March 2021

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Thirty-two years ago, in his final State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan described America as the “shining city on a hill.”

That  characterization of the United States was accurate then and it is accurate today, though according to a nonpartisan analysis of human freedom around the globe, our shine has lost some of its luster.

The CATO institute in Washington, DC recently published its annual Human Freedom Index, according to which the United States dropped nine points, and now qualifies as only the 17^th freest county among 162 nations ranked. New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong continue to hold the top three spots as the freest countries on earth, with Venezuela, Sudan and Syria holding the dubious distinction as the least free. Japan and Estonia are among the nations whose citizens fared better than did ours in the encyclopedic survey.

The data on which this 2020 index is based is from 2018, insofar as that is the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available to CATO. Looking ahead to 2019 and 2020, there is little reason to expect New Zealand or Switzerland to lose their coveted positions atop the list, as there have been no significant economic or political policy changes in either country as would likely affect their status, at least relative to other countries. For Hong Kong, however, it would not be surprising to see its top-three ranking suffer as a result of crackdowns over the past two years by the parent regime in Communist China on the degree of liberty that had been enjoyed by Hong Kong’s businesses and citizens.

CATO’s analysts consider a dozen indices of freedom in arriving at their conclusions, including the following:

• The Rule of Law
• Security and safety of citizens
• The degree to which citizens are free to associate and assemble
• Freedom of movement in the country
• The size of the government
• Property rights and a robust legal system
• Access to sound money

Each country’s performance is then calculated on a scale of one (least free) to ten (most free). According to the 2018 analysis, the United States scored 8.66 (out of a possible 10.0) in terms of “Personal Freedom” and 8.22 for “Economic Freedom,” for a combined “Human Freedom” score of 8.44. That total, of course, is not bad, but for a nation founded on what were at the time — and for many decades thereafter — principles of individual liberty unique in the annals of human history, it is not something to brag about; especially in terms of a nine point drop to #17 over the course of a single year.

Some of America’s lowest scores were in the categories of civil and criminal justice, where we scored a measly 6.2 and 6.3, respectively (actually below average). Not surprising, we scored a perfect 10.0 in a number of technical indices, such as “Access to Cable and Satellite,” that kept us from slipping even further down the ranking. While we garnered a perfect score for “Same-Sex Relationships,” our low scores on far more fundamental characteristics of a society’s legal mechanisms for protecting individual liberty, still is troubling.

Considered over the course of the past ten years, the U.S. has occupied the 17^th position three other times, in 2008, 2011, and 2013. And while we have never dropped below position 17, the plunge from being in the top ten just the year before (at number eight), portends further bad news when the full data for calendar year 2020 finally is calculated. The loss of freedoms resulting from governments’ responses to the COVID pandemic have by any objective measure significantly eroded freedom in America, especially in terms of property and employment rights, and it is not a pretty picture for human freedom.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

FullMAGnews

by Bob Barr

Second Amendment watchdogs have long cautioned that gun permitting processes easily can be exploited as backdoor gun control. As we know, when it comes banning guns, liberal government bureaucrats never lack the will, only the way. For these petty tyrants, COVID-19 has been something of a godsend. Not only were there suddenly multiple new ways to go after the Second Amendments, but they had a “scientific” excuse.

One layer of bureaucratic meddling that has become particularly troublesome during COVID is pistol purchase permitting schemes, as currently are in place in Washington, D.C., and 10 states. A pistol purchase permit is exactly what it sounds like; a requirement that you must have permission from the government each time you want to exercise the most basic component of the Second Amendment: purchasing a firearm. These permits add time and money to a process that should be nothing more than a simple exchange of information between two law-abiding adults. For some, however, it provides a way for sneaky government officials to shut down the Second Amendment under the cover of bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Take Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, formerly a conservative, pro-Second Amendment county with Charlotte as its major metropolitan area.

At one point last September, the Sheriff’s Office in Mecklenburg County was more than 11,000 gun purchase permit applications behind after being flooded in a single day with more applications than it normally sees over the course of months prior to COVID. Other North Carolina counties experienced similar spikes in permit applications (even as countless cities and counties across the country saw increased firearms purchases all last year).

