In anticipation of rioting or even a second civil war following the upcoming election, the Department of Defense (DoD) is preliminarily gutting the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 to allow for the U.S. military to execute law, i.e., martial law, on American soil.
As it was written, Posse Comitatus does not allow for any constitutional exceptions. The U.S. military is not supposed to be involved with law enforcement activities in any capacity whatsoever, and yet the Congress-passed bill has been so watered down over the past 50 years or so that armed soldiers could soon become commonplace on the streets of America.
“The law allows only for express exceptions, and no part of the Constitution expressly empowers the president to use the military to execute the law,” explains the Brennan Center about how Posse Comitatus is supposed to work.
“This conclusion is consistent with the law’s legislative history, which suggests that its drafters chose to include the language about constitutional exceptions as part of a face-saving compromise, not because they believed any existed.”
Despite all this, the DoD has decided that there are constitutional exceptions of Posse Comitatus. And because nobody with any power is willing to do anything to stop the DoD, the militarization of America’s police forces will continue to expand like a frog boiling in a pot.
“The Department has long claimed that the Constitution implicitly gives military commanders ’emergency authority’ to unilaterally use federal troops ‘to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances’ when doing so is ‘necessary’ and prior authorization by the president is impossible,” the Brennan Center further says.
“In the past, the department also claimed an inherent constitutional power to use the military to protect federal property and functions when local governments could not or would not do so. The validity of these claimed authorities has never been tested in court.”
Hellbound and Down 