Looks like Bush is attacking any of our rights that have Latin names

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Say goodbye to the relevance of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

From Wikipedia:

On June 22, 2006, the Congress modified the Insurrection Act as part of the 2007 Defense Appropriations Bill. Section 1076 of the new law changes Sec. 333 of the “Insurrection Act,” and widens the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States to enforce the laws. Under this act, the President may also deploy troops as a police force during a natural disaster, epidemic, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or other condition, when the President determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order. The bill also modified Sec. 334 of the Insurrection Act, giving the President authority to order the dispersal of either insurgents or “those obstructing the enforcement of the laws.”

The new law changed the name of the chapter from “Insurrection” to “Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order.”

The new changes are criticized as a movement towards martial law because of the quiet inclusion of changes that undermines applicability of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) due to expansion of the circumstances under which the President may declare martial law. Similar to events that led to the Enabling Act of 1933 in Germany, critics contend that the federal government is taking steps to quietly increase the power of the federal authority over the regions while simultaneously increasing executive control specifically for policing the domestic population through legal use of the military.

The changes to the Insurrection Act impact the relevance of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act because it removes many of the conditions under which the PCA would have applied. The PCA reads “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or 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.” Since those cases and circumstances have now been changed in the Insurrection act to be extremely broad, the PCA has essentially been made moot.

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

What is Posse Comitatus? 

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act 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 Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.

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I truly hope that the Democrat opposition turns these around.  I know they won’t though.  My only “real” hope is that the Supreme Court will accept some cases pertaining to the new laws and strike them down.