Liberty Guard Author

OPINION: New 2A Dispute Pits The NRA Against Doctors
The Daily Caller
8:00 AM 11/15/2018 | OPINION
Bob Barr | Former Congressman (R-GA)

The latest gun control dust-up is not between the Bloomberg-funded “Everytown for Gun Safety” and the National Rifle Association; nor is it an argument between law enforcement groups on opposing sides of the issue.
The most recent and ongoing dispute between Second Amendment supporters and gun control advocates pits the NRA against doctors.

Shortly before the November 6 mid-term elections (from which candidates on both sides of the gun-control debate can claim victories), the NRA rebuked the American College of Physicians (ACP) for the organization’s continuing advocacy of gun-control legislation having nothing directly to do with the practice of medicine.

In response, physicians associated with the ACP, along with some doctors not directly related to that group, engaged the gun-rights association in a Twitter war. The battle centered on the question of whether physicians should use their platform as medical professionals to press for political policy changes rather than to improve doctors’ ability to treat victims of gun violence.

Physicians, just like members of any other profession, are certainly free to express their views on firearms-related issues or any other matter falling within the broad parameters of public policy. That some physicians have determined to do so as doctors – using the platforms available to them as doctors to advocate for gun control measures – is not a new phenomenon.

Almost a quarter century ago, in 1995, the “Annuals of Internal Medicine” (the flagship publication of the ACP) declared that “firearm violence” was a “public health imperative” that had reached “epidemic proportions” and therefore measures to limit access to firearms through legislation was an appropriate responsibility of physicians qua physicians.

The ACP has continued and even accelerated its drive to enact gun control legislation. In fact, its webpage highlights gun violence as among the most important issues with which it is concerned.

That webpage prominently displays a red icon labeled, “Firearms and Health”; it is the only “collection” of ACP publications to which visitors to the page are directed. A click on that icon will reveal to the visitor some 60 different publications on the topic.

The publications, which comprise ACP’s current and publicly available collection of gun control writings, include topics that are standard fare for gun control advocates: unfavorably comparing rates of firearm violence in America to other countries, the need for broader and stronger background checks, public opinion surveys supporting gun control measures, the gun show “loophole,” the dangers of having firearms in homes and more.

Recently, of course, the ACP has jumped on the bandwagon of those calling for a ban on so-called “3-D firearms.”
Beyond this compilation of the “usual suspects,” however, the ACP has positioned itself firmly on the far extreme of gun control, favoring measures such as the “prohibition of handgun ownership by private citizens.”

It has advocated also for measures that qualify it for derision, such as a federal ban on plastic (as in “toy”) guns.
It is such fringe advocacy that undercuts the credibility of the ACP, which is supposed to be an organization representing and assisting internal medicine doctors in their practices. But it was the group’s loose use of “studies” and other statistical “evidence” in support of its gun control advocacy, that recently caught the eye of the NRA.

The gun-rights organization blasted the ACP for deploying its physician-supported resources to press federal and state legislators for ever-increasing limitations on individual possession of firearms, based on faulty analysis.

The APC is not alone in using its resources to advocate for not connected to its core mission.  The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has for decades tried, sometimes successfully, to interject itself into the gun control debate, by declaring that gun control is a matter within the organization’s jurisdiction over the control of diseases.
Republican-controlled Congresses have in recent years stopped the CDC from using taxpayer funds to involve itself in gun control efforts.

It is a virtual certainty, however, that the House, soon-to-be under Democrat Party control, will remove such prohibitory language in CDC’s appropriated funding. It is not clear that the Senate, which remains under GOP control, will go along with such a measure.

What is certain is that come January, Speaker Pelosi and her Democrat majority will be a far more receptive audience to extreme gun-control advocacy groups like the ACP; a situation that unfortunately will continue to blur the line between the practice of medicine and the practice of gun control.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.

Democrats’ Revenge-Fueled Agenda Not a Recipe for Long-Term Success
Townhall.com

Bob Barr

In the immediate aftermath of last week’s mid-term elections, which saw the Democrats regain control of the House, many in the GOP fretted that this could portend a long-term trend, extending well beyond the 2020 cycle.  However, and notwithstanding the understandable disappointment in the Republican caucus at being demoted to minority status, the “agenda” being put forth by soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her band of extreme Liberals poised to chair important House committees, might actually be a silver lining to this dark cloud.

The Democratic Party’s “agenda” is, after all, no real agenda at all; unlike the last, truly historic mid-term election in 1994.

The 1994 election brought the first Republican House majority in four decades; in large measure because then-Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and a small group of firebrand colleagues crafted and presented to the voters a real agenda.  The “Contract with America” described for the electorate 18 issues to be voted on within 100 days of the 104th Congress, if the voters gave the GOP a majority in the House. The voters responded positively, and the new Republican majority followed through on its part of the bargain; bringing such important matters as term limits and a balanced budget amendment to the floor for open votes.