Regardless, and irrespective of how many applications have been made, North Carolina state law requires that county sheriffs notify applicants of whether a permit has been granted or denied within 14 days. In violation of that legal mandate, however, permits that are supposed to take no more than two weeks to conclude are now stretching into months.

In Wake County, also in North Carolina, the Sheriff’s Office has been sued multiple times by a local Second Amendment organization trying to compel it to abide by the law. Yet, as multiple lawsuits suggest, these are often and at best limited and temporary victories. Sheriffs excuse their abysmal performance by citing both COVID limitations and the surge of gun purchases following months of violent unrest last summer and political unrest accompanying the presidential contest.

Events in 2020 certainly and understandably made the permitting process more complicated; however, there is no COVID exception to the Second Amendment (or to North Carolina law, for that matter).

Facing such intransigence by the chief law enforcement officials in various counties as the chokepoint for being able to exercise Second Amendment rights, what remedy does the citizenry have — allocate more funding, hire more staff, process more applications. Do whatever it takes to meet the legal requirements to which these officials are beholden, or else strike from the books laws that should have never been put there in the first place.

Today, it is COVID. What comes next? What is to stop these bureaucratic processes from becoming a pocket veto for citizens’ Second Amendment rights? This is accomplished already in many jurisdictions by way of requirements to show “cause” in order to obtain carry permits. Washington, D.C. denied 77 percent of its concealed carry applications prior to a court ruling forbidding it to use the vague “cause” standard for permit issuance. But how much easier is it to simply not process permits in the first place?

That this disturbing trend continues to occur in North Carolina is concerning. If it can happen in the South, historically far friendlier to the Second Amendment than other parts of the country, what else is possible now that COVID has shown bureaucrats just how far government power can be stretched without any real consequence?

These permitting bottlenecks as in the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s department also raises an increasingly uncomfortable issue on the Right: The growing rift between Second Amendment activists, and a group they have traditionally viewed as a natural ally – law enforcement. In my article next week, I will outline why gun control puts conservatives and police in many respects at odds with one another.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

The annual CPAC conference, now in its 47th year, is the premier stage on which GOP stars and neophytes can strut their stuff and position themselves as potential contenders for national office. Notwithstanding the scaled-back venue for the event last weekend in Florida instead of Washington, DC, the event presented a parade of talent which, if Republicans play it smart, should provide a generation of strong leadership for a political party needing a winning strategy and a clear message.

While the media’s attention understandably was focused on former President Donald Trump’s Sunday afternoon speech, the real worth of the conference showed through in the “farm team” of GOP representatives, senators, and state governors who addressed the gathering in-person and virtually.

Having the former president deliver the keynote address made perfect sense. After all, until the unforeseeable COVID pandemic reared its ugly head one year ago, the last four years under his leadership delivered a booming economy, energy independence, lower taxes, stability abroad, and regulatory reform unseen since Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. Trump’s message of economic freedom and secure borders must continue to undergird the Republican Party.

Ultimately, however, the key to future electoral success for Republicans is by who and how that message is delivered, and the spotlight for that stage must be broadened to highlight not only the former president but beyond.

Trump has much to commend himself to the GOP moving forward. The motherload of anti-establishment sentiment he tapped into five years ago propelled him to an extraordinarily unexpected victory in 2016. He also showed voters that it is possible to be elected to national office and actually deliver on campaign promises.

At the same time, it must be noted that the pool of talent on which the GOP now can, and should draw is deep and impressive, and it would be irresponsible for the party to insist that such valuable human resource wait in the wings for the next four years. Four years is more than enough time for the Democrats to solidify their bureaucratic strength, and to manipulate voting processes by hook or crook to ensure that they will retain power nationally far beyond the coming quadrennium.

Indeed, despite Biden’s win last November, his party is not sitting idly by savoring its victory. They are keenly aware of how close their margin was on Nov. 3rd, and they see the same stumbles and lapses in Biden’s performance the rest of us are witnessing. Democrats will continue to promote their young talent onto the bench and into the lineup, not only Vice President Kamala Harris but Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and current Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, to name just a few.

