Blog

Townhall

by Bob Barr

California has long been a refuge for people big on ideas but short on realism. Whether it is the famous sunshine, its gorgeous coastline, or the state’s tolerance for even the most extreme buffoonery, California has played center stage for more than its fair share of “movements” – from beatnik and other counterculture revolutions to murderous cults.

Knowing this history helps to understand why a state with an economy larger than most countries in the world, is swiftly heading towards total collapse. The people running California today are the same ones who for decades believed they could change the world with music and sit-ins but are joined now by millions of young “progressives” even less-anchored to reality than their hippie mentors.

The result of this strange brew is a series of public policy responses to major issues that would be utterly laughable, if not for the very real and extremely serious consequences born of such ineptitude.

Thus, while the populations of other sun-belt states like Texas and Florida are increasing rapidly, California’s population is shrinking. What should be even more troubling is that some 23 percent, nearly one-fourth of California voters, report they are “seriously considering” leaving the state. This includes the rich and famous as well as many businesses which, when leaving, take with them significant tax revenues the state desperately needs to fund its lavish social spending.

How are California’s political leaders responding? Not with any apparent measure of concern, and with some expressing anger at exiting businesses. Last year, for example, state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, upset that Tesla founder Elon Musk did not share her progressive vision about empowering Big Labor, tweeted “F*k Elon Musk.” When the Tesla billionaire later announced the company’s move from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, he pointedly noted the Assemblywoman’s profane tweet.

It would be one thing if Ms. Gonzalez’s cavalier attitude was only costing the state critical jobs and tax revenues, but the problem goes much deeper.

Rabid environmentalism has fueled state leaders’ willful disconnect from reality and threatens to push California over the edge of a historic energy crisis on which it has teetered precipitously for two decades.

Many Californians remember the state’s energy crisis at the turn of the Millennium, which put the term “rolling blackouts” into the public lexicon. Millions were without power for hours at a time, disrupting businesses and livelihoods alike. In the two decades since, California’s energy situation has become demonstrably more perilous, even as state leaders seem blissfully oblivious to the looming catastrophe.

Once upon a time, California enjoyed sufficient energy infrastructure reserves that enabled it to recover from incessant bureaucratic meddling in the energy marketplace, but no longer.

Environmental extremism in pursuit of a “100 percent clean energy future” has gutted traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas. In this unrealistic scenario, California’s energy future will rely exclusively on power sources subject to natural impediments – like clouds, windless days, and drought. Not surprisingly, nuclear power, by far the cleanest and most reliable energy source, failed to survive this clean energy onslaught; the state right now is decommissioning its last remaining nuclear power station, responsible for a whopping 10 percent of the state’s energy needs.

It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that making up this deficit will be impossible relying on wind and solar alone, but state officials continue their anti-energy march, including plans to eliminate internal combustion engines from use altogether. Gov. Gavin Newsom just signed a bill banning the sale of small gas engines, like those found on leaf blowers. That’s one small step for a man, one more giant leap into the energy abyss.

The real danger, however, is that without traditional energy infrastructure, there is no way California can steer away from the iceberg into which its leaders are turning. Outside of buying energy from adjacent states (several of which are facing their own energy crises), there simply is no “back-up” power generation acceptable to California “greenies” capable of coming close to meeting the energy demands placed on it. Once the new blackouts begin, they will remain – perhaps permanently.

For the millions of the 25 percent of California citizens who already are considering leaving the state, now might be the time to do so, before the last U-Haul crosses the border eastward. It is polite to ask the last person in a room to turn off the lights when leaving, but considering California’s current trajectory, such a request will not be necessary.

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

In 1961 a previously unknown “doo wop” group, the Tokens, topped the singles chart with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Considering the “woke” leadership of the United States military and our foreign intelligence agencies, many are wondering if the U.S. military “lion” sleeps while our Russian and Chinese counterparts work feverishly to overtake us in at least one key technology – hypersonic weaponry.

It is a concern worthy of serious study.

Recent public reports establish that both Russia and China have made significant advances in developing hypersonic missiles, the next generation of warhead delivery systems. These reports come as America’s commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden and his top military and foreign intelligence leaders remain fixated on ensuring a “woke” defense establishment and on mandating COVID vaccines for all military and civilian employees under their command, regardless of how many resignations such a short-sighted policy will cause.

