On October 26, 2006, in an article for Toward Freedom, journalist Frank Morales broke the story about George W. Bush’s move toward implementing martial law in the US. According to Morales, Bush was doing so "by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States." The law "allows the President to declare a ‘public emergency’ and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to ‘suppress public disorder.’" This article went on to win a #2 Project Censored Award in 2007.
On October 7th of this year, Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive Magazine, reported that
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."
According to journalist Naomi Wolf, writing for AlterNet, "U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill":
"The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no."
See these two videos on the topic:
From Democracy Now! Is Posse Comitatus Dead? US Troops on US Streets: Interview with Matt Rothschild and Army Col. Michael Boatner, future operations division chief of USNORTHCOM:
Interview with Naomi Wolf: