From the Desk of Bob Barr

Townhall

There is a noticeable trend among young adults to postpone having children, not just for years but, in many cases, permanently. The long-term repercussions of such a movement for our country, will be significant and in many ways negative. Among the factors accounting for this trend are “green” extremism and the toxicity which has so deeply affected the current political environment.

Does the visceral dislike Republicans hold for Democrats, and vice versa, extend to marriage; to bearing children? Do other political factors, chief among them extreme fear of climate change, impact such vital personal relationships? The answer to both queries appears to be “yes.”

At the extreme, beginning in 2006, there has developed a movement to deliberately de-populate the planet by refusing to have children – “anti-natalism.” There even have sprung up umbrella organizations such as “Antinatalism International” and the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” to provide structure and publicity.

To be honest, I had not come across the term “anti-natalism” until noting mention of it recently in an article about the degree to which fear of climate change was causing individuals to alter their lifestyles, including deciding not to have children. On further investigation, I discovered it appears already to have enticed several celebrities to advocate on its behalf, even if only indirectly.

Perhaps foremost among those with celebrity status who have come to question the morality of having children, is New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as far back as 2019, posed the question to whoever might have been listening, “ Is it okay to still have children?” because of what she viewed as the accelerating ravages of climate change.  That same year, Britain’s Prince Harry, now an avowed left-winger living on America’s left coast, declared that he and his wife Meghan would limit their stable of offspring to two, out of deference to the endangered global climate.

Not only are individuals jumping on the no-more-children climate change bandwagon, but prominent business entities as well are dipping their corporate toes into the controversy.

Morgan Stanley, the New York based multinational investment management and financial services company, last year alerted investors that bringing a child into the world is “7-times worse for the climate in CO2 emissions annually than the next 10 most discussed mitigants that individuals can do.” It is unclear exactly what that statement means, but clearly it reflects the notion that having children represents a dire threat to Mother Earth.

The United Nations, always eager to raise the alarm against the developed world and the United States in particular, recently issued what it labels a “Code Red” warning for all of humanity because of climate change. While stopping short of formally endorsing anti-natalism in this context, the U.N. has been among those organizations issuing regular, apocalyptic warnings about global overpopulation since the 1970s.

Drilling down from the international level to the family, the vehemence with which Republicans detest Democrats, a favor returned in at least equal measure by Democrats toward Republicans, also appears to be infecting even personal, marital relationships. For example, a poll conducted last December revealed that at least among college students, more than 70% of Democrats would not knowingly even date a Republican.

This aversion to dating, much less marrying, and far less having children with someone of the “other” Party, while not new, has displayed a sharp increase over the past decade. Lasting, inter-party relationships, such as that between dyed-in-the-wool Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat firebrand James Carville, are becoming ever more rare as the deep and consuming animosity between the two parties grows. Overall, marital unions between Republican and a Democrat have sunk to a clear minority.

Whether for fear of increasing the “carbon footprint” a new child brings to the world, unwillingness to form a lasting personal relationship with a member of the “other” Party, or the economic cost of raising a child (calculated to be $300,000 for a child born today), the birthrate in the United States remains at its lowest ebb in history.

Green extremists might cheer this decline, as might other countries and movements seeking to harm or supplant the United States on the world stage, but in the medium and long-term, a nation riven by internal divisiveness and suffering a declining population is ill-positioned to remain a top-tier power.

And a nation without children would be a very unhappy place, indeed.

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

Daily Caller

Last Thursday’s unveiling of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s long-promised “Commitment to America” is a step in the right direction, in that it offers voters a sense that the GOP at least has an agenda. But it is hardly a giant leap and lacks the excitement, specificity, and strength that made 1994’s “Contract With America” such a game-changer.

Unlike its predecessor, this latest attempt to provide a scoresheet for evaluating House candidates reads as if it was drafted by a committee or committees, which in fact it apparently was. Not that such preparation is a fatal defect, but if the resulting document is wordy, lacking in clarity and precision, and comes across as an effort to please everyone who had a hand in its drafting, it loses the very attributes that made the 1994 Contract so appealing.