When these factors are considered alongside Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s publicly reported views that Communist China is not “an enemy,” and his self-admitted friendship with his counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army that overrode his loyalty to former President Trump, it is indeed fair to speculate where his true priorities lie.

In a similar vein, over at the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, on assuming office early this year, made clear that his top priority as Secretary of Defense is not China or Russia, but rather to ferret out “white extremism” in the ranks.

At the CIA, recruitment videos soliciting future intelligence experts focus not on defending against foreign threats and equipping our nation’s decision-makers with the very best intelligence possible on which to base national security policy, but on ensuring that the next generation of employees are sufficiently versed in LGBTQ philosophy.

While the Pentagon’s policies on LGBTQ awareness and hiring are well-advanced, its focus on hypersonic weapon technology appears far less robust, even as Russia and China continue with major programs in this area. According to a recent, nonpartisan study by the Congressional Research Service specifically regarding “Hypersonic Weapons,” the United States currently has “no programs of record for hypersonic weapons,” and only possible production of “prototypes.”

Pentagon news releases speak glowingly about the importance of developing both offensive and defensive hypersonic weapon capability, but when officials are pressed on the matter, the picture lacks clarity. For example, in typical government gobbledygook, the Defense Department’s Principal Deputy Director for Hypersonics, Mike White, has explained that the department has not moved beyond the stage of “[identifying] the most viable overarching weapon system concepts to choose from and then make a decision based on success and challenges.”

In other words, while our primary adversaries develop functional hypersonic weaponry, our government is still “deciding to decide.”

On the defense side of the hypersonic weapon equation, the picture is equally dim. According to the same August 2021 CRS study, even as both China and Russia continue to aggressively develop hypersonic weaponry, including those capable of maneuvering in flight and carrying nuclear warheads, a former top Pentagon official, Michael Griffin, testified before Congress that the United States “doesn’t have defenses against [their] systems.”

China’s development of hypersonic delivery vehicles is especially troubling considering that its leaders reportedly are looking at possible deployment of such devastating weapons in a “regional context.”  In the current heated environment Beijing is fostering vis-à-vis Taiwan, such a policy presents an exceptionally dangerous scenario.

We all are by now familiar with Gen. Milley’s promise to warn Beijing in advance of any hostile action against the communist regime by the U.S. military. Unfortunately, the good General failed to elicit a corresponding promise from his PLA counterpart to warn us in advance of Chinese action, including by hypersonic missile.

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 COVID crystal ball is murky. Will it clear or darken further?

In what seems like a lifetime ago, elected officials were selling two weeks of economic and social sacrifice as the price to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Today, more than a year-and-a-half later, there remain cities and states in which citizens need permission from the powers that be, in the form of vaccines and masks, to do everything from eating in a restaurant to keeping one’s job.

The extremes to which local, state, and federal authorities have gone to exercise their newfound COVID “emergency powers,” is no surprise to anyone familiar with the way modern government works. Still, the speed by which America turned from a quasi-free society to one reflecting a patchwork of punitive policies, rules, and mandates, caught all but the most cynical critics of government power off-guard. Even private-sector requirements come with tightly wound strings trailing back to the White House.

Of course, consistent with the universal law that “no matter how bad things are, they can always be worse,” it could be worse. We could be Australia.

Whereas here in the United States enforcement of COVID regulations has been mostly reactive, authorities in Australia have been far more aggressive. Aussie police cars and officers in battle gear roam the streets and sidewalks of the country’s cities, on the lookout for unmasked senior citizens, who then are wrestled to the ground and forced to mask-up before being arrested.

Videos of such brutality from countries like Russia and China, are unsurprising, but in Australia – a western-style society with a long history of democratic norms? It was unthinkable – until it wasn’t.

The question is, if it can happen in the Land Down Under, can it happen here?

Thankfully, at least for now, the roadblocks to despotic rule constructed two-and-one-third centuries ago by our Founders, have kept us safe from the COVID tyranny we are witnessing in Australia and elsewhere around the globe. But for how long will these defenses hold? How strong is our Bill of Rights, the primary shield against totally unchecked government power?