That policy-driven agenda set the stage for historic action by the Republican majority in the House over the ensuing two-and-one-half years, leading in mid-1997 to a balanced federal budget for the first time since the 1960s.  All this and more was accomplished with a Congress controlled by the GOP and a Democrat in the White House.  And while factors relating to President Clinton’s impeachment in late 1998 derailed the ability of the two branches to continue working together on substantive matters such as those, for that brief, shining moment substance prevailed over partisanship in the Nation’s Capital.

Today, the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton – one willing to work with the GOP on substance – is no more.  Today’s Democratic Party wears partisan blinders so pronounced, that the only “agenda” it can see is wrecking vengeance on a Republican President who bested their candidate two years before.  The Party’s agenda now consists of nothing other than reflexive, incoherent hatred for Donald Trump.

In place of a substantive policy agenda with which to begin governing when the 116th Congress convenes next January, Pelosi and her angry minions have prepared a shopping list of more than 85 investigatory targets focused not on matters of substance or national importance, but on Donald Trump personally, his family and his associates. Promised investigations range from securing access to Trump’s tax returns, to inquiring into Ivanka Trump’s clothing business. Rather than moving forward with their version of a Contract with America, Democrats are pinning their entire hopes on a “Contract for Revenge”; intent on dragging the public through dozens of partisan investigations, scripted “outrage” soundbites, and hollow impeachment attempts.

Such strategy indicates Democrats have largely if not completely abandoned any hope of bipartisan cooperation, settling instead for passing a handful of symbolic bills, probably to include their go-to favorite, gun control, all designed as nothing more than fodder for the 2020 presidential election.  Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, otherwise a smart and crafty politician, appears by his silence to be giving the green light to Pelosi’s and Maxine Waters’ scorched-earth strategy in the House.   Apparently, Schumer and his Senate colleagues still fail to realize how much their over-the-top performance during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings cost them in the just-concluded Senate contests.

The opportunity being handed the Republicans in the House by the Democratic Party’s revenge-seeking investigative agenda, however, does not guarantee the GOP will be able to regain that majority in 2020; far from it.    If Republicans sit back, squabble, and simply hope that the Democrats will self-destruct, the status quo (which is, after all, the most powerful force in the universe) will likely keep the Democrats in power in two years.

If on the other hand, the GOP presents vigorous leadership in the House, with a consistent, positive and substantive agenda that can rekindle even some of the passion that drove voters to the polls a generation ago, they may very well find themselves poised to not only recapture the majority in two years, but lay the foundation for a lasting, conservative agenda to drive national policy for years to come.  In fact, House and Senate Republicans could even jump start that process by doing something other than licking their wounds in the upcoming Lame Duck session.

Townhall.com
NOVEMBER 7, 2018
One Small Step for Members, One Giant Leap for Civility
Bob Barr

This opinion piece went to press before the results of yesterday’s voting were known.  But regardless of who will serve as the country’s next Speaker, one question will remain distressingly front and center:  how we can return a degree of civility and professional discourse to an institution that has drifted far from such a mooring.

We now find ourselves at a point where a veteran Member of the House can — without a word of admonishment from her Party’s leadership — call on people to “get in the faces” of those with whom they disagree, and who vows openly to use the power of a committee chairmanship to wreak vengeance on political enemies. Others call for “kicking” opponents when down.

We have seen confirmation hearings for a nominee to the highest court in the Land descend into shouting matches that would be, in some other setting, utterly comical.

It has become fashionably facile for Democrats and others to lay blame for this toxic environment at the feet of Donald Trump.  The plain-speaking president frequently makes it easy for such a charge to be levied. However, the current condition has been far longer in the making than two years; and congressional leaders, especially those on the Democratic side, have done virtually nothing to stop or even slow the downward spiral.

Rekindling civility in a body grown unaccustomed to it, will be neither easy nor quick.  But there is one step which Party leaders on both sides can take that could at least start that process.  It is a step surprisingly simple; a move actually taken two decades ago by a man – Newt Gingrich – who was demonized by the Left as being uncivil, but who truly understood and advocated for civility in public policy debate.

In early 1997, at the start of the 105th Congress, then-Speaker Gingrich and then-Minority Leader Dick Gephardt scheduled a three-day bipartisan retreat in Hershey, Pennsylvania for all House Members, along with their spouses and children.  My wife and I, in the company of our two teenage sons, traveled to Hershey on Amtrak not really knowing what to expect.

