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Soldiers, not cops
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Soldiers, not cops
07/23/02
No idea, it has been said, is so bad that it can't be debated. But some - like the suggestion now floating around Washington that the Posse Comitatus Act be relaxed to give the military a domestic law-enforcement role - should not get much time on anyone's agenda. It counters core American beliefs and presents the potential for problems, and dangers, this country does not need.
The posse comitatus - Latin for "force of the county" - is the ad hoc body of citizens gathered by the civil authorities to chase felons, put down riots or otherwise enforce the law - it's the "posse" that the sheriff of a hundred Western movies hurriedly assembled to do what needed to be done.
Try Our Classifieds
But the act that bears its name specifically bars the participation of the Army (and by extension any of the military forces) from executing U.S. laws without the express authorization of Congress or the Constitution. The act codifies the American principle of keeping separate the military and civilian spheres of authority.
The United States was born with a healthy distrust of standing armies, "independent of and superior to the civil power," as the Declaration of Independence put it in its list of grievances against King George III.
That sentiment didn't generate codification until after the Civil War, when the use of federal troops to enforce Reconstruction laws, as well as to put down labor unrest, came to a head in the Hayes-Tilden presidential election of 1876. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won that contest by one electoral vote. Democrats charged that the federal troops sent by Hayes' predecessor, President Grant, to guard polling places in several Southern states, had discouraged Tilden supporters from voting.
Two years later, Congress passed the act that removed the military from further such involvement in civilian affairs. It has served the nation well ever since.
Now, with the upheaval of domestic security concerns created by the attacks of 9/11, a few voices - Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge among them - are contemplating a re-examination of this barrier. Biden says a revision would, for instance, allow military involvement should a plot involving weapons of mass destruction be discovered. Ridge allows that such a change might be discussed, but notes that it would go against American instincts. In that, Ridge is correct.
First, there is no demonstrated need for revising the Posse Comitatus Act. The Constitution clearly gives such authority, if needed, to the various state militias - the National Guard. Although those organizations have largely been incorporated in the federal military structure, they remain under the authority of the state governors, where they belong.
Second, in cases of national emergency, the president has used his authority to send in troops to maintain order and provide needed assistance. Such emergencies as Biden suggested surely would fall under such authority.
Third, involving the military in domestic law enforcement would tend to blur the vital distinction between the civil and the martial. That is a distinction essential to the nature of this democratic federal republic. It keeps power in the hands of the people, where it belongs.
Rewriting the Posse Comitatus Act is the answer sought by those who tend to look to greater military authority as an answer to too many problems. History and logic counter that removing this barrier could create dangers we do not need. There is much to be done to protect this nation from terrorism. Bringing the military into civilian law enforcement is not among those needs. Let the Posse Comitatus Act stand.
http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/opinion/1027416847117420.xml
c 2002 The Plain Dealer.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
07/23/02
No idea, it has been said, is so bad that it can't be debated. But some - like the suggestion now floating around Washington that the Posse Comitatus Act be relaxed to give the military a domestic law-enforcement role - should not get much time on anyone's agenda. It counters core American beliefs and presents the potential for problems, and dangers, this country does not need.
The posse comitatus - Latin for "force of the county" - is the ad hoc body of citizens gathered by the civil authorities to chase felons, put down riots or otherwise enforce the law - it's the "posse" that the sheriff of a hundred Western movies hurriedly assembled to do what needed to be done.
Try Our Classifieds
But the act that bears its name specifically bars the participation of the Army (and by extension any of the military forces) from executing U.S. laws without the express authorization of Congress or the Constitution. The act codifies the American principle of keeping separate the military and civilian spheres of authority.
The United States was born with a healthy distrust of standing armies, "independent of and superior to the civil power," as the Declaration of Independence put it in its list of grievances against King George III.