The genius of our written Constitution is that the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights are explicit, thereby allowing for strong legal challenges to government overreach. This was clear early in the COVID pandemic when governments attempted to close gun stores and to restrict the right of people to travel freely from one state to another. These legal opportunities, however, are not available to our less-fortunate friends in Australia.

While successful outcomes to such court challenges are by no means guaranteed, the right and the ability to bring credible, constitutionally based challenges does provide a meaningful (and peaceable) playing field that can be the difference between living in tyranny or civil war.

The concept of federalism woven into our system of government provides an additional level of protection against COVID-based abuse by the federal government. State governors not enamored of the Biden Administration’s mandate-heavy, one-size-fits-all approach possess a degree of freedom and flexibility not enjoyed by their counterparts in Australia and other western countries. Florida and Texas, and many other “Red” states where citizens have elected governors more conservative and libertarian-minded than Joe Biden, have proven the worth of the dual-sovereignty model bequeathed to us by our Founders.

Then there is the Second Amendment, which allows for an armed citizenry and serves as a natural hedge against tyranny unrestrained by the democratic process alone. While it is unrealistic to suggest militias with small arms could stand a chance against the full might of the U.S. military, the real point is that the Second Amendment ensures that the road to tyranny would not be without painful, ruinous speedbumps. No such impediments exist in Australia, which years ago cracked down hard on the private ownership of firearms.

Still, it remains to be seen whether these vital safeguards will continue to withstand the constant pressure by “progressives” in Washington, DC, and in state capitols from California to New York, to force everyone into surrendering their remaining vestiges of individual liberty in the name of “safety.” This is the real questions voters should bear in mind as they vote next year and two years thereafter.

Is Australia’s nightmare our future?

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

Apparently unconcerned about California’s population decline, which most observers attribute to the state’s high taxes and excessive regulation, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last weekend signed into law a passel of new mandates, some of which appear crazy even by the Golden State’s liberal standards.

Based on a “finding” that having “Boys” and “Girls” toy aisles in large retail stores is “stigmatizing,” Newsom signed into law a requirement that, beginning in 2024, large retail stores in California must have “gender-neutral” toy sections. The LGBTQ lobby in the state lauded the move, claiming it will reduce “pressure [on] children to conform to gender stereotypes.”

Where such nonsense comes from remains a mystery to many of us not living inside California’s bubble, but it has come to infect virtually every aspect of life within the state. One of the strangest pieces of what the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday called “impactful” legislation signed by Newsom, is one that outlaws “stealthing.” Lest one make the same mistake I did when first seeing that term in the article, thinking it had to do with military stealth technology, it actually (in California, at least) has to do with …  sexual intercourse.

With the stroke of a pen, however, Newsom may have solved the awful problem of sexual “stealthing.”

According to the Chronicle, AB453 “criminalizes the nonconsensual removal of condoms during sexual intercourse, an act known as ‘stealthing.’” This conduct apparently has become such a serious and widespread problem in the Golden States that it requires a state-level prohibition to correct. Indeed, according to Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, who hails from Los Angeles, if left ignored as a form of “sexual battery,” the practice would continue to “cause long-term physical harm and violate the dignity and autonomy of [its] victims.”

Yet another bill signed by Newsom in his never-ending quest to control virtually every facet of personal conduct his imaginative mind can conjure, was AB367, the “Menstrual Equity Act of 2021.” This forward-looking new law strengthens the “basic human right” of Californians to have free access in school restrooms to “menstrual products.”

Notwithstanding that such a normal bodily function as considered by this new law is by its nature personal and private, the legislation expressly concludes that its impact will “ensur[e] the health, dignity, and full participation of all Californians in public life” (my emphasis). California’s already over-taxed citizens henceforth will be able to rest easy, knowing that all public schools from grades 6 to 12, and all state colleges, community colleges and universities will be stocked with tampons.

Consistent with its commitment to gender neutrality in all things, the new law extends the tampon mandate not only to girls’ restrooms, but to boys’ and gender-neutral bathrooms as well. This presumably will ensure that California’s “gender equity” commitment extends to all manner of students, including those who may be “nonbinary” or “gender nonconforming,” and cradles them in a “safe, and welcoming” environment free from any “forms of bias.”

