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Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us. Read More

     To do more than deploy the National Guard to patrol the US border with Mexico, the President will most likely need Congressional approval.  See: TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 67 > § 1385 entitled Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus. The Posse Comitatus Act - Prohibits search, seizure, or arrest powers to US military personnel. Amended in 1981 under Public Law 97-86 to permit increased Department of Defense support of drug interdiction and other law enforcement activities. Certainly preventing illegal border crossings would involve "other law enforcement activities", and perhaps whatever activities have been...

Last night on CBS, new show about a Delta Force counter-terrorism unit. Depicts both the comradeship of special forces guys and their family relationships. Good actors who fit right in.

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version October 26, 2005, 8:24 a.m. Maintaining the Divide Posse Comitatus should stay as is. I see that my good friend and Naval War College colleague Derek Reveron has climbed aboard the military-should-be-the-lead-agency-in-domestic-catastrophes bandwagon. He's in good company. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the president, members of Congress, editorial writers, and pundits have been making the case for increased use of the military in domestic affairs. The only folks that seem to be opposed are the governors, but we can write off their opinion as an attempt to defend their...

President Bush informed the nation, during a press conference, that he might seek to use the U.S. military to quarantine parts of the nation should there be a serious outbreak of the deadly avian flu that has killed millions of chickens and 60-some people in Southeast Asia. That's the second time Bush has expressed a desire to use the military for local policing. The first was in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. 1385) generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the U.S. National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement...

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE KATRINA disaster and the subsequent failure of local, state, and federal agencies to react in a timely manner have led some to call for an expansion of the military's role in domestic affairs. "The question raised by the Katrina fiasco," writes Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal, "is whether the threat from madmen and nature is now sufficiently huge in its potential horror and unacceptable loss that we should modify existing jurisdictional authority to give the Pentagon functional first-responder status." The president has apparently agreed that the issue deserves a look. In a national address...

President Bush recently suggested that the military be given broader powers to deal with domestic crises like Hurricane Katrina or a potential bird flu epidemic, but emergency response and security groups in the U.S. say the military already has the power it needs to provide both relief and protection to citizens, and question whether the president's real motives aren't political. In mid-September, after Katrina and the subsequent civil disorder struck New Orleans, President Bush told the nation that the military should play a bigger role in such major domestic crises."It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires...

President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic. He said the military, and perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to take such a role if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection. "If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?" Bush asked at a news conference. "It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- "Send in the Marines." For more than two centuries, those words -- or something similar -- have been uttered hundreds of times by our nation's leaders when it became necessary to protect American lives, property, interests and security. But in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, "Send in the Marines," may take on a whole new meaning. This week, while hundreds of square miles of storm-devastated Louisiana and Mississippi are still inhabitable, the House Government Reform Committee began hearings into what went wrong in responding to Katrina. Unfortunately, before we have even determined what went wrong, "official Washington"...

Latest response of President Bush to the inadequacy of the response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal government elements to the Hurricane Katrina crisis is to suggest that in the future such matters, because they are threats to national security, should be turned over to the U.S. military to manage. The president should peruse the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which forbids use of the military to carry out civilian law and establishes civilian control over the military. Following Mr. Bush's suggestions would require changing the act. That, in my view, would be a very bad idea...

President Bush yesterday sought to federalize hurricane-relief efforts, removing governors from the decision-making process. "It wouldn't be necessary to get a request from the governor or take other action," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday. "This would be," he added, "more of an automatic trigger." Mr. McClellan was referring to a new, direct line of authority that would allow the president to place the Pentagon in charge of responding to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and outbreaks of disease. "It may require change of law," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "It's very important for us as we look at the...

President Bush wants to make it easier for the Pentagon to deploy military troops during domestic disasters such as Hurrican Katrina. But a critic of that idea says Bush risks undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the Posse Comitatus Act.

In his televised address on September 15, President Bush declared that "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces--the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice." Senator John Warner (R-Va.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, goes further. In the wake of Katrina, he's suggested weakening Posse Comitatus, the longstanding federal law that restricts the government's ability to use the U.S. military as a police force. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita called Posse Comitatus a "very archaic" law that...

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Congress ought to consider giving the U.S. military the lead role in responding to natural disasters, as he heard one general describe the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort as a "train wreck." Bush spent the last three days monitoring Hurricane Rita's high winds and flooding from military bases and emergency centers in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana. The president, whose poll numbers have slumped to new lows, was widely criticized over the slow federal response to Katrina. His meetings with military brass and disaster coordinators were aimed at...