That sentiment didn't generate codification until after the Civil War, when the use of federal troops to enforce Reconstruction laws, as well as to put down labor unrest, came to a head in the Hayes-Tilden presidential election of 1876. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won that contest by one electoral vote. Democrats charged that the federal troops sent by Hayes' predecessor, President Grant, to guard polling places in several Southern states, had discouraged Tilden supporters from voting.
Two years later, Congress passed the act that removed the military from further such involvement in civilian affairs. It has served the nation well ever since.
Now, with the upheaval of domestic security concerns created by the attacks of 9/11, a few voices - Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge among them - are contemplating a re-examination of this barrier. Biden says a revision would, for instance, allow military involvement should a plot involving weapons of mass destruction be discovered. Ridge allows that such a change might be discussed, but notes that it would go against American instincts. In that, Ridge is correct.
First, there is no demonstrated need for revising the Posse Comitatus Act. The Constitution clearly gives such authority, if needed, to the various state militias - the National Guard. Although those organizations have largely been incorporated in the federal military structure, they remain under the authority of the state governors, where they belong.
Second, in cases of national emergency, the president has used his authority to send in troops to maintain order and provide needed assistance. Such emergencies as Biden suggested surely would fall under such authority.
Third, involving the military in domestic law enforcement would tend to blur the vital distinction between the civil and the martial. That is a distinction essential to the nature of this democratic federal republic. It keeps power in the hands of the people, where it belongs.
Rewriting the Posse Comitatus Act is the answer sought by those who tend to look to greater military authority as an answer to too many problems. History and logic counter that removing this barrier could create dangers we do not need. There is much to be done to protect this nation from terrorism. Bringing the military into civilian law enforcement is not among those needs. Let the Posse Comitatus Act stand.
http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/opinion/1027416847117420.xml
c 2002 The Plain Dealer.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
By Oliver Del Signore
Back in the 80s, Nancy Reagan championed a "War on Drugs" campaign that featured as its slogan "Just Say NO!" From what I could determine, the only people who took the slogan seriously, who imagined it would do anything to stem the use of drugs, were the drug warriors themselves. Everyone else pretty much laughed at or ignored it. But Nancy was right. She was just right about the wrong thing.
The real target of her "Just Say NO!' campaign should have been the Federal government itself.
There are two ways a government can control its citizens-by using guns or by using money. Money, of course, is the preferred method here in the USA. Congress passes some useless legislation designed to make themselves look good, or to address a manufactured or imagined problem, then threatens the states with loss of some type of federal funding if they do not comply. State legislatures and local officials, sheep that they are, scurry to comply lest their neighbor get more money to waste than they will.
And the people are slightly more oppressed.
If it only happened occasionally, we could almost live with it. But such laws are not occasional things. They make up the bulk of legislation passed by the self-serving professional busybodies we keep electing to "govern" us. It doesn't matter that most of the laws are blatantly unconstitutional. I've searched and searched through my copy of the Constitution, over and over again, looking for the clauses that give Congress any authority over education, drug use, health care, housing, disaster relief, firearms, or any of the myriad areas into which they seem to relish sticking their collective noses. But I can't find a single word enabling them to do what they do.
What was that? The Supreme Court said they could? So what? I've also searched for the clause that gives the Supreme Court the authority to decide what is constitutional and what is not. I can't seem to find that one either. Does anyone really believe the Founding Fathers of this country wanted the government to pass judgement on itself? In fact, what they wanted, and what they designed, was a system whereby the people, through local government and through jury trials, were the ones who decided whether or not laws were constitutional.
Which is why it is time we American citizens got together, individually and on the local and state level, and Just Say NO!
We've got to start saying NO! to the threats of withholding funds. Indeed, we've got to start saying NO! to any funds not specifically intended for one of the very few powers the Constitution actually grants to the Federal Government.
We've got to say NO! to the education reform that has dumbed down our children to the point where high school graduates need electronic cash registers with pictures on the keys to help them place the order and make change for a dollar, that hands diplomas to people who can't find France on a world map, and who, in many cases, can't read or write well enough to fill out a job application.