The GOP, with successful and telegenic sitting governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, Members of Congress including Dan Crenshaw and Jim Jordan, and Sens. Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, among many others, has an even broader and deeper pool of talent. These stars, however, must be free to breathe, spread their wings, and be encouraged to fight vigorously to prove themselves; not as second-stringers in Trump’s shadow, but in their own right so that the cream of the crop rises to the top.

Politically, the next four years will be brutal — no-holds-barred pitched battles waged in the media, state legislatures, congressional districts, and even courthouses across the country. And, if there is one thing Nov. 2020 and Jan. 2021 taught us, it is that old playbooks, even the one that propelled Trump to the presidency five years ago, are no long guarantors of success; my home state of Georgia, now represented in the Senate by two ultra-liberal Democrats, is proof of that.

How the GOP manages its “off-season” will reveal whether the party has taken those lessons to heart, and with a balancing act that would be the envy of the Flying Wallendas high-wire team.

If Trump, who still has much of value to give his party and his country, is willing to immerse himself as a coach for the star-studded team the Republicans already have suited up, not only he will solidify his legacy but usher in a resurgence for the GOP. To paraphrase John Fogerty, “put them in coach, they’re ready to play.”

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

As recounted by Lewis Carroll in his timeless parody “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Alice discovers her surroundings to be “curiouser and curiouser.” In many ways, the fictitious world conjured by Carroll more than a century and a half ago aptly describes the state of affairs in our nation’s capital after only the first weeks of the Biden Administration.

The speed with which the new administration and its Democrat cohorts in both houses of the Congress are undermining substantive historic and common-sense norms of behavior and law, is deeply disturbing.

For nearly two months now, since the violence on Capitol Hill in early January, Washington, D.C., has been turned into an armed compound. Thousands of armed military personnel patrol its streets, and miles of razor wire and metal fencing encircle the Capitol building itself and several blocks in every direction. This militarization of the Capitol, clearly with the approval of the president himself, is not only unprecedented but pointless from a substantive security standpoint, insofar as no threat as might come close to warrant such massive response has been cited and no evidence in support thereof has been produced.

But what has been happening inside that secured perimeter is stranger still.

Just last week, for example, Merrick Garland, nominated by Biden to serve as the next attorney general of the United States, stated with quite a straight face that he simply was unable to decide whether the act of entering our country illegally should remain an unlawful act. Other matters clearly appropriate on which a nominee for this high office would have views, confounded him as well.

At the very same confirmation hearing at which he could not state with certainty whether an illegal act should remain an illegal act, Garland declared that during his past 24 years as a federal judge leading to his being on the threshold of becoming our country’s 86th attorney general, he had never given sufficient thought to whether federal law would protect biological female athletes against unfair competition by male athletes who declare themselves to be “female.” Hmmmm.

Members of Congress seem to share the attorney general nominee’s unfamiliarity with or disdain for fundamental principles of fairness and the plain language in the Constitution. For example, last week two Democrat House members, both from California, sent letters to all major cable, satellite and streaming video providers demanding to know why those providers were continuing to carry conservative-oriented news outlets. The principle that the First Amendment to the Constitution protects recipients of those demand letters against just such congressional interference, obviously was alien to at least this pair of lawmakers.

Earlier last month, Democrats in both Houses of Congress introduced legislation to give $300 million of taxpayer dollars to a federal agency that was established three-quarters of a century ago to combat malaria in the southern part of our country – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These most recent funds, however, would be directed to CDC not for combatting malaria, or any disease for that matter, but to study and implement gun control. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

Of course, any meaningful correlation between a federal bureaucracy’s mission and congressional appropriations hardly remains anywhere in the federal government. The nearly two trillion dollar “COVID Relief” bill passed last week by the House confirms this reality with an exclamation mark. Most of the massive spending in the pandemic “relief” legislation is directed to programs and priorities that have no relationship at all with fighting the pandemic that continues to infect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

However, in what has to be the clearest evidence Democrats in Congress have lost whatever touch they might previously have had with an understanding of and respect for historical constitutional and legal norms, on Feb. 22 (three days before Biden sent cruise missiles blasting into Syria), more than 30 House members publicly recommended that the decision whether the United States should respond in the future to a nuclear attack in kind no longer should be made by the president as commander-in-chief, but rather by a committee! On that score, even Alice likely would be perplexed; our adversaries in the real world certainly would be.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.