Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has a has a twisted sense of logic, if MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is to be believed.

In a hearing with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Wednesday, Graham said he opposed stopping persons on the no-fly list from buying guns but at the same time advocated taking away their Miranda rights.

“The problem I have is that the watch list, when you look at the numbers, has so many problems with it that I think it`s not appropriate to go down the road that we`re going because a constitutional right is involved,” Graham remarked. “And before we subject innocent Americans who have had done nothing but have the wrong name at the wrong time, to having to go into court and pay the cost of going to court to get their gun rights back, I want to slow down and think about this.”

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But he said, while he’s okay with no-fly list members buying guns, he doesn’t want them to know about their right to remain silent.

“I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights,” he said.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann invited The Huffington Post‘s Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss Graham’s thinking.

“Let me start with the head-up-the-butt logic question here,” Olbermann began. “Senator Graham is willing to say a terror suspect should have his Miranda rights suspended but somebody on a terror watch list should have the same rights as anybody else to buy a gun or some actual explosive that will blow up?”

“Well, what do you want here, Keith? Consistency? This is a United States senator after all,” said O’Donnell as Olbermann snickered.

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“And pandering is difficult, especially reactionary pandering in the aftermath of these kinds of tense events. And so, Lindsey Graham, once again, got desperately lost in his wanderings around the Constitution and what he feels like respecting in a given moment and what he feels like ignoring,” O’Donnell continued.

“And so, this one is about as funny and simple-minded as it gets. To catch him on tape that close together, with conflicting thoughts, is a particularly fun day in those Senate hearings, said O’Donnell.

Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Bloomberg explained that the “terror gap” allows suspects on a federal watch list to buy firearms. “That is a serious and dangerous breach of national security,” said Bloomberg.

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“It is time to close this ‘terror gap’ in our gun laws,” he told the committee.

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast May 5, 2010.

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