We've got to say NO! to the insane War on Drugs that allows our Government to imprison a higher percentage of our citizens than does any other country in the world, that does nothing to discourage drug abuse, and that actually creates the atmosphere of profitability that makes the drug trade attractive and dangerous.
We've got to say NO! to laws that seek to disarm Americans, that prevent us from defending ourselves against four-legged, two-legged, and bureaucratic predators.
We've got to say NO! to the debilitating and divisive welfare and quota systems that have served only to create an underclass of dependents, that has tainted the accomplishments of minorities who have struggled so long and so hard for true equality, that has divided a once proud people into warring camps, each desperately seeking the ear and approval of their masters that they might be granted an ounce or two of the king's gold.
We've got to say NO! to the controllers, NO! to the bureaucrats, NO! to everyone who wants to help us for our own good.
When we sit on juries, we've got to say NO! to the prosecutors and judges who seek to fine and imprison us for actions that harmed no one, except, possibly, ourselves. And when they try to legislate juryless trials, we've got to storm the seats of government and say NO! we will not accept the loss of our right to decide who is guilty and who should go free.
We've got to say NO!, NO!, NO! over and over again, until they finally get the message that Americans want to be free, that we want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit, as long as we do not harm others.
We've got to start now, today, this very minute to take back the rights and the freedoms we have been letting slip away. For if we do not, if we continue to allow elected and unelected officials to castrate us, to neuter our rights, to dissolve our freedoms, it is our children and our grandchildren who will, in the end, pay the ultimate price. It is they who will live as slaves to the state. It is they who will look back, with tears in their eyes, and ask why we let it happen.
Just Say NO!
Click Here to read more by Oliver Del Signore
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/delsignore76.html
Oliver Del Signore is a freelance writer and the webmaster for Backwoods Home Magazine. He welcomes comments via email to webmaster@backwoodshome.com.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
So What Does a Freedom Lover Do NOW?
By Claire Wolfe
Editor-at-Large, Backwoods Home Magazine
On September 11, the world stopped. There's nothing to say about it now that hasn't become a clich?.
Everything -- beyond a few acres of New York, Arlington, Virginia, and Pennsylvania -- looks normal. But nothing is normal. We're suspended somewhere between a reign of terror and World War III, with no idea where we're going.
Rod Serling would have understood this moment.
There are only two certainties: that there will be more violence (pray that it's aimed only at the guilty) and that our own government, in the name of "safety" and "security," will launch an all-out assault on American freedoms.
In the meantime, we're pulling together. And God blessing America. And readying to make our individual sacrifices. We don't know where or against whom the U.S. military will strike or how long or extensive a war we might be plunging into. We don't know whether -- or when -- or how -- our unknown enemies may strike again against us. Could we be hit with a biowar attack, a backpack nuke, a bomb aimed at a major dam? Could the power grid go down? Communications go out? Food shortages hit, locally or nationally? We don't know. So in this moment of patriotism and paralysis, what's a freedom lover to do?
Whatever else we do, let's be as reasonably prepared as we can be -- both to protect our lives and to protect our rights.
First the personal:
Check your gear
Remember all that stuff you stored up for Y2K? All those dried lentils, tanks of gasoline, generators, medicines, and cans of bulk ammo you've been sort of embarrassed about ever since?
If you didn't stock up for Y2K -- or if you're rusty on emergency preparations -- get BHM's new book "Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide." It will tell you everything you need to do. What the heck, get it anyway and stow it with your emergency goods as a reference.
If you've already been there, done that, and have a storeroom stocked to the rafters, it's time to take another very good look at what you've got. Go -- today -- into your garage or basement and check the condition of everything.
Foods. On the really long-term storage foods, like bulk wheat, corn, or honey, make sure the containers are still intact and that they haven't been gotten at by gnawing critters, flood waters, mold, or anything else.
