Although the National Guard has been used in the past to deal with protests, they were called by the state governors and were not acting at the direction of the Federal government.
"The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Navy, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.
The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the 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 Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime."
I wonder if this is true, and if the Obama Administration intends to deploy Federal troops, or declare martial law, this summer prior to the elections. I am not familiar with the Newark Examiner.
It does not seem consistent with the law, because this is a regular army regiment. The provisions for their deployment passed during the Bush Administration had been repealed, setting the use of troops back to the conditions of Insurrection as I recall.
I believe that is the premise by which the government directed MacArthur to lead regular army troops to dispel the WWI veterans from the Capitol in the last Great Depression.
Even in the race riots of the 1960's which were in many cases armed and dangerous, the National Guard was deployed at the direction of the state's governor. I am not aware of any other legal precedents or rules on this. Perhaps someone else can oblige.
P.S. A reader informs me that this news report is from a 'conservative' news source that has a variety of virtual locations in different states. The size of this military unit is also said to be greatly overestimated at 80,000. I suspect that this might be the case, and that the purpose of this news piece may be to incite misplaced concerns. But it does serve to bring up the issue, and to make people aware that posse commitatus has been considered a 'liberty' of the land for over a hundred years. If it is ignored, and the law is broken, then the American people will speak out against it again, as is their duty and their obligation.
Newark Examiner
Special army unit ready to be deployed on American soil just before Nov. elections
April 21, 2010
In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.
The special force, which is the new name being given to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, has been training at Fort Stewart, Georgia and is composed of 80,000 troops.
According to the Army Times,"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to dealThe key phrase is 'may be called upon to help with civil unrest.'
with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in
response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield
explosive, or CBRNE, attack."
This afternoon a local radio talk show host reported that he had been in contact with a member of the military. This military source stated that the armed forces have been alerted to the strong possibility that civil unrest may occur in the United States this summer, prior to the midterm elections of 2010.
The source described this as 'our long, hot summer of discontent' that could be eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1968 when riots broke out in many of our largest cities.
However, the summer of 2010 could well be much worse due to the players involved. In 1968 the major players were war protesters. This time, the outrage simmering beneath the surface of American society involves a broad cross-section of the heartland, and most of them are heavily armed...
Read the rest here.