Perhaps the 2022 Commitment is so different from its predecessor because the political environment in which this year’s mid-term voters will cast their votes is so dissimilar. In 1994 Democrats entered the final weeks before the November elections blissfully confident that their four-decade long House majority would hold once again. This year, virtually every poll indicates the Democrats will lose their majority in the House.

In such environment, perhaps it makes sense to present a national Republican agenda that is strong on generalities and short on specifics; a game plan that provides just enough substance to qualify as an actual agenda without alienating voters already inclined to vote Republican. If so, it is precisely the type of timidity that many Republican voters have come to identify with the GOP in recent years.

The 1994 Contract was prepared in secret by a small group of House Republican leaders with input from an even smaller cadre of tested consultants. It was not promised and referred to repeatedly and publicly over many months, thereby reducing, if not eliminating any excitement “bump” once it was sprung whole cloth on the electorate and the Democrats.

Most importantly, however, the Contract gave the American electorate something it never before had received – a specific, concise, and clear set of ten manageable promises, set forth in language easily understandable to the average voter. It promised but importantly did not over-promise, and it set a very specific timetable for keeping those promises.

The current Commitment is very different, consisting of four broad, evergreen “themes” that tend to appeal to virtually every voter: a strong economy, a secure nation, a future of freedom, and an accountable government.

Each of these general topics is then buttressed with several sub-topics, which each in turn contains a few specifics. Drilling down to these specifics, the committed reader does indeed discover a few clear policy proposals and legislative initiatives for the GOP to pass if it regains the majority. These include a “Parents Bill of Rights” and ending proxy voting in the House.

Unfortunately, many of the “specifics” included in the Commitment lack details, and while all are consistent with long-standing tenets of the modern Republican Party — “curb wasteful government spending,”  “secure the border,” and “safeguard the Second Amendment” — there are no metrics with which the electorate can measure the Party’s success in keeping its promises.

It pays homage to the now-boiler plate promise by Republicans and Democrats alike – “Save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare” – a slogan that has become as meaningless as a distinction between the two major parties. Its inclusion adds nothing.

Many of the items listed are exceptionally vague — “personalize [health] care” and  “move supply chains away from China” – while others border on the esoteric – “enhance America’s …  cyber resiliency.”

Perhaps the single most important commitment in the entire document comes toward the end, where McCarthy commits to “conduct rigorous oversight” of the Executive Branch.

If a new Republican House majority conducts serious, substantive, and continuous oversight of abuses by the Executive Branch generally and the Biden Administration in particular – something that is among the rarest exercises of congressional responsibility by either Party – the 2022 Commitment to America will have earned its keep.

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

With much of the island still without electricity as a result of Hurricane Fiona pummeling Puerto Rico on Sunday, one might think that the Biden administration would be leading an effort to repeal a 1920 federal law that continues to cost the island’s inhabitants dearly for every gallon of petroleum imported into the island, which in turn pushes the cost of most consumer goods far beyond those on the U.S. mainland.

The administration, along with a majority of the Congress, however, stubbornly refuses to seriously consider weakening, much less repealing, the Jones Act (also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920) as a way to help the island’s 3.2 million inhabitants cope with inflation, high unemployment, and lack of basic necessities..

The Jones Act is best described as the poster child for overtly protectionist legislation that long ago outlived any usefulness it might have provided when signed into law. It was designed to protect the domestic maritime industry against competition from other countries; a goal it has accomplished for more than a century. The law does this by mandating that shipment by water of any goods or cargo between any two U.S. ports must be conducted only by vessels built in the United States and that are at least 75 percent U.S.-owned and crewed.

The Jones Act was passed in the aftermath of the First World War, during which America’s maritime fleet had been severely impacted by German submarine attacks, and when our nation’s shipbuilding and cargo carrying capacity was insufficient to meet the needs of the war effort. While national security might at the time have constituted a legitimate basis on which to enact corrective legislation, such is no longer the case and has not been for decades.