On mid-term foods like those year's supplies of #10 cans you ordered from Utah, examine their integrity, too. Check for rusty bottoms, serious gouges, or swelling (not usually a problem with dried goods, but could happen if the integrity of the can has been breached). Replace damaged items or items that don't lend themselves to more than a couple of years' storage. Powdered milk, for instance. Although it may last five years or more, anything over two years old is suspect. Certain other fragile foods should be opened and used or tossed; any banana chips, butter powder, or sour cream powder you bought in 1998, for instance, are probably putrid by now, despite the world's best packing.
On store-bought canned or boxed goods, check for integrity and swelling, then toss and replace anything that doesn't look perfect. Theoretically, these off-the-shelf canned goods last only for a year, maybe two. If they've been stored in a cool, dark place they can be used much longer -- but I wouldn't vouch for their nutritional value. Get more. This is the time of year when lots of stores have case-load canned-food sales.
Fuels. If you stored gasoline -- presumably adding Sta-Bil to keep it from turning to jelly -- check it. If it's still good, use it (but cautiously; try it in your lawn mower before you risk your car). Then re-fill your storage containers with new, freshly treated gasoline.
Check kerosene, diesel fuel, white gas, butane, or whatever else you've got on hand to power your emergency heaters, stoves, or vehicles. Renew your supplies as needed.
Power and light equipment. Test generators, Coleman stoves, lanterns, flashlights. (Renew your stock of batteries!) Don't just test them for a moment then store them away again. If it's been a couple of years since you practiced, conduct a drill in which you live for a couple of days (at least) without outside utilities. Note how all your equipment and procedures work -- then change anything that doesn't.
Medicines and other health protection. You already know to make sure you have a fresh, current year's supply of any medications your family members require for life and health.
Some of the more dedicated Y2K preparers not only stocked their regular medicines, but laid in preventatives and antidotes against biowar attacks. It might be good timing to renew those, given the enemy we seem to be dealing with. IF you didn't buy them before, you might do it now. Here are a couple of places to learn about bio-war protection: Tempest Publishing's Chem-Bio.com (http://www.chem-bio.com/), which sells first-responder supplies to police and other emergency agencies; and Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America: What You and Your Family Can Do Defensively Before and After by Larry Wayne Harris (http://norden1.com/~hawkins/CIVIL.HTM).
Guns and ammo. Since Backwoods Home is blessed with one of the nation's foremost defensive firearms trainers, Massad Ayoob, as a columnist, I'll leave the hardcore stuff to him. But if you haven't checked your emergency weapons and ammo in a long time, definitely do. Make sure firearms are in clean, useable condition. Check to see that they have no obstructions in their barrels. If they've been dismantled and stored in Cosmoline or otherwise stashed for long-term storage, get them out, reassemble them, check for rust or bad parts, and test-fire them.
Before test-firing any stored ammunition, also check it very carefully. Most well-made ammo that has been stored in a dry place at consistent, cool temperatures should be okay. But if you bought cheap, bulk, corrosive ammo (like a lot of the SKS cartridges (7.62 x 39mm) sold in the 1990s), you MUST check it very carefully before even thinking about using it. Over time or with poor storage, the bullets and cases of this ammo can become fused to each other. Try to fire it, and instead of expelling the bullet from the case, it may explode. Get a bullet puller from your local gun store if you don't already have one and pull bullets from multiple, randomly selected cartridges. If they come out easily, great. If they won't detach from the case, don't use anything in that box.
There's only a limited amount of info available on safe use of old ammo, but you can find plenty of knowledgeable people to ask at Shooters.com (http://talk.shooters.com/) and rec.* (http://recguns.com/). Another good source is any maker of smokeless powder or primers (as these things are more tricky to store than cartridges and therefore more time and ink is given to their safe storage).
You, friends and family
I was talking with my best friend about a week after 9-11 and she was lamenting something that's become common for a lot of us: The people we love the most are often far away, where we can`t rush to each other`s sides in moments of need.
