Word: comitatus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Though the common-law-courts movement is loosely organized, with no strict hierarchy, the first arrests were big ones. Schweitzer became a leader of the Freemen after a tax dispute in the late 1970s. Using ideas common to the Posse Comitatus and other rightist fringe groups, they cobbled a doctrine out of bits and pieces of the Magna Carta, the Bible, the Constitution and other sources to argue that the Federal Government represents an illegal usurpation of the common-law power of localities. The ideas are now spread by groups under a variety of names--Freemen, We the People, People...
...armed services" to control illegal drugs and immigration is even more gimmicky. It's also not new. Senator Al D'Amato, the Republican from New York, led a similar charge in the mid-1980s, which the Reagan Administration rebuffed. Long-standing military tradition, codified in the Posse Comitatus Act after the Civil War, bars soldiers from actions that could spill over into arrests and seizures of U.S. citizens. Says Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan Assistant Defense Secretary: "We train them to vaporize, not Mirandize." Alexander says he knows this but offers no details, bridling at the very thought...
...fringe groups that have sprung up in America and taken up arms. The Ku Klux Klan, for example -- born as a social club and quickly evolving into a militia, recruiting members through appeals to patriotism -- still thrives on hatred of blacks, Jews, Roman Catholics and foreigners. The moribund Posse Comitatus, a militant group based in the Farm Belt, wanted to wipe out the tax collectors. The patriots, by contrast, have a more generalized fear of Big Government, which they say is rapidly robbing individuals of their inalienable rights, chief among them the right to bear arms. Patriots were particularly enraged...
Although the military opposes the House bill, it is already deeply involved in the drug war. Five years ago Congress amended the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the armed forces to enforce civil law, so that the military could provide surveillance planes and ships for interdiction purposes. In fiscal year 1985 the Pentagon spent $40 million on interdiction efforts. This year the military played a central role in Operation Blast Furnace, the raids on Bolivian drug-processing labs...
...would require the President to deploy, within 30 days after passage of the bill, military equipment and personnel to thwart drug trafficking. Although the posse comitatus act of 1878 generally forbids the armed forces from enforcing civil laws, the bill would allow the military to arrest dealers captured in "hot pursuit." Said David Westrake, an official of the Drug Enforcement Administration: "Increased military support is welcome and needed." But a variety of civil-liberties advocates immediately demurred, as did the Defense Department. Said Spokesman Robert Sims: "It is a bad precedent to use the Army as a police force." Other...