Still, like the famous case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce described by Charles Dickens in his well-known novel, “Bleak House,” the Jones Act lives on and on and on.

Exceptions to the law’s rigorous and costly mandates can be invoked for emergency needs, as President Trump did in 2017 following the devastation suffered by Puerto Ricans as a result of Hurricane Maria. The Act also allows for national security exceptions, as was considered earlier this year in the context of cuts targeting Russia’s petroleum exports. Over the decades, however, such moves are rare, insofar as they may incur the wrath of union leaders and members of Congress from districts having significant shipbuilding industry.

The cost of this law for a small nation like Puerto Rico (an “unincorporated territory of the United States”) that is highly dependent on importing virtually all petroleum and most other consumer goods, is massive; estimated to be in excess of $1.2 billion per year.

Still, whatever compassion resides in the White House or on Capitol Hill for the misery periodically inflicted on citizens of Puerto Rico by disruptive and deadly hurricanes, remains insufficient to move Washington away from its steadfast support for the protectionist law and the many shipbuilding union voters who demand allegiance to it.

In fact, rather than our government moving to relax some of the strict mandates the Jones Act requires which make it significantly costlier and less efficient to move goods and services from one U.S. port to another, recent initiatives have been in the opposite direction. In December 2020, for example, legislation was passed requiring that the law’s mandates apply to all aspects of the “offshore wind industry.”

The survivability of the Jones Act proves yet again that the most powerful force in Washington, if not in the entire universe, is the force of the status quo.

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

With a huge public workforce, high unemployment, and an energy sector plagued with recurrent Third World-style blackouts, is Puerto Rico a sign of things to come for the United States mainland?

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory” of the United States whose 3.2 million citizens enjoy U.S. citizenship. To be fair, the island suffers from weather and geography problems not of its own making. It lies in the path of tropical storms and hurricanes that periodically cause widespread damage, such as Hurricane Fiona which crossed the island last Sunday.

The Commonwealth’s problems, however, extend beyond geography and weather. Even before Fiona hit, the entire island had been without electricity. Some areas had not fully recovered from a previous island-wide blackout in 2017. The electricity situation has become so notoriously bad that one of Puerto Rico’s internationally known singers, Bad Bunny, included complaints about his homeland’s energy failings in a recent music video.

Not only are Puerto Rico’s outdated and poorly maintained power plants constantly vulnerable to storms, but also to what has become almost a regular occurrence – fires caused by faulty equipment. Whatever the cause, of course, power outages have a ripple effect that cuts off water to homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals; in turn leading to serious economic and health concerns.

As with issues faced by Americans on the mainland, shoveling more taxpayer dollars at problems does not necessarily result in better quality of services or products. In recent years, because of the devastation caused by Puerto Rico’s constantly failing electrical grid system, billion of dollars have flowed from the mainland to the island for the express purpose of fixing the problem, but with little, if any, positive effect. In fact, $12 billion in federal aid already had been committed to the problem long before last Sunday’s storm.

Notwithstanding such assistance, and with the island’s electricity customers already paying twice the rates as mainland users, the problems never seem to get resolved.

A significant factor in the Commonwealth’s continuing, if not worsening energy crises, appears to be the structure of the labor market on the island. Long a Mecca for public sector employment,  more Puerto Rican workers are employed by the government than in the trade, transportation, and utilities sectors combined. Overall, some 22% of all jobs on the island are government jobs, nearly twice the percentage as in the U.S. economy.

Unions in Puerto Rico, particularly those in public-sector jobs, are a major political force that periodically harm the island’s fragile economy. Recently, for example, teachers and other public sector employees engaged in a strike that resulted in a generous government commitment for higher pay that will weaken the island’s already reeling economy suffering an unemployment rate far higher than the 3.7% on the mainland.

