The Obama administration made the right call charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in federal court rather than hold and question him as an “enemy combatant,” as several Republicans and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have urged.

As a naturalized citizen, Tsarnaev could not be tried by a military commission, and eventually would have been transferred to a civilian court. The main argument for holding him as an enemy combatant was to question him indefinitely without a lawyer.

In the absence of a clear and imminent threat of further terrorism, however, we don’t see how officials could properly justify ignoring the suspect’s constitutional rights.

“All of the information that I have, they acted alone, these two individuals, the brothers,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said.

No credible authority has contradicted the mayor. It’s not clear Tsarnaev even meets the legal requirement for enemy combatant — that he is “part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” His older brother, Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout last week with police, may well have fit the bill, given multiple reports of how he had become radicalized in recent years. But the younger Tsarnaev’s sympathies are less well-known.

A day or two of questioning without the Miranda warning was justified, but only in the presence of an imminent threat — which simply doesn’t seem to apply anymore.

And so we find ourselves agreeing with ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero, who in a statement last weekend said, “Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights. The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule.”

— Denver Post