Suppose a Governor recalls his National Guard troops ...

[cool user name]

... and Bush belays that order.

Who has Constitutional authority over the National Guard troops of any given state?

[mod mom]

1. Bob Fitrakis used this in a campaign platform in Ohio, and said it would cause

a "constitutional crisis" .

How many constitutuional crisis' do we need before someone acts?

[havocmom]

9. Our gov (Montana) raised hell about the fact that 5 of our Guard's 6 choppers were in Iraq

In a state as big as Montana, and with the fire dangers here both in rugged mountain areas and vast grassland plains, those helicopters are vital. The fact that 5 of 6 were also overseas meant we were at risk HERE AT HOME because of the pResident's folly abroad.

Brian Schweitzer went on a road, trip raising hell about that fact. Our birds were returned. Guess the junta didn't want to test their luck on the matter. It is something other governors might think about.

[Selatius]

2. Once the prez nationalizes the governor's troops, the governor has no say.

The most obvious precedent was the president nationalizing state guardsmen to go in and forcibly integrate southern schools and universities.

[cool user name]

3. Ok, I thought so ... but I wanted to be sure. Thanks, Selatius.

[malaise]

5. What happens when a state decides to secede? n/t

[Toucano]

8. This happens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_civil_war

[whistle]

4. Nice try, but Shrub*/Gonzalez took away that power two weeks ago

<snip>
Friday, January 12, 2007
Governors lose in power struggle over National Guard
By Kavan Peterson, Staff Writer

A little-noticed change in federal law packs an important change in who is in charge the next time a state is devastated by a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina.

To the dismay of the nation’s governors, the White House now will be empowered to go over a governor’s head and call up National Guard troops to aid a state in time of natural disasters or other public emergencies. Up to now, governors were the sole commanders in chief of citizen soldiers in local Guard units during emergencies within the state.

A conflict over who should control Guard units arose in the days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. President Bush sought to federalize control of Guardsmen in Louisiana in the chaos after the hurricane, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) refused to relinquish command.

Over objections from all 50 governors, Congress in October tweaked the 200-year-old Insurrection Act to empower the hand of the president in future stateside emergencies. In a letter to Congress, the governors called the change "a dramatic expansion of federal authority during natural disasters that could cause confusion in the command-and-control of the National Guard and interfere with states' ability to respond to natural disasters within their borders."

The change adds to tensions between governors and the White House after more than four years of heavy federal deployment of state-based Guard forces to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, four out of five guardsmen have been sent overseas in the largest deployment of the National Guard since World War II. Shortage of the Guard’s military equipment – such as helicopters to drop hay to snow-stranded cattle in Colorado – also is a nagging issue as much of units’ heavy equipment is left overseas and unavailable in case of a natural disaster at home.

A bipartisan majority of both chambers of Congress adopted the change as part of the 439-page, $538 billion 2007 Defense Authorization Bill signed into law last October.

The nation's governors through the National Governors Association (NGA) successfully lobbied to defeat a broader proposal to give the president power to federalize Guard troops without invoking the Insurrection Act. But the passage that became law also "disappointed" governors because it expands federal power and could cause confusion between state and federal authorities trying to respond to an emergency situation, said David Quam, an NGA homeland security advisor.

"Governors need to be focused on assisting their citizens during an emergency instead of looking over their shoulders to see if the federal government is going to step in," Quam said.

Under the U.S. Constitution, each state's National Guard unit is controlled by the governor in time of peace but can be called up for federal duty by the president. The National Guard employs 444,000 part-time soldiers between its two branches: the Army and Air National Guards.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 forbids U.S. troops from being deployed on American soil for law enforcement. The one exception is provided by the Insurrection Act of 1807, which lets the president use the military only for the purpose of putting down rebellions or enforcing constitutional rights if state authorities fail to do so. Under that law, the president can declare an insurrection and call in the armed forces. The act has been invoked only a handful of times in the past 50 years, including in 1957 to desegregate schools and in 1992 during riots in south central Los Angeles after the acquittal of police accused of beating Rodney King.

Congress changed the Insurrection Act to list "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident" as conditions under which the president can deploy U.S. armed forces and federalize state Guard troops if he determines that "authorities of the state or possession are incapable of maintaining public order."