This has always been somewhat true in our mobile society -- but never more so than now. Similarly, my employers are all hundreds or thousands of miles away. My contact with them is by fiber-optics, copper, satellite, aircraft (mail and courier), and road vehicle. We already saw how much of that "infrastructure" could be damaged in a few horrific moments. In the near future, we could see attacks against it -- including "e-bombs" to disrupt electronic equipment. Or in the longer term our own government or economic circumstances could put curbs on our use of anything from highways to the Internet.
Even close proximity doesn't guarantee you can track each other in an emergency -- as we saw in the agonizing days of people trying to locate their loved ones after the hijackings, or the agonizing hours when parents were trying to reach and reassure their children who were in schools.
How will we find each other and make sure we're okay if the Saddam or the Osama hits the fan? Maybe you also made a plan for emergency communications when prepping for the late, less-than-great Y2K. But almost certainly it's more out of date than your three-year-old sour cream powder, thanks to changing life circumstances and technology. Make a new one. And a backup. And a backup of the backup.
For instance:
Have at least two e-mail addresses, and make sure one of them is a Web-based service like Hotmail that you can access from any Net-connected computer. If you still have a personal Internet connection in the wake of disaster, you can use that and the primary e-mail address you got from your ISP. But your first fallback plans can then be to go to a public library, school, or office as soon as possible after crisis strikes, access your Web-based mail and send a message to your friend`s Web-based mail. That way, even if personal phone or ISP connections are out, you'll still have a useable Net connection with loved ones.
Or:
If your favored contact method (or your first fallback) is the telephone, but you get "all circuits busy" messages or dead lines -- as you commonly would in a widespread emergency, your plan might say, "If I can't reach you in Montana, I'll call Betty in Texas, who'll call Gina in Kansas, who'll call Darrell in South Dakota, who'll see if he can reach Montana." (And along the way, each of your friends can get reports on the well-being of the others.)
Know who's got cellphones and who doesn`t. After September 11, nobody has to be reminded of their importance. They may work when landlines don't.
In a long-term catastrophe -- which let's pray we don't ever have to face -- all manner of communication fallbacks will develop, from ever-faithful amateur radio networks to informal postal services. (Read David Brin's moving science fiction novel The Postman, and don't be offput if you only saw the boring movie.)
Even the best plans may fail in a catastrophe. But having a plan and a backup and a backup of the backup is better than fumbling at cross-purposes in a panic.
You and your freedoms
It was predictable. Within hours of the Black Tuesday horror, legislators, military and police officials, and pro-government columnists were rushing to decree that Americans would have to give up freedom to become more "safe." Some went as far as to blame freedom for causing the attacks -- as if the ability to travel and communicate easily were at fault, rather than a host of international animosities, men with evil intentions, and failures of inept governmental surveillance and detection schemes from the FAA to the FBI and CIA.
In offices throughout Washington, D.C., social managers and bureaucratic empire builders used incomprehensible tragedy to further a well-established political agenda -- reviving demands for national ID with fingerprints, mandatory smart cards for everyone ("so, as they go into an airport or anywhere, we know exactly who they are"), expanded wiretap authority, greater surveillance and tracking of our spending, bans on cryptography (which, of course, every international terrorist would politely obey, right?), *-recognition cameras in public places -- ad infinitum.
"When you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently," said Republican Sen. Trent Lott.
Anybody who isn`t willing to give up civil liberties "can go elsewhere," decreed Rep. John Cooksey of Louisiana.
"Whatever it takes," said Hillary Clinton, the woman who once created a plan to socialize 14 percent of the U.S. economy.
Most ominously of all, on September 20, George W. Bush announced creation of the cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security. This isn't a new idea. This warm, fuzzy named agency was conceived during Clinton's term and quickly dropped from discussion. (Even the government Web site created to hold the report disappeared after just a couple of months.) There's nothing protective about the Homeland Security office, as you can read at http://www.rense.com/general10/roadmap.htm). It's quite simply the well-planned structure for imposing the American police state.
Meanwhile Americans -- as power mongers know they will do in any crisis -- hastily demanded their right to give up any and all freedom in exchange for "protection."
