Detention By U.S. Marine Raises Questions About Posse Comitatus Act

A segment on the 06/13/25 edition of CNN’s Outfront w/Erin Burnett show featured a video showing a U.S. Marine detaining a man outside a federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. You’ll remember that the Trump administration recently sent U.S. Marines to downtown Los Angeles to deal with riots stemming from aggressive immigration practices of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Per Outfront host Erin Burnett, it was unclear at the time they aired this video, the circumstances that led to this man’s detention by the Marine. The detention however, has naturally ignited a huge debate about the Posse Comitatus Act, which on its face, appears to prohibit any use of the military on U.S. soil for law enforcement purposes.

To be clear, this is a question that has percolated in legal circles for decades, especially as it relates to counterterrorism operations following the 9/11 attacks. This case in Los Angeles now presents a perfect opportunity for a Posse Comitatus lawsuit which hopefully, will result in the Supreme Court settling this burning legal question once and for all.

DOGE Accused Of Amassing Massive Data For Political Dosiers

Bombshell report on the 04/30/25 edition of the Rachel Maddow Show (citing the NY times) says that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is amassing massive amounts of people’s private data from various government agencies in an effort to create a central database that could potentially be used/abused to create “dossiers” of political opponents of President Trump.

Yours Truly captured part of Maddow’s commentary in the tweet below (X below if you like🙄😂).

NY Times’ Julia Angwin told host Maddow that this [dossier politics] is very common in authoritarian countries, especially China. She specifically said: “China is sort of the example that does this. They have these master files that they have on every citizen, everything that they’ve ever done, it’s called social credit score, and they use it to punish dissent.”

Importantly, and quite scaringly, Angwin says compared to other Western nations, America’s privacy laws are the worst equipped to dealing with the dangers of such a centralized database. She adds that our system was designed based on this notion that government officials will always be acting in good faith, and thus tread carefully re the private data of citizens.

If this reporting holds up, it looks like America is gearing up for the biggest civil liberties fight of her 400 year existence. I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, but given since the passage of the Patriot Act right after 09/11, we’ve witnessed increasing encroachments to our civil liberties, and privacy in particular. 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, advances in technology have for all intents and purposes, rendered the 4thamendment moot. Consequently, there’s no privacy to defend. Congress has had numerous opportunities to deal with the problem, but abdicated at every turn. Too late to solve the problem now.🤷. 

I’ve been quite consistent about this issue. This was me ranting and raving about very issue way back in 2019😳👇When some big time MSMer starts bandwagoning over the issue, make sure to remind them that Yours Truly was already crying about this in 2019…when MSM thought it was just another “conspiracy theory”.🙄