The Pentagon Grants Itself the Right to Police the
Public<http://shutupslave.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-pentagon-grants-itself-right-to.html>

05/14/2013

By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled
“Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has
quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining
prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place
for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of
vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil
disturbances.” According to the rule:

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency
circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and
duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to
engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale,
unexpected civil disturbances.



One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern
military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates
to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be
so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants
full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to
the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in
the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they
are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional
schooling to exercise command authority.”

As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military
force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to
access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of
authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is
unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in
determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate
protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that
hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the
circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at
Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military,”
and says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the
long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

A defense official who declined to be named takes a different view of the
rule, claiming, “The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not
a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised.

Jed Morey | U.S. Military ‘Power Grab’ Goes Into Effect: Pentagon
Unilaterally Grants Itself Authority Over ‘Civil
Disturbances’<http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/05/14/u-s-military-power-grab-goes-into-effect/>


J

-

Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel,
go out and

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