Just two years prior, the House majority had switched from Democrat to Republican for the first time in four decades.  Tempers were still high; emotions remained raw; and both sides eagerly anticipated battles to come.  But the simple decision to transport everyone out of the Washington swamp to a resort in Pennsylvania for a long weekend, was genius, and at least in my opinion an unqualified success; if “success” is defined as creating a tangible degree of good will and understanding where little if any had existed previously.

The retreat forced Members from one Party to be in close proximity to their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, for two solid days with no easy escape; and in settings far different from the structured, adversarial environs in which virtually all House business had been defined to that point.

Democratic and Republican Members ate and talked together, in small groups and large over the course of two days and nights.  Most important, the interactions took place with spouses and children present.  This ensured that Members who might otherwise shout charges and level accusations at an opponent, to instead actually listen to one another and respond civilly.  Members from one Party were able to see their counterparts from the other Party not as one-dimensional enemies to be shouted down and belittled; but as human beings with strengths and weaknesses as they themselves possessed.   The exercise began to actually break down barriers reinforced by the relentless battering that had become standard fare in the Congress.

One of my sons, watching Chuck Schumer dance with his daughter during an evening party while we were in Hershey, turned to me and remarked that, “he is as bad a dancer as you are, Dad.”  In fact, Schumer was not as bad a dancer as I was (and remain), but my son’s observation encapsulated precisely what that weekend retreat accomplished. The exercise pushed us to see each other as husbands, wives, parents, and neighbors.

It worked; for a while.  Unfortunately, leaders from both Parties failed to follow up on its success over the long term.  But for one brief, shining moment, the ice of extreme partisanship melted away and was replaced by civility.

Whoever is elected Speaker come next January, I would strongly urge he or she take that same small step as did Newt Gingrich and Dick Gebhardt in January 1997.  It worked then and will work again.  Lord knows we need it now more than ever.

Birthright Citizenship Is No Constitutional Guarantee

The Daily Caller

11:00 AM 11/03/2018 | OPINION

Bob Barr | Former Congressman (R-GA)

The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has been part of our Constitution for 150 years, but the “birthright citizenship” language it contains has never been directly addressed by the United States Supreme Court; the only time it even partially dealt with the issue was in 1898 (in a case that involved foreign parents of a child born in the U.S. who were lawfully in the country). The Congress, which could legislatively define and limit the amendment’s problematic terms, has never developed the political backbone to do so.

President Trump has stepped into this vacuum declaring that he will, by executive order, clarify and limit what it means for a person born in the United States, to also be “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” as the amendment requires. This point bears repeating: in order for a person to be considered a U.S. citizen by virtue of being born within the borders of our country, they must also be subject to our sovereign power.

The flash point here is clear: does a child born to a mother who is in the United States illegally, gain American citizenship by the sole fact of having been delivered on our side of the border?

To understand and answer this question, it is necessary to consider the historical and legal parameters within which both our Constitution and the 14th Amendment were crafted, considered and interpreted.

As a starting point, it is important to understand that there is absolutely nothing in the legislative history surrounding the adoption of the 14th Amendment that supports the interpretation that it contemplated granting citizenship to children born of mothers unlawfully in our country. In fact, quite the opposite becomes clear if one studies the records of the actual debates accompanying adoption of the proposed amendment by the Congress.

There is, for example, argument by the very drafters of the language establishing that it was not intended to grant citizenship to foreigners. The amendment’s clear and overriding purpose was to ensure that emancipated slaves born in the U.S. would be considered citizens; it had nothing to do with children born of non-citizens while in our country.

Furthermore, standard rules of legislative interpretation mandate that the amendment’s language in this regard must be afforded meaning consistent with relevant history, law, and intent. As noted in the Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution, much of the law and rules of interpretation employed by the drafters of the amendment drew on British canons of law, including the seminal treatises of law by Blackstone that declared birthright citizenship a feudal concept and therefore inapplicable to and incompatible with our form of government. This clearly supports the argument that in the drafting of the language of the 14th Amendment, births by illegal aliens were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country and therefore not entitled to enjoy the privileges of citizenship.
Thus, even though at the time of America’s split with Great Britain in the last quarter of the 18th Century, our then-mother country recognized citizenship by birthright, the principle was not incorporated by language or intent into our constitutional system of governing; and the 14th Amendment made this clear.

Congress to this point has been unwilling to address the problem. It could do so, for example, by passing legislation making clear that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, means persons lawfully in the U.S. and therefore subject to our nation’s sovereignty rather than the sovereignty of the country in which they are lawful citizens. Or Congress could, by super-majority in both houses (and after ratification by three-quarters of the states), amend or outright repeal the 14th Amendment.

