It might be a good thing for people to look up information about the chain of command and how it affects the unfolding of events locally.
For instance, even before Katrina had fully cleared NOLA, the dunderheads on the left were screeching that President Chimpie had dropped the ball because he didn’t have the National Guard already in place pulling brave survivor/victims out of the floods.
When anyone replied “Posse Comitatus” Leftists thought they were being assaulted with some secret Capitalist, Racist, Ku Klux Klan curse upon them.
O is going to have to tread a very fine line. If the intimidation by the purchased union thugs and Acorners is not carefully managed, it will quickly be shown whether local enforcers can keep the lid on things.
The problem, as has well been pointed out, is that Our President has from day one been bulling his way past constitutional and statutory restrictions and precedents. He’s getting his way by intimidation. He’s dismissed independent Inspectors-General in clear violation of legislated procedure. He’s insisted on the resignation of the head of General Motors and replacement suitably compliant tool. He’s elevated to positions of great power various cronies who had already violated the same regulations they are now authorized to enforce and interpret, et cetera.
This raises a big question: Without violating the laws that restrict the Federal Government from using the military domestically for law enforcement (i.e., “Posse Comitatus”) he can’t just use the national guard or place local law enforcement personnel under his direct command. He would either have to declare Martial Law, or wait for an official request from the Governor of the state in question.
For just a local dustup, he has to depend upon the local political structure. Consider the layers and layers of bureaucrat heroes between the White House and any municipal police or sheriffs – the tens of thousands of ineradicable Democratic Party appointees at all levels – Federal, state, regional, county, municipal, etc. They could teach things to cockroaches and tropical skin diseases.
At each level, the quaking bastards will be wondering “If I stick my neck out for O, or for Pelosi, or Reid, Or Dodd, Or Durban, or (brrrr) Kennedy, or (shiver) Byrd… I mean, If I violate the Constitution and arrest people protesting AGAINST Obama’s plan, and releasing and nol prossing the union goons beating them up, Who among them going to back me up?????”
That crew has not shown remarkable courage or commitment along the way to underlings and staffers.
I mind a certain young volunteer name of Kopechne…
Even if the mid-and-lower-level functionaries all knuckle under, there’s just a lot of play in the linkages, and the complete structure is populated BY DESIGN with self-serving gutless miscreants, whose first order of business (after a good morning whack at the exchequer) is a CYA maneuver. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of the Russian Sub-driver’s “Crazy Ivan” 360 degree turn meant to reveal or shake off a closing rival.
It’s one thing to ram opaquely-worded legislation through passage, when you have a supermajority of legislators willing to parley their votes into sweet retirement villas and accounts in the Caymans.
It will be a lot trickier once some hot-head sucker-punches a pensioner, or vice-versa. The Leftards are spoiling for an opportunity to provoke a fight. Because they’ve been able to intimidate law-abiding citizens before, they think they’ve taken the measure of the opposition.
Yes, it’s a fine line that nees to be tread, but fearless leader is drunk on power and couldn’t pass a field sobriety test.