"I don't care if they know when I go to the bathroom," declared a man at a town meeting in the Carolinas. "I don't care if they know what color underwear I wear" as long as they make us safe. Never mind that, as Daniel Pipes of the Wall Street Journal pointed out, lazy reliance on mass, random surveillance (as opposed to the hard work of targeted intelligence operations) helped contribute to the Black Tuesday catastrophe.
In an AOL poll, 71 percent said they favored increased anti-terrorism laws, even if it cost them their own freedom. And the Pew Reseach Center for the People and the Press found that 29 percent of Americans were already willing to put other law-abiding people in internment camps, strictly as a preventative measure.
If you're one of those who`d trade freedom for false promises of security, I have nothing to say to you. You'll be neither safe nor free, and thanks to your acceptance of police-state policies, neither will the scant 12 percent who told AOL they weren't going to lose freedom. Neither will I.
So what can a tiny minority of freedom lovers do? Many things both personal and political -- but with, alas, no guarantees that they'll keep us free. It's possible that nothing we do will keep us free in the terrible months and years ahead, but we can`t surrender liberty without a fight. Here are some thoughts.
Find a balance. We need to support the U.S. government in any real attempt to bring terrorists and warmakers to justice, while absolutely never letting the government indiscriminately target US. Keep reminding the media, legislators, bureaucrats, and enforcers that we are not the terrorists and therefore we should not be the targets of new tracking and restrictions. Remind them of how tragically ineffective such mass surveillance has proven itself to be, and how it actually deflected from real investigation of parties who were covertly planning the utmost evil.
Make them prove their case. When your friends and neighbors nod their willingness to submit to various invasive, but ineffective "security measures," try the Socratic method. Don't tell them they're idiots (even if they are). Ask them, patiently but persistently, to describe to you exactly how the measures they advocate would work and how, specifically, they would improve safety. Let them discover through their own reasoning that what they advocate isn't effective. Do the same, to whatever extent you can, in town meetings, letters to the editor, or any communications you think it's necessary to have with legislators.
Don't fly. Don't help finance the destruction of the Bill of Rights by paying the airlines to disarm you and subject you to useless, Stalinist searches. And inform the airlines you'll get back on planes when they respect your rights.
Don't submit passively to any violation of the Bill of Rights. If you are forced to stop at a checkpoint, arbitrarily show ID, submit to warrantless searches of your property or possessions, answer questions about your peaceful activities, or anything else that smacks of Nazi Germany or pre-Revolutionary War America, think. Be calm and evaluate the situation. In the depth of a real emergency, you may decide to cooperate. But otherwise, calmly and lucidly state your legal and philosophical objections -- and firmly but peacefully resist if you are able.
Don't submit to any further disarmament. Just think what those passengers could have done on September 11 if they'd had the weapons and the will to protect themselves and their country. More helplessness is NOT the answer.
Study and discuss how the Israelis handle attacks. Israel isn't a haven of freedom, but it has shown some wisdom in defending against terror attacks -- like having armed civilians guard school children, and like making effective surgical strikes against terrorists. Study and educate others.
Join CCOPS. Concerned Citizens Opposed to Police States is a group that aggressively opposes police-state policies and promotes a Bill of Rights culture. Support it so it can most effectively support liberty. (CCOPS: P.O. Box 270205, Hartford, WI 53027, phone (262) 670-9920, fax (262) 670-9921, http://www.ccops.org). Other groups that have continued to do heroes' work at a time when the world is turning from freedom include the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Free Congress Foundation.)
I'm sure you can think of more. A lot more. Don't give up your country without a fight. And remember always that your country is the place where freedom lives.
http://www.backwoodshome.com/columns/wolfe0109.html
Claire Wolfe is an internationally known columnist and an Editor-at-Large for Backwoods Home Magazine. Comments regarding Claire's articles may be addressed to clairewolfe@backwoodshome.com. Comments may appear online in "Feedback" or in the "Letters" section of Backwoods Home Magazine. Although every email is read, her busy schedule does not permit a personal response to each one.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878