The Change We Can Believe In?

Hit & Run > Posse Comitatus Goes Belly Up - Reason Magazine:

"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

...I predict that while now couched in terms of the necessity for a ready response to a cataclysmic terrorist attack, within five years there will be calls to use these forces for less urgent matters, such as crowd control at political conventions, natural disaster response, border control, and, inevitably, some components of the drug war (looking for marijuana in the national parks, for example).

Here's hoping Obama scales this back. Or if he doesn't, that, with a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans rediscover the way they once got the heebie-jeebies over this stuff."