If anybody was actually paying attention, they’d see the Republican national security brand melt before their eyes in the past couple weeks. They first smeared the White House about reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights. Then it came out that Abdulmutallab was talking after an interrogation process marked by help from his family and the citing of good treatment as key to the value of the intelligence. The GOP responded that the White House wasted 6 weeks, as if bonds are built overnight. Now, John Brennan has revealed that he told GOP Congressional leaders THE NIGHT OF THE FAILED BOMBING that they were taking Abdulmutallab into custody.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan revealed Sunday that he briefed four Republican congressional leaders on Christmas night about the arrest and subsequent handling of the suspect in an attempted sky bombing.

“None of those individuals raised any concerns with me, at that point,” Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They didn’t say, ‘Is he going into military custody? Is he going to be Mirandized?’ They were very appreciative of the information. We told them we’d keep them informed. And that’s what we did.”

The revelation could undermine Republican complaints about the reading of Miranda rights to the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab.

Ya think?

Marcy has hit this already, so I won’t dwell. But we should all re-emphasize something. In response, Kit Bond, one of the four Republicans briefed (McConnell, Boehner, Bond and Pete Hoekstra, the minority leaders and the ranking members of the Intelligence Committees, were the four), said, “Brennan never told me any of plans to Mirandize the Christmas Day bomber — if he had I would told him the administration was making a mistake.” What Brennan said, and all he had to say, is that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody. Because it proceeds necessarily from there that his Miranda rights are read. That would be the standard practice of law enforcement in the United States.

Republicans are not only bloodthirsty when it comes to national security, they’re also willfully ignorant.