Make Sequestration as Painful as Possible and How to Violate Civil Rights According to AG Holder

by Jack

People I think we are in big trouble!  Across the nation little bureaucrats are scrambling to make sequestration as painful as possible at the behest of the White House.  They want to make the reduction in increased spending as painful as possible on you and me, can you believe it?  Our beloved President, Barrack Obama, the man who is supposed to represent all the people and do only what is right for all of America wants to stick it to us the taxpayers just to protect a bloated budget, union cronies and big government, can you imagine that?  What a low, despicable thing to do to us!   Need proof?  Okay, read on:

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.


Aside from failure to do their duty to protect America from overspending and doing the opposite, the Attorney General announced that it is legal under certain circumstance to order a deadly drone strike on American citizens, even if they are on American soil. This is in direct conflict with the US Constitution that prohibits the military from taking hostile action outside their jurisdiction.

Need the proof?  Please check this out, it’s from Officer.com:

The writer is talking about using the military to train with civilian law enforcement… “The effort was largely unsuccessful and that lack of success was mostly due to this thing called Posse Comitatus.

As worded in federal law 18 U.S.C. § 1385:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of the Reconstruction and was updated in 1981. Its intent was to limit the powers of Federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce the State laws. As I have learned, Posse Comitatus does not prohibit (as I always believed and was told by one of the senior training agents at the FBI) military personnel from exercising law enforcement powers within a State; it merely requires that any such authority must exist within the U.S. Constitution or by an Act of Congress.

In doing research for this blog entry I found that there have been changes and exemptions to that law passed since it was initiated in 1878. The original act, as shown, refers to the Army or Air Force (which itself is interesting since the Air Force didn’t exist as a stand-alone entity until the 1940s). In 1981 it was modified to “the Armed Forces of the United States” and specified that it did not apply to National Guard forces acting under state authority within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state’s governor. To clarify one other entity, Posse Comitatus does not apply to the Coast Guard because the C.G. has both a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission.

For all that, it is generally believed that Posse Comitatus prohibits the federal government from using soldiers, marines, airmen or seamen, of active duty or reserve status, to enforce domestic laws. Additionally, to the best I can find in my research, no such event has occurred since WWII and even then the actions were directly war related and in support of federal law enforcement agencies to support man-power needs.

How then, one must wonder, can the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, issue a statement that says it’s legal and lawful and within the powers of the President of the United States, to order a drone attack against a citizen of the United States? Such would not only violate Posse Comitatus (assuming it was a military drone) but also the Fifth Amendment due process protection delineated in the Constitution.”

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13 Responses to Make Sequestration as Painful as Possible and How to Violate Civil Rights According to AG Holder

  1. Soaps says:

    How then, one must wonder, can the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, issue a statement that says it’s legal and lawful and within the powers of the President of the United States, to order a drone attack against a citizen of the United States?

    —-

    The drones have only been used to kill terrorists, sworn enemies of the USA, and only in foreign countries, not US soil. The fact that a few of these terrorists were born in the US is not relevant. They converted to radical Islam and moved to terrorist states in order to wage their war against the US. By doing that, they have renounced their citizenship and all US civil rights.
    I don’t support any programs of Obama, except for this one.

  2. Tina says:

    I agree with Soaps about strikes on Americans that have gone to other countries to join with terrorist in jihad. They gave up their rights when they turned their backs on America.

    The objection being made is the American on American soil, right?

    …the Attorney General announced that it is legal under certain circumstance to order a deadly drone strike on American citizens, even if they are on American soil.

    I don’t trust government but I also don’t like the idea of a nuclear or biological WMD being used against Americans. Are there scenarios where this measure would be the best, most effective hard decision?

    The President still has the football with him at all times. The nuclear button hasn’t been used but the authority still exists to use it under extreme conditions.

    This is why it is vital to elect smart, thoughtful, experienced, strong leaders.

  3. Tina says:

    The sequestration email shows that Obama puts politics and the next election ahead of what is best for the American people.

    Why are we not surprised? The man does not govern; he campaigns.

  4. Chris says:

    In related news, did you hear about Rand Paul’s epic filibuster today? I usually don’t like the guy’s politics, and almost never favor his positions over Obama’s, but this is bloody brilliant.

    The money quote:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rand-paul-conducts-filibuster-in-opposition-to-john-brennan-obamas-drone-policy/2013/03/06/1367b1b4-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html

    I am beyond happy to see Republicans finally take a stand against Obama on something that matters. (And beyond disappointed that the so-called progressives in Congress aren’t leading the charge.)

  5. Chris says:

    Whoops, forgot the money quote:

    “Are you going to drop . . . a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?”

  6. Libby says:

    “Across the nation little bureaucrats are scrambling to make sequestration as painful as possible at the behest of the White House.”

    So what are they supposed to do? Continue to provide you services you won’t pay for?

    Your government ain’t got no “duty” to do nothin’ you won’t pay for. Get that through your head, and maybe we can work this out.