Backers of the new rules, including U.S. Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the changes were needed to clarify the role of the armed forces in responding to serious domestic emergencies.

Mark Smith, spokesperson for the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said local and state emergency responders know what their communities need during a crisis better than officials in Washington.
"The president should not be able to step in and take control of the National Guard without a governor's consent. The Guard belongs to the states, has always belonged to the states and should remain a function of the states," Smith said.

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=170453

[cool user name]

7. Damn ... I didn't hear about that ...

Thanks for posting.

[Catch22Dem]

6. Weren't we faced with a similar situation during Katrina? (n/t)

[havocmom]

10. Yep, the feds sent in mercenaries because Guard was hard to find

Blackwater was sent in to 'keep the peace' and stop 'looters' from risking all sorts of danger in the effort to get food and water for themselves and neighbors in need.

The Guard drills for emergencies: rescues, supply delivery to people in immediate need and such. The neocons have them in Iraq helping war profiteers turn blood into gold for neocon sponsors.

[azureblue]

12. Nope

Louisiana's NG was in Iraq, along with most of their gear. Bush tried to take away control of the NG from Blanco, but she wisely refused, so Bush sent in the Blackwater thugs.

Read here:

PENTAGON CLAIMS THERE ARE ENOUGH NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS IN REGION:
“Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs.”


Documents Highlight Bush-Blanco Standoff

By Spencer S. Hsu, Joby Warrick and Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 5, 2005; A10

Shortly after noon on Aug. 31, Louisiana Sen. David Vitter (R) delivered a message that stunned aides to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D), who were frantically managing the catastrophe that began two days earlier when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

White House senior adviser Karl Rove wanted it conveyed that he understood that Blanco was requesting that President Bush federalize the evacuation of New Orleans. The governor should explore legal options to impose martial law "or as close as we can get," Vitter quoted Rove as saying, according to handwritten notes by Terry Ryder, Blanco's executive counsel.

Thus began what one aide called a "full-court press" to compel the first-term governor to yield control of her state National Guard -- a legal, political and personal campaign by White House staff that failed three days later when Blanco rejected the administration's terms, 10 minutes before Bush was to announce them in a Rose Garden news conference, the governor's aides said.

The standoff, illuminated among more than 100,000 pages of documents released Friday by Blanco in response to requests by Senate and House investigators, marks perhaps the clearest single conflict between U.S. and Louisiana officials in the bungled response to New Orleans's surrender to floodwaters and chaos.

While attention has focused on the performance of former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown, and communications breakdowns that kept Washington from recognizing for 12 to 16 hours the scope of flooding that would drive the storm's death toll above 1,200, the clash over military control highlights government officials' lack of familiarity with the levers of emergency powers.

Blanco's top aides relied on ad hoc tutorials from the National Guard about who would be in charge and how to call in federal help. But in the inevitable confusion of fast-moving events, partisan differences and federal/state divisions prevented top leaders from cooperating.

A Blanco aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the people around Bush were trying to maneuver the governor into an unnecessary change intended to make Bush look decisive.

"It was an overwhelming natural disaster. The federal government has an agency that exists for purposes of coming to the rescue of localities in a natural disaster, and that organization did not live up to what it was designed for or promised to," the aide said. Referring to Bush aides, he said, "It was time to recover from the fiasco, and take a win wherever you could, legitimate or not."

Vitter, in an interview, disagreed but acknowledged the clash.


Former FEMA head in NYC: party politics played role in Katrina
1/19/2007, 11:59 p.m. CT
By NAHAL TOOSI
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Party politics played a role in decisions over whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, with some in the White House suggesting only Louisiana should be federalized because it was run by a Democratic governor, former FEMA Director Michael Brown said Friday.

Brown, speaking to a group of graduate students in New York about politics and emergency management, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the devastating hurricane be federalized.

"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," he said, without naming names. "We can't do it to Haley (Barbour of Mississippi) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.

http://www.nola.com/newsflash/louisiana/index.ssf?/base/news-29/116926645760340.xml&storylist=louisiana'"

[Davis_X_Machina]

11. Litigated in the '80's over deployements...

...to the borders of El Salvador.

Dukakis tried this approach and lost.