Look, police around the world have a tough go. Under any circumstance, their number one duty is to uphold the law, right? Unfortunately, recent pandemic chaos in places like New Zealand has taken things in a strange direction when it comes to the law. When Auckland police decided to pull over this suspicious vehicle- the trunk contained contraband that will shock you. Watch today’s episode of Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe to see what these mates found.
by Bob Barr
Magic acts have always been a popular draw in Las Vegas. These days, however, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could take their $5 Trillion Disappearing Budget Act show on the road, and give David Copperfield a real run for his money.
With one sleight of hand, these congressional charlatans can turn a $5 trillion budget to $3.5 trillion, and in the next wave of the political wand, make it disappear altogether.
We’ve come a long way downward from the late 1990s, when national leaders like then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and then-President Bill Clinton (not yet severely wounded by impeachment), could negotiate and pass through both parties’ membership in the Congress, a federal budget that actually was balanced. No black magic; only facts and transparency.
Today’s Congress under the leadership of the Democrat Party in both houses, has proven itself utterly unwilling or incapable of such effort, which explains their latest magic act. And, as magic acts go, it is certainly one for the ages.
There is no rabbit in this magician’s hat; just massive, historically high spending that will saddle future generations with the bill for a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Rather than treating the public with enough respect to be honest about the true cost of their plans, Democrats instead are gaslighting Americans into believing it costs nothing at all.
President Joe Biden took to Twitter over the weekend to boast how his plan “costs zero dollars,” while House Budget Committee member Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) ballyhooed the “zero-dollar” narrative to The Hill.
This, of course, is a flat-out lie, and an absurd one at that. Even the “lesser” $3.5 trillion estimate is a deliberate fabrication. In July, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated the true cost of Democrats’ plan to be between $5.0 and $5.5 trillion. When spending at this level, missing the mark by more than $1 trillion is not some innocent calculating mistake. It is an intentional effort to hide the truth from taxpayers, who are the ones on the hook for the final tab regardless of what Democrats promise.
The Wall Street Journal detailed some of the budget shenanigans used to cloud the real price tag. This legerdemain includes phasing-in future costs years down the road, so they are not fully factored into the bill’s 10-year estimate; it also shifts long-term costs onto states and off the federal tab. It is no wonder the WSJ called Biden’s plan “one of the greatest fiscal cons in history.”
Do Democrats they really believe Americans are so stupid as to buy this nonsense? The most disturbing aspect of this charade is that, yes, Democrats are counting on exactly that.
They believe Americans will overlook the difference between what normal people know as “cost” – that is, how much a person pays for something – and how Democrats are defining it here, as nothing more than the amount added to the national debt; in other words, no real “cost” to be concerned about.
In the real world, a $100 item at the store is not suddenly “free” if you find $100 on the ground; there is still a cost to the person who lost the $100. Democrat talking points identify this “someone else” as the “rich” and corporations (not including, of course, those corporations that contribute huge sums to help Democrats stay in power).
Also in the real world, all taxpayers – not just the “one percent” – will be tapped to pay for this boondoggle. Contrary to Democrats’ belief, you can “tax the rich” only so far before the principle of diminishing returns kicks in, and spiraling costs will require an illusory ever-expanding tax base to support them.
This is not a 10-year commitment either. History all but guarantees these programs will morph into permanent fixtures of federal policy, known as “entitlements.” As more funding is needed, Democrats will become ever more aggressive in finding new revenue streams.
What Americans must start asking, since the media will not, is if Democrats are so transparently dishonest about what is on the surface of their proposal, what is hiding in the details? We already fell once for Democrats’ “pass it so you can find out what’s in it” ploy. The cost of being fooled once again could very well wind up permanently wrecking our country’s economy.
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.