As if students in California’s public schools did not have their classroom time already filled with mandated subjects, including sex education touching on transgenderism, in the future, thanks to yet another piece of legislation signed into law by Newsom, students will be forced to take courses in “ethnic studies” in order to graduate.

Although Newsom last year vetoed a similar ethnic studies bill because it was considered “too politically correct” – even for California — and contained too much technical jargon, the new law does not disappoint. For example, its mandated provisions extend to “Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x Studies.” It even includes “Armenian migration” among the “historically marginalized groups” to be studied. In a perhaps surprise blow to the ultra-liberals in the General Assembly, the new version of the legislation apparently is not quite as hard on “capitalism” as its predecessor.

With Newsom flexing his muscles after beating back the recent, quixotic recall effort against him, and with a General Assembly constantly pushing the envelope of liberalism to new extremes, it remains a safe bet that the next round of legislation reaching his desk will be even more nonsensical than this collection of mandated silliness.

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

In the latest round of negotiations over President Joe Biden’s proposal to raise taxes by $2.1 trillion, Democrats have struck a moderate, but hypocritical, compromise. According to The New York Times, the agreed-upon funding scheme will target “the merely rich more than the fabulously rich” by “raising tax rates on income rather than targeting wealth itself.”

Off to the side, one can hear Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk sighing with relief.

As Newsmax reported, their plan “largely leaves technology tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk untouched.” This news comes just months after a Pro Publica exposé demonstrated how the two mega tycoons pay very little, if anything, in federal income tax.

Why would the so-called “Tax the Rich” Democrats leave the fortunes of two of the richest men in the world largely untouched? For the same reason that they allow these same billionaires to evade federal regulatory rules, such as Musk’s deliberate disregard of spaceflight safety standards, which has led to fiery explosions.

And, coincidentally, these people contribute generously to Democratic campaigns and causes.

Staff from Bezos’ Amazon provided over $2.2 million to the Biden campaign and nearly $1.0 million to the DNC Services Corp. Those at Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla provided more than $210,000 and $106,000 to the DNC Services Corp.

While these billionaires may have bought themselves a reprieve from the Democrats’ progressive tax agenda, not so lucky are the people historian Patrick Wyman refers to as “the American gentry.” These are the “single-digit millionaires” who own concrete assets like farmland, apartment buildings and construction companies, and live in unfashionable cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania.

And, coincidentally, many of them supported President Donald Trump.

It is on these “gentry,” not on the billionaires against whom Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren rage with such verbal ferocity, that the burden of the new taxation will fall. Class warfare messaging might play well with young leftists who don’t vote, but most Democratic lawmakers are far too savvy to risk angering the donor class, no matter how much they insist that these fat cats need to “pay their fair share.”

They claim to be champions of the working class but mock actual blue-collar Americans as backward bigots at every turn. They claim to be pushing back against a “war on women” but censor the very word “woman.” They clutch their pearls at Trump’s disregard for “democratic norms” but have no qualms about plans to create new blue states or pack the Supreme Court.

Democrat state legislators take group pictures on private jets, even as they and their Hollywood friends party maskless at the Met Gala.

You’d better not try any of that. Let your mask slip slightly below your nose as you wrestle with your carry-on, and you’ll be booted off the plane in a heartbeat. It’s your fault, of course. If you wanted to fly maskless, you should not have flown commercial. If you wanted to enjoy the Gala without a sweaty rag over your face, you should have snagged a spot on Anna Wintour’s guest list.

Or, if you can’t be one of the elites but still want to enjoy their special privileges, you could consider being a member of a group they like; one that allows them to virtue signal without facing any real consequences. Haitian migrants fit the bill, and so 15,000 of them are allowed to walk across the southern border without so much as a nasal swab. Meanwhile, if you fail to present your vaccine paperwork, you’ll be out of a job.

The upper crust don’t care about the border caravan because none of those migrants will end up moving into their gated communities. They love the poor and downtrodden, of course, but there are zoning laws for a reason. Nor do they care about crime. Looting, rioting and defunding the police — they’ll cheer all of it on. There’s no crime where they live, at least the violent kind (remember Bernie Madoff). If the police are defunded, they can always pay for private security to keep the riff-raff off their lawns.

