Congress Quietly Repeals Martial Law Provision

In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008).

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), who championed the opposition to the original law, was also the hero of the repeal.  It helped that all the nation’s governors opposed the 2006 law.

Boise State Professor Charlotte Twight, the author of the excellent Dependent on DC, alerted me to the change last night. I checked on Nexis and the only news coverage I found regarding the repeal was a 322-word Gannett News wire story from February 1 that focused on how the repeal made governors happy.

I first wrote about the Posse/Insurrection peril for American Conservative a year ago.  My most recent piece on the subject was an article for the January issue of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s (FFF) Freedom Daily.  The law was changed between the time the article was published and when FFF posted the  January article online on April 9.

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11 Responses to Congress Quietly Repeals Martial Law Provision

  1. Dirk W. Sabin April 17, 2008 at 1:34 pm #

    Gosh, I can’t imagine why a newspaper might report the repeal a new sordid law that over-ruled a major civil liberties law that had been on the books for decade. Stuff like this only merits publication in the newsletter of the National Association of Librarians, about the only public group actually committed to Civil Liberties and Privacy and is willing to fight for it.

    There are not likely enough days in a year to repeal all the dunder-headed abridgments to longstanding civil liberty protections cooked up by these Gomer Pyle Imperialists.

    As to the Press, it’s still good for sports stories and lifestyle reporting.

  2. Jim April 17, 2008 at 2:08 pm #

    Dirk, the press was saving its artillery and its newshole in case somehow else got reflected in Dick Cheney’s sunglasses.

    “Gomer Pyle Imperialists” is a great term.

  3. alpowolf April 19, 2008 at 5:54 pm #

    Perhaps I just feel pessimistic lately, but given our recumbent Congress and courts I doubt that Bush really needs a “law” to declare martial law. I think if he declares martial law the military will obey and few in the legislative or judicial branches will try to stand in his way.

  4. Jim April 19, 2008 at 10:38 pm #

    Excellent point, Alpowolf.

    Maybe my initial blog entry should not have sounded as if folks can put their concerns on ice.

    I also posted this notice over at Antiwar.com blog and some folks are hammering the issue…
    http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/04/17/congress-quietly-repeals-martial-law-provision/

  5. Marc April 20, 2008 at 4:13 am #

    Good, if only Congress would keep going and repeal almost every law enacted since 1913 and a few others before that.

  6. Dirk W. Sabin April 20, 2008 at 12:12 pm #

    Maybe it’s just me but I find it amazing that the most important aspects of this so called “War on Terror” here at home consist of
    1. Illegal spying on American Citizens by the Executive working in cahoots with telecom corporations
    2. Diluting of Posse Comitatus Laws
    3. Spending vast sums of the taxpayers money on a war begun under false pretexts and with falsified intelligence , essentially, replacing a secular government with a politicized Muslim government which, in the final analysis will create a flashpoint between the Shia and Sunni and institutionalizing the historic Fault line between these two .
    3.Wrecking our military preparedness through the degeneration of soldiery via extended tours as well as the destruction of vast amounts of war material and demoralization of the young officer corps.
    4. Steadily increasing the money supply by the FEDS “liquidity tools”, commonly known as printing presses and igniting an inflation which will continue to weaken us.
    5.Co-opting the media through cant, propaganda, use of military personnel as “talking heads” and intimidation
    6. Abridging the Separation of Powers, infantilizing Congress in the process and vastly increasing the power of the Executive on specious grounds.
    7. Sanctioning Torture while suspending habeas corpus and turning an office of the White House into a Torture Design Boutique
    8. Reinvigorating the Cold War
    9. Trashing the reputation of the Government of the United States
    10. Replacing the high comedy of tax and spend liberal government with the dark comedy of cut taxes and spend Compassionate Conservative government.

    One would think that the terrorist may still be in the mountains of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border but they are also quite at home in Washington D.C., softening the public up for the coming resource competition of the next 50 years. To paraphrase, “that terrorist you’re lookin for is at the end of your own arm”.

  7. Jim April 22, 2008 at 6:55 pm #

    I hope you’re right that someone has got their hands around the real terrorists right now.

    Thanks for the excellent list of what the War on Terrorism has become…

  8. Randy August 11, 2009 at 5:56 am #

    It’s great that the 2006 provisions were repealed. However, the question is who was behind those provisions in the first place? Who set about to steal more Liberty by giving the Executive Branch more power to use the military to attack our citizens?

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    […] (Bovard) — In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008). […]

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    […] (Bovard) — In late 2006, Congress revised the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act to make it far easier for a president to declare martial law. Those changes were repealed at the end of this January as part of Public Law 110-181 (HR 4986), the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 (signed into law by President Bush on January 28, 2008). […]