I am skating around on thin ice, so to speak, because we really do not like to reveal the content of private communique's with close friends / relatives. But my fellow father-in-law, like his fellow father-in-law, is walking around stunned at this mass of presumptuous zombies who actually think they have the right to "walk right in" and take up ringside seats in the Republic of Texas and/or the United States of America.
To watch Jorge Ramos, who is certifiable as a ranting, mendacious, marxist, Gringo-hating oaf as he assures us that these nice people walking by him on their way to Texas or somewhere up north, are just family people looking for safety and opportunity.
When Jorge was doing a stand-up yesterday, and the "marchers" were walking with determination, lugging their luggage, it was apparent that 92.4% of them were males, well nourished, and ages 15 to 30…with no women or children. Jorge breathlessly reported as they walked by, "They are young mothers with young children just looking for a better life. They are good people."
The minders who are at work on the "imaging thing" run over quickly to deny people taking pictures of anything beyond the "mommies" and their "children". It is not a "caravana" (incorrect term), it is a "desfile" (correct term)…but actually it is neither…it is truly just a sham.
Below is the content of my answer to my fellow father-in-law…a truly great friend. I respond to his question about why the President cannot deploy Federal Troops on the border's edge. He is more "to the point"…while I am long-winded…and perhaps that is why we get along so well. We are, in this matter, both in concurrence and agreement.
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Estimado Consuegro,
There is some debate about this. One school of thought is certain that the proviso of "posse comitatus"…a term that, once the braids and tangles are sorted out by the legal beagles…requires, suggests, calls for, and is generally obeyed in the sense that it forbids the American central government (Washington D.C.) from deploying United States Army troops on American soil for the purpose of disciplining and/or punishing American citizens and people who are not committing challenges to the authority of the law of a State or any combination of States and / or localities, or the laws of the Nation. To wit:
THE ACT:
Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act – in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 – is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. It was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction and was subsequently updated in 1956 and 1981.
The act only specifically applies to the United States Army and, as amended in 1956, the United States Air Force. While the act does not explicitly mention the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy has prescribed regulations that are generally construed to give the act force with respect to those services as well. The act does not apply to the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor.
The United States Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, is not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act either, primarily because although the Coast Guard is an armed service, it also has both a maritime lawenforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission.
The title of the act comes from the legal concept of posse comitatus, the authority under which a county sheriff, or other law officer, conscripts any able-bodied man to assist him or her in keeping the peace.
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History:
The Act, § 15 of the appropriations bill for the Army for 1879, found at 20 Stat. 152, was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation of the former Confederate States by the United States Army during the twelve years of Reconstruction (1865–1877) following the American Civil War (1861–1865). The president withdrew federal troops from the Southern States as a result of a compromise in one of the most disputed national elections in American history, the 1876 U.S. presidential election. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican candidate
In return for Southern acquiescence regarding Hayes, Republicans agreed to support the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate States, formally ending Reconstruction. Known as the Compromise of 1877, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana agreed to certify Rutherford B. Hayes as the president in exchange for the removal of federal troops from the South.[1]
The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual States. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant of any state's role of exercising police power and maintaining law and order, whether part of a wider federation or a unitary state. During the local, state, and federal elections of 1874 and 1876 in the former Confederate States, all levels of government chose not to exercise their police powers to maintain law and order.[1] Some historians have concluded most Reconstruction governments did not have the power to suppress the violence.
When the U.S. representatives and senators
In the mid-20th century, the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower used an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, derived from the Enforcement Acts, to send federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, during the 1957 school desegregation crisis. The Arkansas governor had opposed desegregation after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 in the Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The Enforcement Acts, among other powers, allow the president to call up military forces when state authorities are either unable or unwilling to suppress violence that is in opposition to the constitutional rights of the people.[2]
The original Posse Comitatus Act referred essentially to the United States Army. The United States Air Force, which had been incorporated within the Army inside the U.S. (and the Navy outside) until 1949, was added in 1956. This law is often relied upon to prevent the Department of Defense from interfering in domestic law enforcement.[3] The United States Coast Guard is not included in the act even though it is one of the five armed services because it is not a part of the Department of Defense.
At the time the act became law, the modern Coast Guard did not exist. Its predecessor, the United States Revenue Cutter Service, was primarily a customs enforcement agency and part of the United States Department of the Treasury.[4] In 1915, when the Revenue Cutter Service and the United States Lifesaving Service were amalgamated to form the Coast Guard, the service was both explicitly made a military branch and explicitly given federal law enforcement authority.
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From this point, pulling away from the dry legalese of condensed Law Journal summaries, it essentially means that the President of the United States of America cannot deploy active American military forces on American soil. There have been exceptions: (1) The enforcement of the integration of schools in Little Rock and the remainder of Arkansas, and (2) the Urban Riots that took place during the Summer of 1966…and (3) the events at Mount Carmel when the United States Army, with General Wesley Clark is charge, sent personnel and helicopters and heavy machinery to destroy the compound where the religious nuts were holed up. Trouble there was that there were 42 children inside the building when it erupted into flames. Only four or five escaped.
And, and as you know, my father served in the Army and was deployed in the area of Fort Brown in Brownsville and Fort Ringgold in Rio Grande City. Many National Guard soldiers were sent down by their Governors, at the request of the War Department due to the instability on the border. Since my father was Regular Army, he and his squadron led and big-brother'd the Guardsmen they led and commanded. New York, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin sent significant numbers of National Guard troops…and this support continued up to and through to the mid-1930s. There mission was to intercept illegal alcohol and drugs, guard against anarchists, communists, German agents, and other acts of marauding that continued up into the late 1930s. After that the mounted cavalry was essentially abolished.
Several hundred thousand cavalry, mounted infantry, infantry, artillery batteries, and support personnel from many States moved in and out during well over twenty years because of the continuing disorders in Mexico, especially along the lower reaches of the Rio Grande. It was hot, dusty work…with weird cold snaps during January and February…and wet spells that never ended and droughts that never ended…and it all made good, tough soldiers.
My reading, therefore, is that active regular Army can be deployed because it is in defence of the territorial integrity of the State of Texas, being invaded by foreign parties, not Texian or American citizens. United States Representative Henry Cuellar, a relatively conservative Democrat is of the opinion that Posse Comitatus can not be used by any uniformed personnel…military or constabularies, unless approved by the State's governor.
His position is that, in matters of a State's responsibility and rights, then, must devolve upon the Constabulary first, then the Governor's National Guard (Texas happens to have a State Guard as well). But, this must recognise that United States Regular Army can enter into a State's insurrection problem, IF the President orders the United States Regular Army soldiers to follow the orders of the governor. That moves well into the sticky business and a morass of legal purgatory.
I tend to disagree with Congressman Cuellar (who was appointed as Secretary of State by George W. Bush during his first term as Governor) and his point of view, based upon my father's service and for the fact that (in succession) Governors Colquitt James (Pa) Ferguson, William Hobby, Pat Neff, Miriam (Ma) Ferguson, Dan Moody, Ross S. Sterling, and (Ma) Ferguson (2nd term). These names mark an epoch of 1911 through 1935 that the Governors (and the Governess) deployed Regular American Army and National Guardsmen from many different States all along the Rio Grande.
Please forgive the Blowhardness, but you know how I am. I try to answer good questions with depth and understanding.
El Grngo Viejo
