Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn't pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

Not my words, online from a source indicated below - but sobering words to whatever degree there's truth to them.

Does the Homeland troop deployment mean what some infer, more, or less?

See, here, here, and here.

As to McCain saying he knows how to get bin Laden but would not telegraph his punches, again, over the past seven years since 9/11 happened he really should have told those who were befuddled, or who perhaps did not care.


_________UPDATE________

Leahy Concerned about NorthCom’s New Army Unit - By Matthew Rothschild, October 7, 2008

Senator Patrick Leahy is concerned about the Pentagon’s decision to designate an Army unit to Northern Command.

On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force specifically to NorthCom, which is in charge of securing not some foreign region but the United States of America.

The unit it assigned is the 3rd Infantry, First Brigade Combat Team, which has spent three of the last five years in Iraq. It was one of the first units to get to Baghdad, and it was active in retaking and patrolling Fallujah. One of its specialties is counterinsurgency.

This marks a change for NorthCom, which was established on October 1, 2002. Its website still says it “has few permanently assigned forces,” and that “the command is assigned forces whenever necessary to execute missions, as ordered by the President and the Secretary of Defense.”

Leahy “asked for a briefing from his staff” on this development and “wants to monitor the situation,” an aide to Leahy said.

Leahy was instrumental in getting Congress to repeal the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act. The rider authorized the President to have troops patrol our streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite.

Leahy said last December that this rider “made it easier for the President to take over the Guard and to declare martial law.” In a Senate statement on April 24, 2007, he cautioned against inserting the military “into domestic situations.” As he put it: “One of the distinguishing characteristics of the United States is that we do not use the military to patrol our communities and neighborhoods.” A few months before that, he warned that we must ensure that “the military is not used in a way that offends and endangers some of our most cherished values and liberties.”

The repeal of the rider was signed by Bush on January 28, though Amy Goodman reports that “Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal.”

Bush should be impeached, even with the few lame duck months left, for those "signing statements" which defy the Constitutional primacy of Congress over the Presidency.

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
The fact of the troop deployment in the Homeland may be news to some. Laehy, who is a brave patriot who was really pissed at what his mail brought him shortly after 9/11 and who does not buy the "single troubled Fort Detrick researcher" version of weapon grade anthrax mailings that the FBI hung on Bruce Ivans dead body, is the one non-blog or left-internet opinion voice to be heard about clear concerns the step entails. By Leahy speaking up, the story and worries are going closer to mainstream. However, the worries are not new - they arose almost upon the public announcement of the deployment. Last Sunday in posting about two internet commentators, I mentioned the situation and gave links:

Friedman has an intensely provocative post about a matter that has generated much blog and internet reporting attention, and worry, about troop deployment in the "homeland" from Iraq duty, where Democracy Now and Army Times give some sobering detail - and where readers can Google to read more but still be left wondering - what's happening, what's being anticipated, why this?

Finally, Friedman posts a guest editorial by Miller, about election theft and the McCain choice of Sarah Palin.

If no other links are pursued but the last two, the homeland troop deployment and the Palin - election considerations, the most important gist of things can still be sensed. I do not discount election fraud and manipulation claims dating from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as freely as many others do. I think accepting the "generally accepted version" is much like being accepting without skepticism of all single-gunman-killed-Kennedy explanations. Believe what you will.

Regarding generally accepted versions, there is open skepticism over the lone-anthrax ranger story, with no sidekick involved, as the anthrax answer; see what the anthrax-Ivans skeptics say, here, here, here, here, and here.

Whatever the views on the FBI and Justice Dept. closing of the anthrax mailing drama with only a single body onstage, not at all like Hamlet, we still have Posse Comitatus as history, and its wisdom arguably gone in a Constitutionally permissible way, since it was only statutory and grew from a history where troops had been used on Homeland soil, abusively, but without any definitive judicial holding of lack of Constitutional authority.