Peacetime Martial Law.

[alfsauve]

I'm not normally given to espousing conspiracy theories, but they just gained some added credibility.

Here's a little jewel from the White House's Friday PR dump.   That's the stuff they release to the news media after the deadline for the  weekend news, hoping nobody will notice.

This is Exeucitve Order Name National Defense Resources Preparedness.  And even has it's own nickname, NDRP.  It allows for  Peacetime Martial Law.  The POTUS would have power to take decide what was a "potential" threat to national defense and then take over anything deemed necessary.     

So when might a "potential threat" to American security arise?  How about the day before inauguration of the next president.

Here's the Executive Order: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/03/16/executive-order-national-defense-resources-preparedness

And an opinion piece from Canada Free Press: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/45319

[tombogan03884]

[runstowin]

War Powers Act ...

On November 19, 1973, the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency presented Senate Report 93-549 at the first session of the 93rd Congress. The Introduction to the report, an examination of existing War and Emergency Powers Acts, states:

    "Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."[1]

    "These proclamations give force to 470 provisions of Federal law. These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional processes."[2]

    "Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."[3]

    "With the melting of the cold war--the developing detente with the Soviet Union and China, the stable truce of over 20 years duration between North and South Korea, and the end of U.S. involvement in the war in Indochina-there is no present need for the United States Government to continue to function under emergency conditions."[4]

However, in relating an overview of the history of this emergency rule, the Committee admitted that

    "A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. As a philosophical issue, its origins reach back to the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. And, in the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have-from, at least, the Civil War-in important ways, shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency."[5]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=War_Powers_Act