twincityhacker

I took advantage of early voting to, well, early vote. The line was about an hour long, but the voting process is pretty simple. And electronic. The only unknown I voted for was for govener, as I don't like Mitch Daniels. Which is a sucky reason to vote, except I really, really don't like Mitch Daniels.

So, I've done my bare-minimum civic duty, and am now proceeding to hide under the covers until November 5th. Or the apocalypse, whatever one comes first.

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

From The Army Times

( entire article behind the cut )

There are several reasons why this isn't halal, kosher, or cool. I think the entire reason why the Army has troops stationed as a disaster-ready team is because the people who are supposed to be that disaster-ready team - THE NATIONAL GUARD - is overseas or in re-cooperation mode. And, of course, these guys are supposed to be in re-cooperation mode as well. There's going back to Iraq or Afghanistan as soon as their "rest" time is up. I don't think they'll get a lot of "rest" if they're being the National Guard for the entire US. These are the practical, best-case senario problems.

The OMGWTFBBQ is ACTIVE ARMY IN THE US. There probably isn't much of a difference between when a state National Guard is taken over by the Commander-in-Chief. But the difference between extraordinary circumstances like the state government not enforcing federal laws, and having the Army ready to go do riot patrol.

And a comment about the legality of the situation, quoted from spiderine post here.

"The U.S. Army being deployed against the citizens it is sworn to protect. Right in time for the November elections. THIS SCARES ME. I could start ranting about how this is ILLEGAL according to both the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and the Insurrection Act of 1807 -- but both of those had the teeth taken out of them in 2007 with the signing of the < a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.R._5122_(2006)">2007 Defense Authorization Bill*."

I'm just so comforted by this. Anyone in Canada or the UK want a mail-order bride?

*There are amendments made to the amendments, and I haven't gotten then all sorted out in my head, but it sounds like the changes to the Insurrection Act have been repealed. Thus leaving the original law in place.