The violence perpetrated in the streets of cities across America continues because state and local elected officials (all Democrats) refuse to do what is necessary to stop it. These acts no longer fit the definition of protest. Rather, sedition defines them: “incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government.”
President Donald Trump has ordered agents from the Department of Homeland Security to quell the disturbances in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, which appear to be coordinated, and stop them from spreading to other cities.
On Wednesday, the White House announced the deployment of what it terms “federal assets,” which Attorney General William Barr defined as “street agents and investigators,” to targeted cities experiencing the most violence.
Some contend the president is exceeding his constitutional authority and what’s known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which “prohibits the use of U.S. military forces to perform the tasks of civilian law enforcement such as arrest, apprehension, interrogation, and detention unless explicitly authorized by Congress.”
It may be splitting hairs to say DHS forces are not the military, but the larger question is this: Should the president allow federal property to be destroyed and people shot, given the refusal of some mayors and governors to intervene? Or, for the sake of preserving “domestic tranquility,” saving human life and protecting public and private property take the action he has taken?
Perhaps the media should ask people whose jobs have been disrupted, their businesses destroyed, their work suspended—or ended—if they are OK with allowing the rioting to continue.
Pundits and activists can pontificate all they want from the safety of their basements and the security of uninterrupted paychecks, but what about the victims? Have they no right to be safe and secure?
A federal law known as 18 U.S. Code 2385 and titled “Advocating overthrow of Government” says this:
