Glenn Beck's right on Miranda, Lindsey Graham isn't

I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong when it came to the identity of the would-be Times Square bomber. I was absolutely positive it was going to be a crazy old white guy. Not that I have a problem with crazy old white guys. Nope. I hope to be one of them. The crazier the better.

In fact, I look forward to the day in the not-so-distant future when I’m sitting in a rocker on the front porch just waiting for a bunch of no-good kids to try to walk across my front yard. Why? I want to do what any crazy old white guy would do: I want to shout, “Get off of my lawn,” and threaten to shoot them with a nanobot-powered Shatner rifle, which will cause them to immediately piss themselves while reciting the opening monologue to Star Trek. They don’t call them the golden years for nothing.

Of course, I didn’t need to tell you guys about my theory. After all, you had no idea I thought a crazy old white guy was behind the botched bombing. But in my defense, old white guys just seem to be so much more motivated than everybody else when it comes to political matters.

They go to city council meetings. They attend Tea Party rallies. Hell, I’d be willing to bet pesos to flan de leche that if every day was election day, they’d be out there casting ballots and counting them. Simply put: Old white guys get shit done.

But that’s not who was behind the Times Square dud. Nah. It was a 30-year-old Pakistani-born American named Faisal Shahzad. Not surprisingly, Shahzad’s arrest was the hot topic last week on the cable news shows, especially Fox & Friends.

See, the subject came up about whether or not Shahzad should be read his Miranda rights — you know, the rights that tell you that you don’t have to tell the authorities shit, that is unless you want to incriminate yourself. And apparently, Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade just couldn’t see eye to eye. It seems Kilmeade thinks there’s something wrong with reading Shahzad his Miranda rights, while Beck does not.

Beck said, “He’s a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution,” to which Kilmeade replied, “He’s a threat to the country. That’s different.” Later, Beck said, “We don’t shred the Constitution when it’s popular. We do the right thing.”

Like Beck, I like the Constitution. The 1st Amendment is my fave, with the 2nd Amendment coming in, well, second. I think that the American people should be able to possess the same kind of weapons as Uncle Sam, otherwise it’s not really a fair fight — and frankly, that’s what the 2nd Amendment is all about, making sure that the American people can overthrow the government if necessary. Uncle Sam’s our bitch; we’re not his.

Which brings us to Lindsey Graham. South Carolina’s senior senator recently let it be known that he would oppose a bill that would prevent Americans on the terrorist watch list from purchasing guns.

According to The Huffington Post, “Graham described the bill as an instrument of those who would ban guns altogether. ‘We’re talking about a constitutional right here,’ he said, explaining that he could not support a bill that would force ‘innocent Americans’ to ‘pay the cost of going to court to get their gun rights back.’ ”

Lindsey’s right. Just because you’re on the terrorist watch list that doesn’t make you a terrorist, and it certainly doesn’t take away your rights as an American. However, Graham apparently doesn’t care about reading Miranda to Americans who’ve been arrested for some sort of terrorism-related activity.

The Post reports that “Graham wasn’t nearly as concerned about rights when he launched into a disquisition on the treatment of American citizens accused of terrorism. ‘I am all into national security,’ he said. ‘I want them to stop reading these guys Miranda rights.’ ”

Graham added, “Even if you’re an American citizen helping the enemy, you should be seen as a potential enemy, not as someone who committed a crime in New York.”

Geez, I hate to say this, but Glenn Beck needs to talk some sense to this guy.