To begin with, I agree with your characterization of his statements in Colorado Springs, and also find it very alarming it was/is almost unanymously excused as some harmeless outreach project. That isn't what he said.

where I am in disagreement, is with the first half of this statement:
"Unlike the military which is forbidden to be the private army of the commander-in-chief, no such proscription weighs against this frightening paramilitary concoction from the fevered mind of our aspiring despot."
If you are referring to Posse Comitatus, I believe with a little research, you will find this is, sadly, no longer the law. To begin with, it was never some Constitutional given, but merely a law passed by Congress.

Now to repeal one act of Congress, all that is required is another act simply requiring something else. That some law has a name, does not require them to mention it again, as in, "The law of Posse Comitatus is hereby repealed."

Signed by Bush, on the same day as the Military Commissions Act, was another bill called the NADA 2007. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2007. Buried in this bill were three important items:

• Budget and authority for both the Army and Air Force to engage in domestic law enforcement.
• Authority for the President to task the military for such action at the request of any state, or local authority.
• Authority for the President to initiate same, even without state or local request or permission.

Taken together, these three items written into NADA 2007, signed by the President, effectively make Posse Comitatus, null and void. Neither has government been idle in this regard.

A little Googling should turn up the fact that the Pentagon has already been tasked with monitoring the domestic doings on the Internet. Also that the Pentagon already has contracts out for bid to use private companies do the monitoring, pattern recognition, and what not. (I saw these two items go by in the news about 2-3 months ago.)

Then comes Obama's idea for "required national service" by both high school and college students, Obama's "civilian national security force ", and finally his reneging on a promise to fillibuster FISA Telcom immunity, and voting for warrantless spying within the US by the next president (guess who). and you have what amounts to an Obama Youth Corp. of nightmare proportions, with military support to back it whenever he so desires.

Even if Obama is, and remains as pure as driven snow, this will all remain for some future man of ambition to use. He may even keep the harmless sounding name of Obama's Youth Corp.

Food for thought, anyway.
Fred Coleman
Riverside, Ca.,