Posse Comitatus: The Past returns to haunt the United States. By William John Hagan Houston Home Journal 09/21/2004 The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits the use of United States Troops, domestically, has been a thorn in the side of President George W. Bush’s second term. First, on the Mexican border where troops are needed for border security the President can’t send them. Now, during Hurricane Katrina his hands are similarly tied. The Posse Comitatus Act has never benefited the United States but the concept should have been considered by many foreign governments. In the early 1990’s, for example,...

Bush suggests lifting the ban on using the military domestically. WASHINGTON - As Washington picks through the lessons learned from hurricane Katrina, there is a growing conviction that the only organization with the skills, expertise, and resources needed to respond quickly to a catastrophe of such magnitude is the American military. President Bush suggested a larger disaster relief role for the armed forces in his national address last week, and Congress has indicated it will take up the issue this autumn. Though the topic has emerged at other troubled times - most recently 9/11 - Congress has always avoided amending...

President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil. Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered. Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of...

President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil. Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered. Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of...

WASHINGTON President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil. Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered. Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label...

...First, the blame game is missing the mark. George W. Bush is being accused by his natural enemies [b]ut his real error came long before Katrina, when he and Congress created a Department of Homeland Security.... After a disaster, politicians want to "do something." Striking back at U.S. enemies was essential and Mr. Bush did that against al Qaeda with the enthusiastic approval of Congress... giving free rein to Beltway gluttony.... That leads to lesson No. 2: If an agency is meant to cope with emergencies, don't put lawyers in charge.... In Mr. Brown's defense, lawyers are conditioned by training...

In response to the military presence in the Southern States during the Reconstruction Era, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act[1] ("PCA" or the "Act") to prohibit the use of the Army in civilian law enforcement. The Act embodies the traditional American principle of separating civilian and military authority and currently forbids the use of the Army and Air Force to enforce civilian laws.

Got this from my cousin this morning. Just in case anyone didn't see it or hear some of its content, read below. This reporter really locked down a lot that happened before the storm, and most of it isn't even being touched on the net. This kind of incompetance and stupidity in a Governor and Mayor is absolutely unforgivable and inexcusable. Before I read this, I thought impeachment talk for Blanco and Nagin was just talk, but now I don't think anything short of impeachment would be enough considering the level of absolute stupidity the two of them showed before...

Parts of New Orleans became so dangerous ... the Bush administration briefly sought to take control of local law enforcement... The administration sent Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco a proposed memorandum...last Friday, raising the possibility that the federal government would take command... In a series of telephone conversations...the governor's office refused. The memorandum amounted to a White House request for a federal takeover of local law enforcement, said Denise Bottcher, the governor's spokeswoman. Gov. Blanco, in a letter to the White House..., said she would retain control of her state's National Guard... "Our response was 'no' to federalization..." said Ms....

ARLINGTON, Va. — Active duty troops will not be used to forcibly evacuate people from New Orleans, but National Guard troops might, the deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command said Wednesday. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin instructed law enforcement officers and the U.S. military late Tuesday to evacuate all holdouts for their own safety. But none have been forcibly removed yet, said Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Inge. Should authorities decide to remove the people, that task would fall to the roughly 900 New Orleans police officers still on duty and the National Guard, he said. Since forcible evacuations would be...

...Notably, the New Orleans mess improved only after the Pentagon got involved. Though the military is normally barred from domestic law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, Defense officials have been doing a lot of creative thinking about what they can do and what the public now expects post-September 11.... Mr. Bush will also need to guide the rebuilding choices for New Orleans and the Mississippi delta.... But clearly there is an issue of how much federal money to pour into a city that is below sea-level and would still be vulnerable to another Category Four or Five...

We all know what happened and what’s going on now in NOLA, so I’ll skip an intro. I propose that DHS and FEMA directors should be ex-military commanders, preferably those who just came back from recent international successes: Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and tsunami relief. The DHS and FEMA should also have a trained and ready domestic emergency relief (military) brigade at their disposal with supplemental military units, cross-branch, on call as needed, and ready to respond within 48 hours of a National Disaster being declared. I have nothing against the current heads of DHS and FEMA, but...

The Posse Comitatus Act is a federal law of the United States (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, and was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The original act only referred to the Army, but the Air Force was added in 1956 and the Navy and Marine Corps have been included...

