Bonus Army Conflict
Shacks, put up by the Bonus Army on the Anacostia flats, Washington, DC, burning after the battle with the military, 1932.

Rutherford B. Hayes kind of out maneuvered poor Tilden in the presidential election of 1876. There have been those who claim there was a 'deal' struck with the South that would end Reconstruction. That in return for putting a Republican back in the White House following the second term of President Grant, the troops would be pulled out of the South permanently.

Personally, I feel that the repubs just wanted to get back to 'business' anyway. It was Grant and some other moral forces in his administration that had followed through on the promises of the Radical Republicans  before and after Lincoln that kept the old Confederacy from reinslaving the African Americans.

There had been Black Congressmen elected to office in the South. Judges included ex slaves. There was a real change a comin' and it all vanished in a flash.

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States. The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

The purpose of the Posse Comitatus Act ostensibly was to get the Federales out of the South. But it also served to curb presidential power per his position as Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces.

WWI veterans were camping out at our capital in 1932. There was quite a protest over the terrible way they had been treated by their country. It was in the midst of the depression before FDR.

MacArthur was the Army Chief  of Staff and spouted that this protest represented a communist uprising.

Conspicuously led by MacArthur, Army troops (including Major George S. Patton, Jr.) formed infantry cordons and began pushing the veterans out, destroying their makeshift camps as they went. Although no weapons were fired, cavalry advanced with swords drawn, and some blood was shed. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured by gas (including a baby who died), bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/peopleevents/pandeAMEX89.html

This is an interesting article, implying that MacArthur actually disobeyed direct orders. And the incident involved Ike as well as Patton. But this was the most bothersome part of the article:

Although many Americans applauded the government's action as an unfortunate but necessary move to maintain law and order, most of the press was less sympathetic. "Flames rose high over the desolate Anacostia flats at midnight tonight," read the first sentence of the "New York Times" account, "and a pitiful stream of refugee veterans of the World War walked out of their home of the past two months, going they knew not where."

The public appeared to 'buy it'.  A strong press demurred.

But here is the quiz of the day.

Who do you think recently desired to settle 130 years of settled law and send the Armed Forces into action on our soil?

Well, if I had never read the following article I would have guessed Dick Cheney.

And guess what?  I would have been correct.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

w demurred. Thank the good Lord. (really blesses himself this time)

Now the second part of my quiz would be:

On what legal basis did our ex Vice-President rely upon to buttress his wish for a Military State?

Why our favor OLC including Yoo and Gonzales and all the boys with a Memorandum of Law:

 "The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States," the memorandum said.

The memorandum -- written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty -- was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president's authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes

If you think we are all in deep doo doo now, think about how bad we could be off at this point in time.

Still, at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.

Oh and there is our friend Addington again. Isn't he a picture of patriotism. I have despised this asshat since his first appearance on cable news. He has testified before Congress and shown nothing but distain for our entire Constitutional Government.

To be fair to w's administration:

Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

And there, by the way, is Robert Mueller. As time goes on I have more and more respect for this guy. If you recall he was the one who ordered to guards standing in front of Ashcroft's hospital bed to prevent Gonzales and Card from entering until the acting Attorney General showed up.  Remember w was seeking extension of an illegal order for wiretaps without warrant. But that is another story.

Director Robert Mueller along with the then Acting Attorney General James B. Comey offered to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice ruling which concluded that warrantless domestic wiretapping was unconstitutional.[8] Attorney General John D. Ashcroft refused to intervene in attempts by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to waive this ruling and permit the domestic warrantless eavesdropping program to proceed. Former President George W. Bush ultimately gave his support to making changes to the program on March 12, 2004, thereby defusing a crisis there.[8]

I know this is healthcare day. A lot of blogs on this issue.

But this story was another example of how close we all were as American Citizens to living under a military dictatorship. With no Constitutional Rights whatsoever.  It underlines to me anyway, what a precarious world we really live in. Almost as if all our rights are only on paper and how any yahoo or Yoo anyway, can take a scissors and destroy all our assumptions about democracy, and divided government.

That is local, State and Federal Governments. Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of all those governments. Checks and balances as they say.

And we could have all woken up one morning and seen a couple of  Army Tanks outside our homes. I can picture a nice Captain  crawling out of a tank and greeting the curious neighbors. JUST KEEPING THE PEACE MAAM.

Everybody would indeed be so friendly. All the cable channels would begin with a Pledge of Allegiance, carefully keeping the phrase 'Under God.'

After reading all of these health blogs over the last month it really strikes me that there is another underlying story going on here.

We are witnessing Democracy at work. Thousands upon thousands of pages of bills and addendums and appendices are floating around. Our representatives are arguing and arm twisting and sometimes ranting and raving for change. Of course the repubs are sitting on the sidelines telling us how Democracy never will work and real change for the people is only a dream.

I don't know. I just was struck by this New York Times Article. It really scared the bejeesus out of me.

Cheney and Yoo and Addington really represent the true Enemies of the People. An extremely evil group of men who would undue 230 years of real democratic progress in this country.

They should be prosecuted for what they have done.

But the real story of some of the things THEY WANTED TO DO must be aired so that the people understand what catastrophes might have actually occurred.

I will tell you this. As long as Barack Obama is sitting in the oval office, I believe, deep down inside my very soul, that a military coupe is out of the question.

Four years, eight years from now, WHO KNOWS?