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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced late Saturday night that in addition to the National Guardsmen — who were being deployed to restore order in Los Angeles — he was placing active duty U.S. Marines at nearby Camp Pendleton on high alert. Hegseth’s announcement, made via a post on X, came just hours after it was reported that President Donald Trump was invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 in order to deploy a number of National Guard troops as protesters clashed violently with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the Los Angeles area. “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal...

President-elect Trump’s confirmation last month of his plan to deploy military assets for immigration enforcement sparked a constitutional debate. Legal scholars and commentators quickly declared such action forbidden by long-standing prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. But this conventional wisdom misreads both the letter and spirit of American law. A careful examination of a pair of longstanding statutes reveals military support for immigration enforcement is permissible.The issue hinges on two 19th century laws: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and the Insurrection Act of 1807. When properly understood, both allow the President to use active-duty military forces to...

3.3. LEVELS OF AUTHORITY. Subject to Paragraph 3.1., Defense Intelligence Components may provide personnel to assist a Federal department or agency, including a Federal law enforcement agency, or a State or local law enforcement agency when lives are in danger, in response to a request for such assistance, in accordance with the following approval authorities: a. Secretary of Defense Approval. (1) The Secretary of Defense may approve any type of requested permissible assistance described in Paragraph 3.2. (2) The decision to approve requests for these types of permissible assistance described in Paragraph 3.2. to law enforcement agencies and other civil...

Over the last few months, Virginia Democrats have worked to pass extreme gun control measures in the state. In fact, a Democratic congressmen went as far as to say that the National Guard my have to be used in order to enforce a door-to-door gun grab. “And ultimately, I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law,” Rep. Donald McEachin said, according to Newsweek. “That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, on Tuesday signed a bill that no longer requires any "able-bodied person 18 years of age or older" in the state to help an officer who requests assistance during an arrest. The Sacramento Bee reported that the old law, the California Posse Comitatus Act of 1872, was common in the country’s early days, but Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the old law a “vestige of a bygone era." The law was employed to help catch runaway slaves, the report said.

The New York Police Department is testing a new device that can detect firearms concealed beneath layers of clothing. Dubbed “T-Ray,” the machine detects terahertz radiation, a high-frequency electromagnetic natural energy that is emitted by people. It also detects the presence of hidden metal from a distance, The Wall Street Journal reported. snip The boxy machine can be hidden in a vehicle, allowing officers to discreetly scan their target and may provide an alternative to the NYPD's reliance on the controversial tactic of stop-and-frisk, where officers routinely search large numbers of men in high-crime areas, AFP reported. snip The program...

With the president's suggestion that the military should play a bigger role in future major emergencies, he has set in motion a cascade of policy shifts that, if reaching fruition, may shake the Pentagon to its foundation and recast the lines both between the states and the federal government, and between civil and military domestic jurisdictions. It might not be too portentous to say that many serious people may see such a policy shift as having constitutional implications. On its face, the rightness of the idea seems obvious. In extreme emergencies, state and local governments are not up to the...

The Posse Comitatus Act is a federal law of the United States (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed in 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, and was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The original act only referred to the Army, but the Air Force was added in 1956 and the Navy and Marine Corps have been included...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

Are YOU one of the MILLIONS of AMERICANS who are... seeing your community destroyed by drugs brought into this country across our open borders? angry that the absurd immigration policies which contributed to the attacks of September 11 and the DC sniper have still not been corrected? tired of hearing the mantra that illegal aliens only take jobs Americans won't do?

MY NOTE: THIS IS A LONG REPORT. BUT IT WILL GIVE YOU A VERY GOOD IDEA OF HOW THE MILITARY OPERATES, THE PROBLEMS FACED AND THE RESULTS UNDER THE POSSE COMITATUS ACT ON UNITED STATES SOIL. REMEMBER THIS WAS JUST A RIOT. ---------------------------------------------------COMBAT IN CITIES:THE LA RIOTS AND OPERATION RIO Mr. William W. Mendel Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS. July 1996 "They are . . . the post-modern equivalent of jungles and mountains--citadels of the dispossessed and irreconcilable. A military unprepared for urban operations across a broad spectrum is unprepared for tomorrow."1 Ralph Peters "Our Soldiers, Their Cities"...

<p>Washington, July 21 (Bloomberg) -- The government should consider reversing a more than a century of tradition and law to give the military authority to make arrests and fire their weapons on U.S. soil in the event of a terrorist attack, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said.</p>

Until yesterday senior Pentagon officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had denied repeatedly that they planned to ask Congress to overturn, or bypass, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, a fundamental piece of legislation that sharply restricts the military’s ability to participate in domestic law enforcement. But now the Administration argues for a “thorough review” of the law — an initiative that will add to the problems that the strategy faces in Congress.

Plan won't violate law, Rumsfeld says 2002-04-18By Robert Burns AP Military Writer WASHINGTON -- The creation of a military command whose sole mission is to defend American territory will not erode legal limits on using federal troops inside U.S. borders, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday. Rumsfeld announced a series of changes to the military's command structure, the most important of which is the establishment in October of a Northern Command, probably with headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., to centralize the military's role in defense of the United States. The main impetus was the Sept. 11 attacks,...