The activities of the Able Danger project by US military intelligence appear to be at odds with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which forbids use of military personnel in domestic policing actions. Apparently some "intelligence support" is permitted under court and executive interpretations of the act. There was anger on the left in the early 1970s when it was learned that military intelligence kept files on (left-leaning) protest (or revolutionary) groups. There was anger on the right in the 1990s when it was learned that military advisors were present at Waco.

The US military is for the first time making its own plans for dealing with domestic terrorist attacks. Under the plans, quick-reaction forces will be prepared to deal with 15 potential scenarios, including simultaneous bomb attacks. The civilian authorities would usually expect to plan for and provide the vast majority of the resources and personnel for major domestic emergencies. Now military resources such as sniffer dogs will be easier to deploy. The Department of Defense has not traditionally taken a major role in domestic operations. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the military from taking part in any law...

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans. The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams. The possible scenarios range from "low end," relatively...

Pentagon Plans Could Mean Troops for Homeland Defense Secret plans being considered by the Pentagon could lead to a relaxation of the Posse Comitatus Act’s restrictions on the use of U.S. military forces in the enforcement of laws within the country. The plans under discussion would reduce the emphasis on fighting conventional wars and devote more resources to defending American territory and anti-terrorism efforts within our borders. Consideration of the shift is at the center of an in-depth review of U.S. military strategy now being conducted at the Pentagon, as ordered by Congress every four years. The Posse Comitatus Act...

Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil By ERIC SCHMITT ASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - Somewhere in the shadows of the White House and the Capitol this week, a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the presidency, a task that has never been fully revealed before. As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration, these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless departs from how the...

KERRY: "And what I would like to do is see the National Guard and Reserve be deployed differently here in our own country. There's much we can do with them with respect to homeland security."

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED side effect of the war on terrorism, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it historically: domestic intelligence gathering and law enforcement. Several recent incidents involving the military have raised concern among student and civil-rights groups. One was a visit last month by an Army intelligence agent to an official at the University of Texas law school in Austin. The agent demanded a videotape of a recent academic conference at the school so that he could identify what he described as "three Middle Eastern men" who had made "suspicious" remarks to...

The US military: A creeping civilian missionBy David Isenberg It seems that the United States military coup of 2012 has arrived about 10 years early. Well, okay, not the full-fledged classic coup, led by a general on horseback. But, as they say, close enough for government work. First, more about that coup. In 1992, a then little-known deputy staff judge advocate lieutenant-colonel by the name of Charles J Dunlap Jr published an article titled "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012" (1) in the US Army War College's military journal Parameters. In a plot that was a cross...

Will Democrats Select The General Of The Waco Siege As Its Presidential Nominee? By Chuck Baldwin Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon November 11, 2003 An October 28 report in Insight magazine reminded us that the Democratic presidential candidate and now-retired four-star general, Wesley Clark, was the Army commander who used U.S. soldiers and military hardware against American civilians in the federal assault against the Branch Davidians which violated the Posse Comitatus Act and resulted in the massacre of nearly ninety lives, including old men, women, and children. To be sure, General Clark possesses a plethora of great distinctions....

Military force reconfiguration may be necessary for homeland defense By Tanya N. Ballard tballard@govexec.com Defense Department officials may need to rework the structure of the military to meet additional homeland defense missions, according to a new report by the General Accounting Office. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, enacted to preclude federal troops from doing the bidding of local politicians in the occupied South following the Civil War, prohibits the military from conducting domestic law enforcement operations. But the law also allows Congress and the president to make exceptions, and after the Sept. 11 attacks the Defense Department picked up...

Are YOU one of the MILLIONS of AMERICANS who are... seeing your community destroyed by drugs brought into this country across our open borders? angry that the absurd immigration policies which contributed to the attacks of September 11 and the DC sniper have still not been corrected? tired of hearing the mantra that illegal aliens only take jobs Americans won't do?

For Americans, it's a jarring sight: Uniformed soldiers, armed and dangerous, patrolling the train stations of New York, the bridges of San Francisco Bay and the streets of dozens of cities in between. It's a sight common in much of the rest of the world, but one that American leaders as far back as the Founding Fathers have scrupulously tried to avoid except in disaster areas and desolate stretches of the U.S.-Mexican border. Now, it could become even more common, according to Fox News. Fox reports that a handful of U.S. senators and some in the Bush administration are calling ...

