrested or involuntarily committed. Otherwise, we’d live in a world where perhaps there’s less crime, but also life isn’t worth living. Senator Manchin may want to live in a police state, but few of us would want to join him there.

Beyond such arguments of law and principle, practical experience shows that the denial of due process rights doesn’t make us safer. The NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance tramples Americans’ due process rights but has never stopped a significant terrorist attack. Ditto the TSA’s warrantless groping at the airport. In fact, the PATRIOT Act itself—the law most people remember when they think of post-9/11 assaults on our civil liberties—has never helped crack a big case.

What abandoning due process has produced is a dead American teenager, intentionally assassinated by an American drone strike even though he wasn’t suspected or accused of any criminal activity. It led to Japanese Americans being locked away in internment camps during World War II. It led to the job losses of McCarthyism, unconstitutional wiretapping and metadata collection, and civil asset forfeiture.

Senator Manchin and others who would throw due process out the window in the name of security should recall this recent history so we are not doomed to repeat it.

What do you think?

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