Military Detention Versus We the People

[unhappycamper]

An Army spokesman in one of the detainee areas in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 9, 2010.


Military Detention Versus We the People
Sunday 27 November 2011
by: Shahid Buttar, Truthout | News Analysis

Congress has a deserved reputation for cluelessness. Our leaders have a habit of ignoring real crises like housing, education, mass incarceration, and climate change, while contriving distractions like the budget debate that essentially froze Washington, DC for the past year.

In 2010, the Tea Party rejected the legitimacy of the DC debate, paving the way for the Occupy movement to do the same in 2011. And while those contrasting movements may compete on many issues, they share in common a rejection of Washington’s political establishment.

On Monday, the Senate will grapple with Congress’ latest bipartisan foolishness, the National Defense Authorization Act. Ironically opposed by both the White House and the Pentagon, it would expand preventive and arbitrary detention beyond Guantánamo Bay and the CIA’s shuttered black sites, importing it into the domestic United States.

~snip~

Levin-McCain is substantively, procedurally, and structurally even worse: It actively outflanks the executive, granting powers that neither the White House nor the Pentagon want, and have even pledged to resist. Madison and Jefferson would each roll in their graves at Congress betrayal of their legacy.



unhappycamper comment: The Levin-McCain effectively attacks the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. From wikipedia:

The Act was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation by U.S. Army troops of the former Confederate States during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867–1877) following the American Civil War (1861–1865). The U.S. withdrew Federal troops from Southern states as a result of a compromise in one of the most disputed national elections in American history, the 1876 U.S. presidential election. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio in the popular vote. Tilden garnered 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165; 20 disputed electoral votes remained uncounted. After a bitter fight, Congress struck a deal resolving the dispute and awarding the presidency to Hayes.

In return for Southern acquiescence regarding Hayes, Republicans agreed to support the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate states, ending Reconstruction. Known as the Compromise of 1877, this deal of political expediency removed federal protection for Southern ex-slaves.<3> The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual states. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant to the states' primary job of exercising police power and maintaining law and order.

During the local, state, and federal elections of 1874 and 1876 in the former Confederate states, all levels of government chose not to exercise their police powers to maintain law and order. Many acts of violence, and a suppression of the vote of some political and racial groups, resulted in the election of state legislators and U.S. congressmen who halted and reversed political reform in the American South.<3>

When the U.S. Representatives and Senators from the former Confederate states reached Washington, they set as a priority the creation of a statute prohibiting any future President or Congress from directing, by military order or federal legislation, the imposition of federal troops in any U.S. state.

The original Posse Comitatus Act referred essentially to the United States Army. The Air Force was added in 1956 and the Navy and the Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the Department of Defense. The United States Coast Guard is not included in the Act. (The U.S. Coast Guard was originally part of the Treasury Department, was later part of the Department of Transportation, and is now within the Department of Homeland Security.) This law is often relied upon to prevent the Department of Defense from interfering in domestic law enforcement.<4>



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Great. I'm looking forward to M4 carbines in my face. :(

[lib2DaBone]

1. Once they arm the TSA and turn them loose in America.....

We will oficially have a Federal Police force.

We can then proceed to fill up the military jails...

The War On Terror is designed to keep Americans in.. not keep bad guys out.

[Scuba]

2. President Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth on this topic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBdPEK5pNtE&feature=youtube_gdata_player


This is Rachel Maddow's report on the topic of "pre-crime" and the President's very clear statement that the US will incarcerate People "preventatively".


Here's a earlier post, same topic...


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2378124