    And your example don’t sound right anyway, cause I was looking into the owning of range land once. I thought it would be so cool to have a couple hundred acres, preferably butting up to the BLM to just go sit on for a couple months a year; maybe harvest a deer or two. But, in addition to property taxes, you have to pay this uproarious wildfire assessment tax thingy … to the state … not the fed, which would render to project somewhat more expensive than I thought.

    I think that the fed only gets into the wildfire thing when a state runs out of money, and what it all … again … boils down to is: if you don’t want to pay the state and you don’t want to pay the fed, you can just watch it burn, and no sniveling.

  7. Harold Ey says:

    Yes Chris I agree we do share your joy, as to the “Money Quote about Fonda”, I know a lot of Vietnam veterans and surviving POW’s that would love those co-ordinates

  8. Tina says:

    Libby: “So what are they supposed to do? Continue to provide you services you won’t pay for?”

    How about they take their managerial jobs and their fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers seriously!

    The President took office during a severe recession and chose to increase the number of federal employees at a time when government should have been particularly careful about managing the peoples money.

    AEI reports on the numbers:

    The number of federal employees has risen under President Obama. There were 2,790,000 federal workers in January 2009 when the president took office, and now there are 2,804,000 workers. The fact is that there is no month during President Obama’s term when the federal workforce was smaller than it was in the first month of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The president took over in January 2009. Every month after January 2009 has seen more federal workers than were employed in January 2009.

    Salaries and benefits for those added employees would amount to incredible savings but that’s just part of the picture. CATO reported back in 2011:

    With projections of huge federal deficits for years to come, policymakers should scour the budget looking for places to cut spending. One area to find savings is the generous compensation paid to the federal government’s 2.1 million civilian workers.1 Total wages and benefits paid to executive branch civilians amounted to $236 billion in 2011, indicating that compensation is a major federal expense that can be trimmed.2

    During the last decade, compensation of federal employees rose much faster than compensation of private-sector employees. As a consequence, the average federal civilian worker now earns twice as much in wages and benefits as the average worker in the U.S. private sector.3 A recent job-to-job comparison found that federal workers earned higher wages than did private-sector workers in four-fifths of the occupations examined.4

    The federal workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of average American workers competing in the global economy. It is time for some restraint. Federal wages should be frozen or cut, overly generous federal benefits should be overhauled, and the federal workforce downsized through program terminations and privatization.

    It is absurd to think that government can’t meet vital services needs and spend a lot less at the same time.

    The sequester money is a single raindrop in a vast ocean and the so-called cut actually represents a smaller than expected increase in spending.

    Government ALWAYS grows…budgets always go UP. The trouble with all government is that it spends other people’s money as if they have access to a bottomless pit filled with cash that will never run dry. Very few of our leaders take their responsibility seriously and those who project budgets always pad them.

    Zero Hedge reported that at the end of last year our debt to GDP was 103.8%. That means we have more debt than we have produced as a nation. Out government should NEVER represent a bigger economy than the people can produce in the private sector…that’s suicide! What will happen to your precious services, Libby, when it all turns to crap?

    Libby it has to stop.

  9. Princess says:

    First, Rand Paul rocked the Senate yesterday. Finally someone standing up for citizens. George Bush stole our civil liberties with the Patriot Act and Obama has only stolen more. Anyone else see a pattern here? And McCain had a fit about that filibuster, what a tool.

    But in big sequester news, Boehner is having a total fit about White House tours being cancelled (like that is the biggest problem), but I’m glad he was such an idiot about this because the report from the Secret Service totally shows why the sequester is necessary. Cancelling those tours will save $74,000 a week. A WEEK!!! That adds up to almost $2million saved by the end of the fiscal year.

    Are we in a time of economic crisis or not? Because if we can shave $74k a week with white house tours, sounds to me like it would be pretty easy to find even bigger cuts in other places. Starting with the DOD. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/07/17225371-secret-service-canceled-white-house-tours-save-74k-a-week?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

  10. Libby says:

    “Out government should NEVER represent a bigger economy than the people can produce in the private sector…that’s suicide! What will happen to your precious services, Libby, when it all turns to crap?”

    Well, then … we are in agreement. You can watch it burn … and no sniveling.

    • Post Scripts says:

      Libs…we don’t want to watch anything burn! We want the country and the people, including yourself, to prosper. We want government to provide for those things which the private sector cannot. We want government to operate efficiently and be restrained, so as not to intrude into our affairs anymore than absolutely necessary and allowed by the Constitution.

      We (conservatives) think people ought to be able to manage their own money better than the government and that we don’t need a Nanny State taking it in excessive taxation. Why do you feel this is such a horrible thing?

      This, at least in my mind, is what real compassion is all about. It’s sure not about big government shifting the wealth to the prop up those who have made bad life choices, and intruding and over-regulating our lives.

  11. Libby says:

    “Libs…we don’t want to watch anything burn! We want the country and the people, including yourself, to prosper.”

    But no individual, no matter how prosperous, can deal with a wildfire.

    So, are you going to accede to the pooling of resources, aka “pay” … or are you going to let it burn … and no sniveling?

    It really does seem to me that you will not face this question … let alone answer it.

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