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It seems we've got at least one Republican who is not on board with Sen. Lindsey Graham and crew and their talking points on whether the FBI did their job in investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the Boston Marathon bombing and on whether his brother ought to be treated as an enemy combatant.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed Friday in a shootout with police, travelled to Russia in 2012, he may have done so under an alias.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s six-month stay in Russia last year “becomes extremely important” as a key to the investigation of the Boston bombings, Rogers told NBC’s David Gregory. His visit to Russia “would lead one to believe that that’s probably where he got that final radicalization to push him to commit acts of violence and where he may have received training” in terrorist techniques. Rogers, a former FBI agent, said the FBI had questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev after being given information from a foreign intelligence service “that they were concerned about his possible radicalization.” [...]

The FBI, Rogers said, “did their due diligence and did a very thorough job” of investigating Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but when the FBI asked for more help from that foreign intelligence service, it got no further cooperation. [...]

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Pardon me if I have a problem with someone who was happy to be a cheerleader for us invading a couple of countries that were not a threat to us and the huge overreach by the Bush administration in response to 9-11, now saying that maybe the city of Boston and law enforcement there potentially overreacted because they locked down a good deal of the city, while in pursuit of suspects who were lobbing explosives in their path as they tried to escape.

JEFFREY BROWN: But 9/11 was a while ago. Have we forgotten that sense of -- in our own cities?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I don't think so, judging by the reaction.

When this is all over, I want to see a debate from people who know what they're talking about, about the wisdom of shutting down a region to chase one 19-year-old. I mean, it -- it could be an overreaction. We will wait and see.

And, also, when you go to places that suffer from these sorts of attacks, Israel and other places, one of the things they tell you is that the power and the importance of resilience and the importance of normalcy. So, say in Israel, during the Intifada days, when there would be an attack in a cafe, that cafe would be open the next day. And so the idea was to keep society normal, not to minimize what's happened, but to keep society as normal as possible.

And so I'm not sure we're achieving that with the media coverage and the shutting down an entire city.

Brooks is a decade late with his feigned concern for Americans and their response to terrorist attacks. He's also a day late and a dollar short with catching up to Chris Hayes and Jon Stewart, who both expressed similar concerns over the way Americans react to gun and crime compared to the resources they're willing to pour into the name of preventing terrorism.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Despite some blogs attempting to conflate Sen. Lindsey Graham's remarks that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev should be held as an enemy combatant with the Obama administration's decision not to read him his Miranda rights due to the public safety exemption, as Roger Cressey explained to Chris Hayes this Friday evening, Tsarnaev still going to be tried in civilian court and eventually read those rights.

Think Progress has more on that here: What You Need To Know About Why The Boston Bombing Suspect Hasn’t Been Read His Miranda Rights:

Despite initial reports to the contrary, FBI agents did not read Boston Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights immediately after he was taken into custody. Instead, they invoked what is known as the “public safety exception” to delay reading those rights to the alleged bomber. Here’s what you need to know about this narrow exception to the Miranda rule: The Public Safety Exemption Is Real

The Supreme Court first held that there is a public safety exemption to Miranda in a 1984 case known as New York v. Quarles. In Quarles a woman told police that a man with a gun raped her, and that he’d run into a nearby grocery store. Police quickly found the suspect within the store, arrested him after a brief chase, handcuffed him, and discovered that he was wearing an empty shoulder holster. Before reading him his rights, an officer asked him where the gun was, and the suspect told the cop where to find it. After retrieving the gun, police then read the suspect his Miranda rights.

Although the Constitution generally forbids law enforcement from interrogating suspects in custody without first reading them their rights, the Court held that a narrow “public safety exemption” permitted the limited questioning that occurred in Quarles. As the Court explained, “procedural safeguards which deter a suspect from responding were deemed acceptable in Miranda in order to protect the Fifth Amendment privilege; when the primary social cost of those added protections is the possibility of fewer convictions, the Miranda majority was willing to bear that cost. Here, had Miranda warnings deterred Quarles from responding to Officer Kraft’s question about the whereabouts of the gun, the cost would have been something more than merely the failure to obtain evidence useful in convicting Quarles. Officer Kraft needed an answer to his question not simply to make his case against Quarles but to insure that further danger to the public did not result from the concealment of the gun in a public area.”

As the Court emphasized, this exemption is “narrow.” It permits police to ask a limited range of questions for the purpose of removing any imminent threats. It does not permit wide-ranging questions intended to build a case against the suspect.

Go read the rest, and as they made clear, the FBI is not allowed to ask broad ranging questions for the purpose of building a criminal case and the suspect will eventually have his rights read to them, and they cannot be indefinitely delayed. And as Cressey explained in the segment above, they're going to have solid case against him due to all of the evidence they've collected already before he was taken into custody.

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Bill Maher's New Rules segment from this Friday evening and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him rip John McCain for his endless appearances on the Sunday morning bobblehead shows.