The power grid system operating across the mainland United States is far more reliable than Puerto Rico’s broken down grid operated by a single company and micromanaged by the government. Notwithstanding this reality, some adherents of the “green new deal” opine that isolated problems which have hit the U.S. system in recent years (such as the unusually cold winter weather in Texas in early 2021) mean we should move toward a single grid system such as on the island Commonwealth. This would be a disaster.

Caught between a large, heavily unionized public-sector workforce, an energy system that resembles one operating in the world’s poorest countries, and high unemployment, Puerto Rico illustrates how an economy driven not by the free market but by the heavy hand of government can find itself marooned. The last thing the American mainland needs to be doing, is taking steps to replicate that situation.

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

In the now-distant past, the top priorities for the Democrat Party reflected views held by many middle- and working-class Americans, and included health insurance, higher wages, and support for public education. That once moderate set of priorities has now morphed into an agenda more at home in a European socialist country than middle America.

Today’s Democrat Party is in love with abortion and at war with the Second Amendment.

With regard to both guns and abortion, Democrats often have employed direct means of accomplishing their goals of unlimited abortion and very limited Second Amendment rights – appropriations riders, legislation, and executive actions. But they also exhibit no hesitancy in using sneaky and indirect methods to get what they want.

In recent years, two of the Left’s favored tools with which to push their radical agenda are retirement funds and restrictions on financial institutions. Both avenues are being pursued currently as ways to limit Second Amendment rights.

Retirement funds, especially those into which members of favored liberal interest groups have paid dues for many years, control hundreds of billions of dollars, which can and are being invested to directly support liberal causes.

Also, and more cleverly, Democrats have seized on the fact that individuals who manage these vast pools of money can in turn pressure financial institutions, including credit card companies, to do their bidding. And, when individuals wielding that power over public employee pension funds are government officials, such as New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, their wishes can be especially persuasive.

Gun control has become a primary arena in which the Left is using control of large employee pension funds to push its political agenda. Their tactics in this regard are reminiscent of an Obama-era plan known as “Operation Choke Point.”

“Choke Point” employed the federal regulatory power over financial institutions to prevent firearms retailers from maintaining business accounts essential for them to engage in lawful business transactions at financial institutions regulated by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) and the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency). This program finally was halted in 2017, in one of the few instances when Republicans controlled the Congress and actually used their power to stop such an abuse of regulatory power.

Partially as a result of having their hand slapped in Operation Choke Point, Democrats in recent years have turned to more indirect means of accomplishing the same goal of limiting the ability of lawful firearms retailers to operate effectively in the marketplace.

The Left’s most recent effort in this gun-control strategy starts with a little-known organization headquartered in Switzerland (a country that used to be but no longer is the world’s staunchest protector of firearms rights), the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). The ISO establishes “merchant category codes” (MCCs) for credit card transactions, which can then be used to track purchases of particular items.

If there were MCCs for every credit card transaction involving the sale of a gun or ammunition, then – Presto! – companies and governments would have a tool by which to easily track and database such transactions.

This strategy was set out earlier this month in letters from leading Democrat members of Congress to the top three credit card companies – American Express, Visa, and Mastercard – urging them to pressure ISO to create a new MCC for guns and ammunition sales.

The ISO and the credit card companies have in the past resisted such a demand, but last week they caved to mounting political and financial pressures and agreed to create and start using a new MCC to identify gun and ammunition sales.

While those supporting this move, including the authors of the congressional letters to the credit card companies, claim it will be employed only to counter “terrorism” and facilitate tracking of “suspicious activities,” the history of such databasing efforts tells a very different story. The tracking is perfectly suited to, and in fact will be used to intimidate and ultimately limit the lawful exercise of Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

If the GOP gains a congressional majority in the upcoming midterm elections, they should do to this program what they did five years ago in closing down Operation Choke Point. As always, however, the question with the Republican Party remains, “will it have the backbone?”

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

Students of theoretical physics are familiar with the principle that if matter and antimatter come into contact, both are instantly annihilated.

