Luckily, the Pentagon's proposed legislation does not currently have a sponsor in the House or the Senate. However, the Pentagon has approached Congress to grant the Secretary of Defense the authority to post almost 400,000 military personnel throughout the country in times of emergency or a major disaster.
If this legislation is ever passed, then it will be the end of Posse Comitatus in this country. What has always separated this country from a banana republic is the fact we don't have the military operating in the city streets. Now, it appears that we will see the soldiers on the streets. I support our military, but I agree with Bruce Willis' character in Under Siege when he tells the government panel that the military should not be operating domestically.
Who has the sole authority to declare an emergency or a major disaster in this country? If you said the President, then you are correct!
Source: The Progressive
If this legislation is ever passed, then it will be the end of Posse Comitatus in this country. What has always separated this country from a banana republic is the fact we don't have the military operating in the city streets. Now, it appears that we will see the soldiers on the streets. I support our military, but I agree with Bruce Willis' character in Under Siege when he tells the government panel that the military should not be operating domestically.
This request has already occasioned a dispute with the nation’s governors. And it raises the prospect of U.S. military personnel patrolling the streets of the United States, in conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
In June, the U.S. Northern Command distributed a “Congressional Fact Sheet” entitled “Legislative Proposal for Activation of Federal Reserve Forces for Disasters.” That proposal would amend current law, thereby “authorizing the Secretary of Defense to order any unit or member of the Army Reserve, Air Force Reserve, Navy Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve, to active duty for a major disaster or emergency.”
Taken together, these reserve units would amount to “more than 379,000 military personnel in thousands of communities across the United States,” explained
Paul Stockton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs, in a letter to the National Governors Association, dated July 20.
Who has the sole authority to declare an emergency or a major disaster in this country? If you said the President, then you are correct!
That section [5122 of title 42, US Code] gives the President the sole discretion to designate an event as an “emergency” or a “major disaster.” Both are “in the determination of the President” alone.
Source: The Progressive
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