MAHER: New Rule. John McCain has to try spending a Sunday Morning with his family. Look, Senator, I'm with you. Anything to avoid church, but come one. It's Sunday morning. There's got to be an easier way to tell Lindsey Graham you don't want to cuddle.

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Lots of relief for the residents of Watertown, MA after finally getting the news that the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzokhar Tsarnaev had been arrested and taken into custody. After what they experienced on their streets this Friday, this is nice to see.

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If we can trust CNN's reporting this time around on the Boston Marathon bombing, this is very disgusting and disturbing to put it mildly: CNN: Unreleased footage shows suspects watched explosions :

CNN reports this evening that federal investigators have much more footage of the two men wanted in relation to the Boston Marathon bombing — and that some of that footage is shocking.

A federal law enforcement source “with knowledge of the investigation” told the network that the suspects stayed and watched as the two bombs exploded, then simply walked away from the horrific scene.

“When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually,” said the source — who CNN reported has seen the footage.

Here's more from the CNN article: FBI: Help us ID Boston bomb suspects:

'They acted differently than everyone else'

Other footage, still unreleased, shows that the two suspects stayed at the scene to watch the carnage unfold, a federal law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN's Susan Candiotti.

"When the bombs blow up, when most people are running away and victims were lying on the ground, the two suspects walk away pretty casually," said the official, who has seen the unreleased video. "They acted differently than everyone else."

While video of at least one suspect planting the bomb exists, the FBI had chosen not to release it, according to the official. One reason, according to the official, is that were the media to repeatedly show the suspects leaving the bomb, it might cause some people to overreact if they came into contact with them.

DesLauriers said intelligence had been developed on the first suspect "within the last day or so." The official who spoke with CNN said images of the second suspect were isolated Wednesday.

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Jon Stewart took our "broken bad" Senate and their failure to pass even some watered down gun regulation to task during the opening segment of The Daily Show this Thursday night. Stewart also took a page out of Chris Hayes' book, going after them for being willing to move heaven and earth to combat terrorism, while pretending there's no point in even passing any laws if criminals are just going to break them when it comes to guns.

After showing a portion of Hayes show comparing the number of terror vs gun fatalities in the United States, here's how Stewart wrapped things up.

STEWART: Well, thank God for Chris Hayes, because I'm not good at math. I'm so stupid. I still think 54 votes is more than 46, because I'm a f**king idiot. But I'm pretty sure that a million is more than 3400, and yet, to battle the evil of terror, we started two wars, tortured people, reorganized almost the entire federal government, disallowed the air trafficking of shampoo and conditioner and okay'd the robot sky killing of American citizens, if warranted by... someone.

Because one American life lost to terror is one too many, which I agree with. But it seems to me we'll move heaven and earth to do whatever it takes to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of foreigners who might kill our citizens, because apparently we think killing our citizens, is our job.

John Oliver continued the theme in the following segment, where he made a complete mockery of the Virginia Citizens Defense League's President, Philip Van Cleave, who was attempting to make many of the same arguments as those Senators, despite the fact that, as Oliver pointed out to him, Australia has proven that gun regulation can prevent mass shootings and gun deaths.

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UPDATE: Between five to 15 reported dead, three firefighters missing, more than 160 injured. The explosion was so powerful, it registered as a 2.1 seismic event.

This has been one hell of a week, hasn't it? Very disturbing news from just outside of Waco, TX: Explosion hits fertilizer plant north of Waco, Texas:

An explosion ripped through a fertilizer plant Wednesday night in the area of West, Texas, sending a massive fireball into the sky and causing dozens of injuries, officials said.

A number of nearby residents were being evacuated because of the possibility of another explosion, officials said.

A hospital in nearby Waco, Texas, has been told to anticipate 100 injured people coming in from the fertilizer plant area, an official at the medical facility said.

Glenn Robinson, CEO of Hillcrest Hospital, said a field triage station was being set up on a football field near the plant some 18 miles north of Waco after the Wednesday night explosion. [...]

"What we are hearing is that there is one fertilizer tank that is still intact at the plant, and there are evacuations in place to make sure everyone gets away from the area safely in case of another explosion," said Ben Stratmann, a spokesman for Texas State Sen. Brian Birdwell. Photos of the explosion -- which reportedly happened around 7:50 p.m. (8:50 p.m. ET) -- showed a huge blaze and flames leaping over the roof of a structure and a plume of smoke rising high into the air. The West Fertilizer Plant is just north of Waco. A school and a nursing home are among the buildings near the plant, CNN affiliate KWTX reported.

Here are more updates from CNN as well: What we know about fertilizer plant explosion in Texas:

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We all knew this was coming, given how much Jon Stewart already loves CNN. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Stewart had a field day after CNN's debacle where they claimed a suspect had been arrested for the Boston Marathon bombing.

From Sam Seder's the Majority Report, Glenn Beck is using the Boston bombing attack to scare the rubes who still listen to and watch his shows into buying gold from his sponsors.