Our elites and their Democrat lackeys care about climate change, COVID and economic inequality, but only until these causes inconvenience them. They actually may believe they are building a better world but in reality, they are simply constructing a world in which they do as they please while the rest of us chafe under their every caprice. If we object, that’s just evidence of our moral deficiency and of their right, and indeed their duty, to keep us in line.

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

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.

Daily Caller

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.

Townhall

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.

Daily Caller

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.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Always lurking inside gargantuan pieces of legislation like the $3.5 trillion spending bill President Biden wants congressional Democrats to send to him, are dangers far worse than the dollar price tag. Such bills invariably include measures that give to government powers it neither deserves nor to which it is entitled, and which wind up costing citizens dearly in loss of privacy and other freedoms.

Currently, it is the IRS salivating at the thought of gaining even greater power than it already enjoys to snoop into taxpayers’ private financial records. If in fact the tax agency gets what Biden wants to give it, the IRS will have before it any individual’s financial accounts with gross inflows and outflows of more than $600 (that’s just six hundred dollars, not six thousand).

The federal government’s power to monitor financial transactions is already vast, but apparently not enough for the folks at the IRS.

Thanks to Uncle Sam’s half-century old War on Drugs, and its junior partner, the 20-year-old War on Terror, the Treasury Department, of which IRS is a part, has the power already to monitor virtually all cash transactions of $10,000 or more. Moreover, if an individual tries to evade such reporting requirements by breaking the total amount into smaller packages, that is itself a federal felony (called “structuring”).

Figuring out whether a taxpayer has crossed the line from lawful financial activities to illegal financial transactions like “structuring,” however, has been difficult for the IRS.

Americans for Tax Reform, a non-partisan, Washington, D.C.-based non-profit discovered that only eight percent of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s investigations into allegations of structuring uncovered actual violations of federal tax law. ATR’s research also revealed that this pitiful rate of return on investigative resources was because investigators simply “had not considered reasonable explanations” for the activities by those it targeted, leading the watchdog group to conclude that most investigations were “merely IRS-CI fishing expeditions.”

These financial transaction laws and accompanying regulations easily can become snares for the unwary, and there are numerous reported cases in which individuals and small business owners have found themselves on the wrong end of a federal felony prosecution for failing to be fully aware of the complexities of the laws.

One of the simplest ways for Uncle Sam to snoop on citizens’ banking transactions is the notorious “Suspicious Activity Report” (SAR). The Bank Secrecy Act mandates that employees at banks, credit unions, and even car financing companies, file such a report with the federal government for any transaction by one of its customers, if it appears “unusual” or out of the ordinary. The SAR is to be filed in every such instance, even if there is no evidence the transaction is illegal; only that it “might signal criminal activity” to the teller or other bank employee.

Biden now reportedly wants to make it even easier for the IRS to monitor individuals’ financial dealings by requiring financial institutions report any accounts where transactions over the year total more than a paltry $600, without further justification.

That many Democrats in Congress appear ready to grant such power to the IRS tells us how far the Party has diverged from its roots of protecting individuals from abusive government snooping. Republicans who would acquiesce to this provision will be confirming they remain blind to individual privacy in the face of government claims to be “making us safer.”

This move expanding the power of the IRS to gain access at will to virtually every bank account in America, may be justified by Biden and Democrats as necessary to access monies hidden in accounts the government wants to seize, and by so doing, help pay for the multi-trillion-dollar spending bill. This is an argument that cannot honestly be made with a straight face, but also one that rarely causes Democrats to hesitate spending the money anyway.

A more accurate, if unspoken reason some Democrats would support expanding the snooping powers of the IRS, is that it would facilitate uncovering details about financial accounts held by political enemies.

Intense pushback from Republicans may be enough to keep this proposal from the final markup of the budget as it goes through the reconciliation process; however, if this IRS-backed provision actually makes it to Biden’s desk, where he surely would sign it, one of the very last vestiges of financial privacy heretofore enjoyed by Americans, will have been swept aside by the stroke of a president’s pen.

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.