Quote:
Originally Posted by unkated
I would agree, and I believe that MilGov would have handed control to a legitimate president, except (IIRC) that as described, the process CIVGOV uses to declare a new President has some major problems with legitimacy itself - that the representation by members of the rump Congress was questionable, and so their appointment of leadership was questionable. Meanwhile, MilGov had an active war to prosecute.
Finally, the Electoral College gets a chance to fulfill its actual purpose, and no one calls them! 
The part that gets messy is when individuals have to choose between obeying a military junta or an illegitimately appointed civilian leadership, like...
- the head of the MidWest office of the FBI gets phone calls from both a General and a new Attorney General and has to decide who to listen to, or
- a Base Commander gets orders from his superior to institute martial law to take control of a neighboring city without an order or permission from a civil authority to do so (breaking posse comitatus, the law that says that the US military cannot be used within the US for law enforcement unless ordered to do so by civil authority), or
- a Colonel orders a power company to limit electricity distribution to a city population so it can be concentrated on military production factories.
Of course, this is all besides the question of who is making personal plays for power on the grand national scale.
Uncle Ted |
Just a minor point, posse comitatus only applies to the US Army (and USAF as when the law was passed they were part of the Army), but not the US Navy, guard or reserves (unless Army guard/ reserves are called to federal duty).