The Posse Comitatus Act has been traditionally viewed as a major barrier to the use of U.S. military forces in planning for homeland defense. In fact, many in uniform believe the Act precludes the use of U.S. military assets in domestic security operations in any but the most extraordinary situations. As is often the case, reality bears little resemblance to the myth for homeland defense planners. Through a gradual erosion of the Act’s prohibitions over the past twenty years, Posse Comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in ...

Spintech - American Crazy Quilt: Posse Comitatus - October 12, 2000 Spintech: October 12, 2000 American Crazy Quilt: Posse Comitatus by Diane Alden The history of Posse Comitatus goes back into America's English past. Under King Alfred the Great, who assumed the chief warlord status in Britain in 871, the constabulary of the shire, or shire-reeve, eventually became known as the sheriff. It was his duty to maintain order in his tun, or grouping of ten families. Nonetheless, it was the citizen's duty in the shire to help the sheriff in nabbing criminals and maintaining order. The sheriff would ...

It seems an odd first step. Why would the head of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, recommend a repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act as a first measure towards fighting terrorism? The Posse Comitatus Act was approved by Congress on June 18, 1878. The measure was a response to the disputed election of 1876 where Rutherford B. Hayes went to bed the loser, but eventually found his way into the Oval Office. The troops who President Grant had stationed at polling places may have had an undue influence over the ballot boxes and stolen a victory for Hayes. Whether the election...

<p>HEATON, N.D. -- A set of footprints leads to Gordon Kahl's snow-covered grave, adorned with freshly planted plastic flowers that battle a bitter wind. It has been 20 years since Kahl was buried in Heaton, N.D., the town where he grew up and farmed. People around these parts can't forget what put him here for good.</p>

Title 18 USC., Part I, Chap. 67 Sec. 1385. - Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."Circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution....Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power to... ...provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; ...define and punish...

It's not often we agree with liberals. But, when the topic is Liberty versus stronger centralized government controls, we tend to agree with whoever is on the side of Liberty. For instance, the grossly misnamed Patriot Act is about to get totally shredded by the courts as unconstitutional. Even so, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others are going forward with it as if it were something Americans would actually respect. Fact is, the only ones who want that stupid Patriot Act are those who love big government control of everything in our lives -- and we already have too much...

If Bill Clinton were still in the White House, Republicans would be on the march against Bigger Government and Bigger Spending. Unfortunately, too many prominent Republicans are cottoning up to increased federal control and the increased spending that goes with it. One of the five components of the Citizen Corps, created by the President in January, is Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System). This is designed to be "a nationwide program to help thousands of American truck drivers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, and utility workers report potential terrorist activity." Operation TIPS calls on Americans, in their daily...

Friday, July 26, 2002 Soldiers shouldn’t be cops The Posse Comitatus Act is more doctrine than law. It was passed in 1878 to prevent civil authorities from pressing federal troops into service on posses. Since then, it has grown into a general prohibition against using the U.S. military to perform domestic police functions. It does not cover the National Guard, whom governors frequently call on for riot control or preventing looting after a flood, or the U.S. Coast Guard. The law was amended slightly in 1981 to allow military logistical support for drug-interdiction efforts. The act does not restrict the...

Posse Comitatus and Nuclear Terrorism CHRIS QUILLEN © 2002 Chris Quillen From Parameters, Spring 2002, pp. 60-74. Few constraints, if any, remain on what terrorists are capable of and willing to do. In the past decade terrorists have released sarin gas on a Tokyo subway, buried radiological materials in a Moscow park, delivered anthrax through the US mail, and killed thousands in a well-coordinated suicide attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Terrorists have proven themselves to be both more bloodthirsty and more innovative than previously imagined. The possibility that state sponsorship of these groups could include providing...

President George W. Bush has just about used up all the slack his conservative supporters can cut him. They accepted it when he sold out to Ted Kennedy on the education bill, they stood fast when he elected to retain most of Bill Clinton's last-minute environmental regulations, the gulped and swallowed the Patriot Act with its increased surveillance of innocent citizens, they rode with him when he signed the atrocious campaign finance reform -- the reincarnation of the Alien and Sedition Acts. They didn't much like it when he proposed a uniform driver's license that all states would have to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite the specter of new attacks on the United States, the U.S. military opposes any move to give civilian police powers to the armed forces to protect Americans, a top Army general said on Wednesday. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane spoke as the government began to examine possible changes in an 1878 "posse comitatus" law that forbids the military from making arrests and undertaking other law enforcement duties except in dire emergencies. "We don't see any reason to change," the Army's No. two ranking officer told reporters, adding that the armed forces would continue...