Corporations will always bow to the loudest pop-culture demand. Unfortunately, in the category of “woke” decisions, no matter how much you do- the goal post continues to move. The more training you do, the more training you need. The more rides you rename, the more customers you lose… which means the more employees you can’t pay… the domino effect is real. Before you know it, you’re recanting your claims and reversing your decisions and then you’ve just wasted your time. Join us for today’s episode as Bob dives into these dilemmas and how they apply to the “wokest” of all… Disney.
by Bob Barr
On Nov. 3, exactly one year from last year’s presidential election, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on a landmark Second Amendment case challenging New York’s century-old law making it next-to impossible for the average citizen to obtain a permit to lawfully possess a handgun outside their home.
To no one’s real surprise, the Biden administration last week filed a brief urging the High Court to dismiss the challenge to New York’s restrictive handgun law. What is interesting are the absurd, bordering on laughable, arguments the Biden Department of Justice makes in support of its position.
If one were to take the administration’s legal brief as historically correct, one would conclude that the United States is a nation founded on firearms restrictions rather than firearms freedom. Moreover, the Justice Department lawyers declare that New York’s highly prohibitory handgun permitting law is “most modest”!
To this Justice Department, giving state bureaucrats near-absolute power to decide whether a law-abiding citizen may exercise his constitutionally guaranteed right to possess a handgun for self-defense “fits comfortably” within what the Department considers the long “history and tradition” of government regulation of weaponry, going all the way back to at least 1285. That was the year, according to our Justice Department, when the British Parliament prohibited Englishmen from “wandering” around London after curfew carrying swords or other arms “for doing mischief.”
British royals prohibiting the carrying of weaponry, as cited by Biden’s legal eagles, include King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, and others. With a pedigree such as these rulers preventing their subjects from carrying “little short handguns” and “pocket daggers,” it would be easy to consider New York’s restrictions “modest.”
Seemingly lost on Biden’s team of crack attorneys, is the historic fact that citizens in these United States are not and never have been “subjects” such as those in historic England, and none of these rulers in the country from which we fought for, and achieved, independence, had to contend with the inconvenience of a constitutional guarantee of the right to possess a firearm.
Both New York state and New York City are breeding grounds for ultra-liberal mayors and governors with a lust for controlling citizens’ lives (a predisposition on full display over the past year-and-a-half of the COVID pandemic). To them, and to the Biden administration, placing into the hands of government officials the near-absolute power to decide whether to grant a citizen permission to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home is not only “modest” but downright beneficent.
To be sure, the New York criminal law does not absolutely ban the issuance of a handgun permit for a citizen’s self-defense. The state is too clever for that. Instead, the law dictates that a citizen may be granted such a carry permit if he or she convinces the issuing official that they have “an actual and articulable … need for self-defense.” This vague and arbitrary burden on the free exercise of a constitutionally guaranteed right is seen by the state of New York and Biden’s Justice Department as entirely proper and “modest,” despite presenting a demonstrably near-insurmountable legal obstacle to overcome.
In furtherance of its support for New York’s restrictive handgun law, the Justice Department lawyers argue accurately that guns carried in public “can be used for murder, rape, robbery, assault, and more.” In fact, criminals do just that regularly in New York City especially. What does not follow, by logic, reason, or history, is that restricting the ability of law-abiding citizens to possess handguns outside their home to protect themselves against those very sorts of crimes, is a “reasonable” restriction on the Second Amendment.
In virtually every other constitutional context, permitting bureaucrats to exercise arbitrary and capricious power such as officials in New York (and several other states) now possess under this challenged law, would be deemed unconstitutional on its face.
It may have been considered perfectly okay for Henry VIII to arbitrarily and capriciously deny his subjects the ability to protect themselves in public, but not the governor of New York or the President of the United States. Hopefully a majority of Supreme Court Justices will make that point when it renders a decision in this case next year.
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.
There’s a lot to look out for these days when it comes to influencing the younger generation. The most concerning is when the pop culture influencers can potentially encourage dangerous decisions in life. There’s not really any way to understand what would move a young man to do this, but this guy traded his flowing black hair for the most unusual of hair implants… Check out today’s episode and let us know what you think in the comments!
by Bob Barr
As Charles Dickens wrote many years ago, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Oh, how true it is today, as we watch Western culture crumble around us — toddlers being forcefully removed from airplanes for not wearing a mask, as Hollywood celebrities and socialist U.S. Representatives gleefully hobnob without such encumbrances. A time when a California mayor decries the “fun police” even as real police crack the skulls of those commoners who defy her mask orders.
