Spurred by belated public awareness of the law, lawmakers from both
sides of the aisle raised objections."This law authorizes the president to essentially strip the control of a
state Guard unit from a state's governor without consent," Leahy said
during an April 24 hearing the Judiciary Committee held on the issue.Bond criticized the secretive origin of the measure.
"Nobody knows where it came from," he said at the hearing. "I think it
was ill- conceived, unnecessary and dumb."Thomas M. Davis III, R-Va., introduced a companion bill in the House (HR
869), which was subsequently added to the House version of defense
authorization (HR 1585), passed May 17."The changes approved last year constituted a dangerous concentration of
power in the hands of the executive branch," Davis said.The National Governors Association has come out unanimously against the
new law and derided Congress for passing it without performing their due
diligence."No governor was consulted, no debate, no hearing, nothing took place,"
North Carolina Gov. Michael F. Easley, a Democrat, said at the April
hearing, adding that the law would hurt disaster response.Ted G. Kamatchus, Iowa president of the National Sheriffs' Association,
said he feared that the law lowers the bar for the president to
establish martial law.The repeal went into the latest Defense authorization, and quietly, and with little notice, a Bush power-grab was actually rolled back last Monday. How often does that happen?
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