Absent a successful constitutional amendment, any legislation affecting the meaning of the birthright citizenship language certainly would be challenged in court, and likely quickly reach the Supreme Court. An executive order signed by President Trump to do the same thing, would similarly be challenged and present the question to the Court.

Trump may not have unanimous public support for taking action in this regard, but history and the clear meaning of the Constitution’s provisions are on his side. And, at a time when clarity in immigration policy and law are ever more critical, having a president willing to do something to move the ball forward is refreshing.

Bob Barr represented Georgia in the United States House from 1995-2003. He is presently the president and CEO of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation, which supports law enforcement officers.

Putting Military at the Border is Well Within Trump’s Authority
Bob Barr
Townhall.com

As Beltway Theater goes, a slow-moving caravan of defiant Central American migrants heading towards the United States border could not have been scripted any better for the midterm elections. Though more than 1,000 miles away, with an anticipated arrival still weeks away, the narratives from each side of the aisle were quickly brought to the stage and performed with all the dramatic aplomb we have come to expect from the D.C. box-office trying to sell election votes as if they were the hottest ticket in town.

Yet, from among the usual cries of “ISIS hiding among the migrants” and “Republicans are racists for demanding border security,” there are actual issues meriting a far more serious discussion than typically offered in the immigration debate; in particular, what powers does a president legallypossess to secure the border against such hordes?

At first blush, it may seem obvious that the president could, and perhaps should, have broad latitude to secure America’s borders; including, as President Trump announced this week, sending the military to the border to serve as needed. However, the doctrine of posse comitatus, codified into the 140-year-old The Posse Comitatus Act, makes this option less clear than conventional wisdom might suggest. Though brief in length and relatively unknown by most Americans, the law is an important safeguard against domestic military occupation; making it unlawful for anyone — not just the president — to use the “Army” (meaning, in modern times, any branch of the military) to “execute the laws” unless “expressly” authorized by law or the Constitution.

Since its enactment, Congress has allowed for few exceptions to the Act; for example, the military providing equipment and expertise to fight the drug war, or previous uses of the military at the border in non-combative support roles. These are not exceptions taken lightly, and history and experience have taught us to be very careful with expanding the definition or use of the military for law enforcement purposes; as I and others noted clearly during the Waco hearings, in debates regarding the USA PATRIOT Act, and elsewhere over the years in the post-9/11 “Security State” environment. Nevertheless, deteriorating conditions at America’s border presents new territory for this old law.

As such, the question we must now ask is whether protecting the integrity of America’s borders against specific threats is a fundamental responsibility of the president, and if using the military to assist in doing so, is a proper exercise of serving as the “commander in chief” as per Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. I would argue strongly it is, and if Trump’s decision to use armed forces at the border is to protect it, rather than supplement the enforcement of immigration laws, his order this week would not fall within the law’s prohibition.

While the flow of immigrants into the U.S. is rightfully within Congress’ legislative purview (as much as the Obama administration worked to side-step it, hence the mess we are in now), the actual defense of the border, especially in specific instances of direct threats to its integrity, would fall to the president, and in some cases, the governors of border states (under their police power and use of their National Guard units). Different from the long standing conversation about border security generally, thousands of migrants traveling en masse is an entirely different issue with greater national security implications. The circumstances here change from a simple immigration enforcement question (not to mention how, exactly, crime and economic problems in foreign countries are legitimate grounds for granting asylum), to one of genuinely defending the border against a specific threat.

Actual defense of the border, the issue at hand today, is not about immigration directly, but properly ensuring a country’s safety jeopardized by allowing anyone (migrants, gang members, or terrorists) and anything (drugs to disease) unfettered access into our country. Though the caravan of migrants is not the  “invasion” some on the Right have made it out to be, it does represent a very real and serious threat to the U.S. by putting our border security at risk and in the global spotlight; a threat that would, if unchecked, serve as an example to others that regardless of intent, to enter the United States one need only swarm it.

Members of the military should not be checking papers and processing migrants; but rather, serve as an impenetrable shield and check against potentially hostile crowds who would see to overrun our struggling Border Patrol, as a tactic to seek entrance into this country not through legal means, but literal force. Is this not precisely what “national defense” means?

There is, of course, the possibility that the military may not be needed at all, or at least not for an extended period of time. Mexico may, in the end, step in and stop the caravan as they too are facing similar issues as the U.S.; not to mention the simple fact of geography and weather may take a heavy toll on the migrating mass and force many to turn back.  But it would be irresponsible for the president not to make contingency plans.  A preemptive decision by Mr. Trump, in consultation with Congress and the Justice and Defense  Departments clearly laying out the President’s ability to legally use the military at the border, would help prevent more serious problems if and when the crowds arrive, and would set an important precedent for the future.