To label this the age of foolishness would be a gross understatement.
Americans already were close to a boiling point over vexatious COVID mandates and rules, but last week’s flagrant parading of Leftist Elites’ disdain for the same rules may turn out to be the final straw. When caught violating her own rules, San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s response was precisely what you would expect of someone not only oblivious to her hypocrisy, but resentful of being publicly outed for it.
People are tired of being told to “follow the science” or “do our part,” when such diktat clearly serves as a smokescreen for policies that directly contradict the science, or to protect elites who have no interest in sharing the burden with the rest of us. Then again, as I wrote recently, it was never about science or sacrifice for Democrats. They have their pandemic, and we have ours, each with its set of very distinct — and very different — rules.
It is and always has been about control, and it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Hollywood elites have long lectured us about global warming all while jet setting across the globe in private planes, because their “busy schedules” leave them so little time for standing in line at TSA airport checkpoints. Marxist Black Lives Matter leaders buy million-dollar homes, because “they’ve earned it.” And it has become clear that “#MeToo #BelieveHer” applies, unless of course, the perp is an influential Democrat. The list goes on and on.
In an ironic twist, the scourge of COVID has made this hypocrisy impossible to ignore, as the consequences were no longer in the abstract, but instead are very real and very personal. It is not easy to shrug off losing one’s job because of COVID shutdowns, or to be ejected from an airplane because a child fails to understand how wearing a mask makes all of us “safe,” as Democrat politicians carry on without having to themselves abide by such inconveniences.
Democrats deserve scrutiny of the cruelty of their hypocrisy – and cruel it certainly is – but the more important story is what this behavior belies about the true nature of how Democrats view power, and the people subjected to it. If Democrats operate in one world, immune to the effects of their actions, how can they possibly represent the interests of those they serve in the other world? The answer is, they cannot.
Remember last year when the social justice marches turned into a broader “Defund the Police” movement, then championed by Democrats at all levels? Turns out that defunding the police has abysmal support among Democrats in general, and with black voters specifically. One reason for this disparity is that elitist Democrats, when not living on Twitter where anti-cop rhetoric wins them praise and notoriety, live in gated communities with private security; meanwhile, inner-city minorities who live in communities ravaged by drugs, gangs, and crime know there is but a thin blue line holding back the violence from their doorstep.
The same is true for the Second Amendment, which because of Democrats’ regulatory schemes with costly and time-intensive requirements, has become a privilege of the rich and near-rich, increasingly out of reach for many in the working class. The same can be said for education.
When Democrat politicians forced school closures last year because of COVID, rich Democrats could afford private alternatives and childcare, while working-class parents gave up jobs to stay home with kids (who were forced to sit in front of a computer screen for hours at a time pretending to “distance learn”).
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be able to tell herself that wearing an expensive dress emblazoned with “tax the rich” (designed, ironically, by a company with its own tax problems) is some sort of performance art disparaging the system. The reality is, however, that AOC is the system; a system with rules enacted by political elites and reinforced by the cultural elites, neither of whom are subject to the realities their policies create.
If this sounds familiar, it is because this is how every anarchist, socialist, and Communist system ended; with the elite living in luxury, while citizens eat their pets to stay alive. As history and those who objectively recount it tell us, sooner or later things will change.
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.
Now you see it… now you don’t. Now you do again, but it has changed colors, shape, and meaning… You see, the government likes to re-imagine the context of many things that should be untouched. Some of these things include the Constitution, our Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and even the Emancipation Proclamation. But for some reason, our nation’s “leaders” just can’t seem to help themselves. Tune into today’s episode of Bob Barr’s Laws of the Universe and see just what we mean by “censorship by camouflage.”
by Bob Barr
Recently disclosed actions by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley highlight a serious fraying of the civilian-military structure at the very core of our constitutional republic and also reveal a deep public misunderstanding of that relationship. Combined, these factors pose a danger the likes of which the country has not witnessed in modern times, if ever.
