Ahira's Hangar

Very bad precedent. Active military should never act as riot police - this is the role of the National Guard in extreme emergencies.

That does seem odd. I was particularly struck by this: Consequence Management Response Force Consequences of what exactly?

--A

Is Posse Comitatus an act of congress passed in the 1890s been repealed. The act says that the use of regular US armed forces on US soil is prohibited.

But the National Guard can be construed as not regular US armed forces...

Are they actually being used? (I mean, are there riots to quell for example?)

--A

I know you know how scary this is-what I heard yesterday is even scarier. Author Naomi Klein and Thomm Hartmann were discussing her book The Shock Doctrine:
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism on his radio show. In her book she lists the ten steps of how a nation becomes a Police State, using regular armed force is one of these key steps. Other steps include invasion of the public's privacy (especially those who actively oppose the state's policy), public displays of character assassination, torture of one's own citizenry-see female protestor arrested at Republican Convention and a rise of "brown-shirt" and mercenary mentality-see Blackwater. I'm sure you've read about similar steps in 1984, and other sources, and seen examples of this in other countries. All these steps occurred in Germany prior to Hitler and WWII and guess what? They were fostered as the result of a serious and continuous depression-see Economic Bailout. These are very serious reasons to elect a different president and more democrats to congress. We can't afford not to.

Yes, the State National Guards are an exception to Posse Comitatus. However, while I'm usually as concerned as Tom Hartmann about the loss of rights, this particular issue U.S. Army to be used as excercise of internal state police power seems to me a bit overblown (I've got the highest respect for Naomi Klein's powers of evaluation and analyses)