Here's a transcript from earlier this week of Bush's press conference.
In it, he says that he wants Congress to authorize him to use the
military to impose martial law within the borders of the United States
in case of an outbreak of Avian Flu (H5N1 — I've written about this
before).
Congress, through the Patriot Act, has already given this
administration an outrageous amount of power to invade citizens'
privacy. Now he wants to use the military for law enforcement, which is
strictly forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act without an act of Congress or an actual rebellion.
The FBI has tried on several occasions to use the Patriot Act to
justify privacy invasions in cases that have nothing to do with
homeland security or terrorism. And the war in Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and
the Katrina response show that they're fundamentally inept at execution
and self-discipline.
So the question we have to ask ourselves is: do we trust these guys
with the power to impose martial law? We're just one step away from a
total police state [Kevin Schofield's Weblog]