Defense Support of Civil Authorities...Authorization to use the Military against Americans in America.

click it for your reading enjoyment


I realize this has happened before in American history but with the militarization of many departments of the fedgov and the money DHS has thrown at local police forces it causes some concern when you do not trust the government to do the right thing.

In the immortal words often spoken here:

WE ARE DOOMED

I have it on good authority that this is only to be used against Zombie outbreaks.

Oh, well then I take back everything I said.
NOT!

We're all doomed either way.  I don't even know why they need this document as according to General Patton in 1932, there's all sorts of references to using federal troops to quell insurrections and such...

http://www.pattonhq.com/textfiles/federal.html

Other administrations have used this power as well.   This is old news.

Evidently the current administration didn't realize that they've had this power all along..

http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=schmooze_papers

https://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/volume87n2/documents/GREENBERGERv.2.pdf

Lots of stuff out there about Presidents using Federal troops quelling internal insurrections...I think the first was the Whiskey Rebellion and this was under the Washington administration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

As far as us trusting the government, Winston Churchill summed it up quite nicely..."The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”

The problem with this, of course, is the damage caused before the government does the right thing (eye of the beholder here)...

                       " I don't even know why they need this document "

...and the answer to that statement is the cause for concern. It' strikes me as cover for disregarding the Posse Comitatus Act.

Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy In America, Volume II, Book 4, Chapter 6."