“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” — Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment creates a number of rights relevant to both criminal and civil legal proceedings. In criminal cases, the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to a grand jury, forbids “double jeopardy,” and protects against self-incrimination. It also requires that “due process of law” be part of any proceeding that denies a citizen “life, liberty or property” and requires the government to compensate citizens when it takes private property for public use.
Our Founders believed that private property was an essential component of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The concept of “Happiness” was defined by our Founders as Property. As James Madison stated in his1792 Essay on Property;
“… In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own….”
The Fifth Amendment is the logical extension of the Fourth Amendment:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The Fourth Amendment originally enforced the notion that “each man’s home is his castle”, secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. It protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance, as well as being central to many other criminal law topics and to privacy law.
Both of these Amendments are pertinent to this blog post and should be taken into consideration when reading it. They are a part of our basic rights under the Constitution!
President Barack Obama considered deploying the U.S. military during the Cliven Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada under the approbation of a Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities signed in 2010.
The Department of Defense directive provides U.S. commanders with the emergency authority to use military support to quell domestic disturbances where needed to “prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property” and when “necessary to restore government function and public order.” A second condition is when Federal, State or local authorities “are unable or decline to provide adequate protection for federal property or federal governmental functions.”
The military assistance can include loans of arms, ammunition, vessels and aircraft, and also authorizes the use of drones in operations against domestic unrest, though it prohibits the use of armed drones.
The directive and information that Obama considered deploying the U.S. military in Nevada were revealed by Bill Gertz of The Washington Times last Wednesday and famously ignored by the rest of the corporate establishment media. Deploying the military in a domestic law enforcement scenario is a violation of Posse Comitatus.
According to Gene Healy of The Cato Institute — a Libertarian Think-tank writes:
“The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the Army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances — even over the objection of a state governor.
What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.
There are good reasons to resist any push toward domestic militarization.
As one federal court has explained: “Military personnel must be trained to operate under circumstances where the protection of constitutional freedoms cannot receive the consideration needed in order to assure their preservation. The Posse Comitatus statute is intended to meet that danger.”
Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, commander of the federal troops helping out in New Orleans, seemed to recognize that danger when he ordered his soldiers to keep their guns pointed down: “This isn’t Iraq,” he said.
Soldiers are trained to be warriors, not peace officers — which is as it should be. But putting full-time warriors into a civilian policing situation can result in serious collateral damage to American life and liberty.
It can also undermine military readiness, because when soldiers are forced into the role of police officers, their war-fighting skills degrade. That’s what the General Accounting Office concluded in a 2003 report looking at some of the homeland security missions the military was required to carry out after Sept. 11, 2001.
According to the report, “While on domestic military missions, combat units are unable to maintain proficiency because these missions provide less opportunity to practice the varied skills required for combat and consequently offer little training value.”
The GAO also concluded that such missions put a serious strain on a military already heavily committed abroad.
American law calls for civilian peace officers to keep the peace, or, failing that, National Guard troops under the command of their state governors. So perhaps we should stop treating the National Guard as if it’s no different than the Army Reserve.
As Katrina made landfall, there were 7,000 Louisiana and Mississippi Guard troops deployed in Iraq. Among them were 3,700 members of Louisiana’s 256th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, who took with them high-water vehicles and other equipment that could have been put to better use in New Orleans.”
Gertz stated in his May 28, 2014 article:
“A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans.
The directive contains noncontroversial provisions on support to civilian fire and emergency services, special events and the domestic use of the Army Corps of Engineers.
The troubling aspect of the directive outlines presidential authority for the use of military arms and forces, including unarmed drones, in operations against domestic unrest.
“This appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens,” said a defense official opposed to the directive.
Directive No. 3025.18, “Defense Support of Civil Authorities,” was issued Dec. 29, 2010, and states that U.S. commanders “are provided emergency authority under this directive.”
“Federal military forces shall not be used to quell civil disturbances unless specifically authorized by the president in accordance with applicable law or permitted under emergency authority,” the directive states.
“In these circumstances, those 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” under two conditions.
The conditions include military support needed “to prevent significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property and are necessary to restore governmental function and public order.” A second use is when federal, state and local authorities “are unable or decline to provide adequate protection for federal property or federal governmental functions.”
“Federal action, including the use of federal military forces, is authorized when necessary to protect the federal property or functions,” the directive states.
Military assistance can include loans of arms, ammunition, vessels and aircraft. The directive states clearly that it is for engaging civilians during times of unrest.”
A defense official opposed to the directive told Gertz, “This appears to be the latest step in the administration’s decision to use force within the United States against its citizens.”
Actually it’s not the latest, though it may be the latest revealed. The regime has been arming alphabet soup agencies at an alarming rate, even as it works in nefarious and extra-legal ways to disarm law-abiding Americans and propagandizes against them. All the while, the regime is arming al-Qaida-linked terror groups in Libya, Syria and elsewhere, demonstrating exactly who the regime considers “terrorists.”
According to Gertz, defense analysts say there has been a buildup of military units within non-security-related Federal agencies, notably the creation of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. “The buildup raises questions about whether the regime is undermining civil liberties under the guise of counterterrorism and counter narcotics efforts,” according to Gertz.
Agencies with SWAT teams include the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Education Department.
Gertz continues in his May 28th Article:
“The militarization of federal agencies, under little-known statues that permit deputization of security officials, comes as the White House has launched verbal attacks on private citizens’ ownership of firearms despite the fact that most gun owners are law-abiding citizens.
President Obama stated at the National Defense University a year ago: “I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone or with a shotgun — without due process, nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.”
A Pentagon official who defended the directive said it was signed in December 2010 after four years of thorough consultations within the Pentagon and with other federal agencies The 2010 directive replaced several previously published directives in 1980, 1991, and 1993. The last time military forces were used to quell civil unrest was 1906 following the San Francisco earthquake to protect the federal mint and restore order in the city.
The official said: “I suppose that in a very extreme case, one can imagine a combination of natural and man-made disasters that result in the cascading failure of communication infrastructure, or some electro-magnetic pulse that shuts down all electronic communication.”
“In the event that it should happen in today’s day and age, we would want our senior military leaders in the field to do all they can to assist their fellow Americans to prevent significant loss of life or malicious destruction of property and to protect federal property or federal governmental functions,” the official said.”
So not only has the regime assumed the authority to disappear Americans without trial or Habeas Corpus under the Congress-passed National Defense Authorization Act, it has assumed under a simple DoD secretary’s signature the authority — and granted it to military commanders — to attack Americans with wanton force if it determines they are a threat. And the second most powerful man in American government, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, has called Bundy supporters “domestic terrorists,” which crosses the threshold needed by the NDAA and the directive to deploy force against Americans standing up to government abuse and overreach.
We have come a long way distant from the basic concepts of our Founders belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Over the years presidents and Congress have been chipping away at our basic rights. In the last 100 years under the egis of Woodrow Wilson’s administrative state. Today the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (once the General Land Office staffed by land surveyors and cartographers) now has SWAT teams and the EPA has the power to control the use of your land if they consider the puddle in your back yard should be environmentally protected as a wetland. This is the totality of the fourth branch of our government — the Administrative State.
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