Chamblee54

The National Defense Authorization Act is before congress now. This is the law which authorizes money for military activity. There is language hidden in this law that would allow the military to take citizens into detention, if they are suspected of terror activity. Democracy Now has a segment on this legislation.
The use of the military as a police force is forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act. This law was passed in 1878, as reconstruction was winding down. There is an unwritted law in America that everything is about race. Why the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 Should Be Repealed states : “Posse Comitatus was passed in the wake of the collapse of Reconstruction in order to prevent the federal government from challenging southern states oppression of their black population. It was a license to the Ku Klux Klan and related organizations to murder and lynch at will, knowing that the federal government would be hamstrung in its ability to stop them.”
The PCA has become weaker over the years. Major Craig T. Trebilcock notes : “One of the most controversial uses of the military during the past 20 years has been to involve the Navy and Air Force in the “war on drugs.” Recognizing the inability of civilian law enforcement agencies to interdict the smuggling of drugs into the United States by air and sea, the Reagan Administration directed the Department of Defense to use naval and air assets to reach out beyond the borders of the United States to preempt drug smuggling. This use of the military in antidrug law enforcement was approved by Congress in 10 U.S.C., sections 371–381. This same legislation permitted the use of military forces in other traditionally civilian areas—immigration control and tariff enforcement.”
The article by Major Trebilcock was written in 2000. He mentions “The Oklahoma City bombing and the unsuccessful attempt to topple the World Trade Center have our domestic security planners looking inward for threats against the soil of the United States from small but technologically advanced threats of highly motivated terrorists. What legal bar does the Posse Comitatus Act present today to using the military to prevent or respond to a biological or chemical attack on the soil of the United States? In view of the erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act,… the answer is “not much.”
Pictures, of Union Soldiers from the War Between the States, are from The Library of Congress