Our Constitution on this point is crystal clear. There is one commander-in-chief, and that person is the President of the United States. The decision to place the elected civilian leader of our country at the apex of the country’s armed forces was purposeful as a means of protecting the citizenry and the states from an overly-powerful national army that could undermine the constitutional order the Framers had so carefully constructed. Without this safeguard, the Constitution likely would not have been ratified in 1788.
Notwithstanding this constitutional clarity on military matters, inter-service rivalries and bureaucratic shenanigans have cropped up throughout our history. In modern times, these practical problems led Congress to pass two major reorganizations of the military command structure.
The first of these was the National Security Act of 1947, which clarified the chain of command from the president on down by establishing the Department of Defense headed by a cabinet-level Secretary.
Then, in 1986 to address problems that hampered the conduct of the Vietnam conflict, and serious inter-service rivalries thereafter, Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Act. This law further clarified the lines of authority for military decision making, and made absolutely clear that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had no operational control or command over any military units or individuals. His responsibility is advisory only — to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council.
Any action by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to make or direct operational, military decisions is directly contrary to the law; in a word, unlawful.
Yet, to Milley and those who support him, which apparently includes Democrat leaders on Capitol Hill, many major journalists and even President Biden himself, these legal restrictions are trumped by their partisan hatred of Donald Trump. Thus, in the days immediately preceding the November 3, 2020 election, and continuing through Biden’s inauguration the following January, Milley took it upon himself to brazenly violate Article II of the Constitution, the National Security Act, the Goldwater-Nichols Act and his own oath of office.
Just days before the 2020 election, reflecting his personal concerns that President Trump’s behavior might cause China’s military to respond adversely, Milley apparently called his counterpart at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to assure him that he – Milley – would make sure no such actions by the United States took place.
Subsequently, according to published accounts that Milley has not denied, in early January he directed that subordinate officers (over who Milley has no lawful command authority) inform him if they became aware of any orders with which Milley might disagree that concerned nuclear weapons decisions by Trump, presumably so he could countermand them.
By thus placing himself directly between the president and the Secretary of Defense, which is the person to whom the president issues operational commands as commander-in-chief, Gen. Milley was acting unlawfully.
Milley has not expanded on these allegations, beyond suggesting they were approved by the Secretary of Defense (which they were not) and that they reflected historical precedent (which they do not). Milley is scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill next week, but severe damage to the constitutional fabric of our country already has resulted.
In the immediate aftermath of these startling revelations, Biden not only declined to fire Milley, but actually expressed “confidence” in him.
A president who exhibits so little regard for the constitutional authority of the office he holds, not only demeans and undercuts his own presidency, but by his actions encourage further and possibly even more dangerous erosion of presidential authority by military leaders who may harbor policy disagreements with Biden’s successors. Journalists who deem such gross insubordination as practiced by Milley to be acceptable because it was predicated on action against Trump, exacerbate the constitutional divide.
Milley and Biden have opened a can of constitutional worms that truly will plague future presidents of both major political parties.
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.
Participation trophies are interesting. For generations now we’ve been warning each other of the dangers of individuals lowering their standard because they’ll get a trophy anyways… right? They don’t even have to be the best, do well, or stand out. Just exist and you get one too. Well, San Francisco has a weird way of handing out participation trophies.
San Fran’s trophies are a bit different than what kids get at the end of the soccer season. They’re $500 checks. And, get this, they’re given to the most violent criminals who decided to not “off” someone this month with a gun. That’s right. Paid to be good. Check out today’s episode of Idiot of the Week and see how San Francisco is battling their gun violence problem- one check at a time.
There is no precedent for what has transpired in the United States of America with Covid-19 Procedures. Joe Biden must be stopped.
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