Political discourse in 21st Century America has become so toxic and polarized that it has come to resemble the realm of quantum physics, with little — if any — room for agreement or even civil discourse. Both sides — the Republican and the Democrat — cannot coexist without destroying each other or reducing each other’s ideas and policies to shambles.

As we enter the final stretch of the 2022 midterm elections and the starting gate for the 2024 presidential campaigns, it has become clear to everyone except the most diehard Pollyanna that every major public policy issue — including guns, abortion, immigration, energy, and others — is being played out on a “zero sum” game-board. Any oxygen that might otherwise sustain civil debate or compromise has been sucked out.

Consider abortion. Since the Supreme Court declared this past summer that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was constitutionally defective, and that henceforth abortion access would be considered an issue for citizens of individual states to decide, the debate has become so white-hot, that for abortion advocates no tactic is off limits — even violence against individual Supreme Court justices. Such actions, while not explicitly endorsed by Democrat Party leaders, enjoy implicit support from many of them.

The issue of Second Amendment rights, always a hotly debated issue in the political arena and the media, remains similarly devoid of compromise. Virtually every incident involving a murder, such the killing of two sheriff’s deputies attempting to serve a warrant in suburban Atlanta last week, becomes an opportunity for Democrat officials to blame “guns” rather than the deeply uncivil and violent behavior among so many young men today.

“Gun control,” a go-to campaign issue for Democrats for more than two generations, has supplanted “crime control” in the debates about how to protect law-abiding citizens in cities across the country. Where 30 years ago many national Democrats, including then-Senator Joe Biden, publicly endorsed tough-on-crime legislation, those same liberals today issue thinly-veiled calls to weaken if not defund police, and blame guns not criminals for increasing rates of violent crime.

There even was a time long ago when agreement could be reached across the aisle to protect key, practical Second Amendment rights, such as the individual right to lawfully transport firearms by interstate carrier across state lines, which has been the law since 1986. Today, such agreement would be impossible.

Immigration, another flashpoint for partisan politics, once upon a time was an issue on which at least limited agreement could be reached. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was orchestrated by President Reagan in concert with members of Congress from both political parties.

Today, the gulf between the two Parties on immigration policy is so wide that agreement on even the most minor aspects of the problem is impossible. This situation is not difficult to understand, considering that Biden’s “open arms” policy is causing massive numbers of immigrants to cross our southern border unlawfully and completely unimpeded. They are being transported at U.S. taxpayer expense to cities in Texas and elsewhere across the country.

With regard to energy, it also was not that long ago when officials from both major political parties were able to discuss such matters civilly, and even pass energy-related legislation that furthered the goal of national “energy independence” — considered both an economic and a national security benefit for the United States. No longer.

Immediately upon assuming office in January 2021, Biden took steps guaranteeing the energy independence we had achieved under his predecessor’s policies was undone. Today, this administration’s aggressive pursuit of the so-called “green energy” agenda has made compromise over energy needs in the name of national security a pipe dream.

It has been more than a century since Albert Einstein and other physicists first hypothesized and calculated the interactions between matter and antimatter. Contemporary, ongoing experiments with the most sophisticated of equipment continue to confirm those early theoretical predictions that if these two basic building blocks of the physical universe come into contact, both will be annihilated. Whether our political system will suffer the same fate remains very much an open question.

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

In the latest “Right Track/Wrong Direction” national poll and the global “Happiness” rating, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the United States is not the unhappiest country on earth (we currently rank #19). The bad news is a significant majority of our citizens (88% according to some estimates) believe we are headed in the wrong direction and pessimistic about turning that trajectory around.

A cursory analysis of politics, education, business, law, and pretty much any other sector of contemporary American society reveals why we are such an unhappy place – we are a citizenry afraid.

The United States has in recent years morphed from a bold, forward-looking, optimistic, and freedom-based society into one that is driven by fear. Not so much physical fear — although fear of crime is a very real and mounting concern — but rather the sense that people are afraid to openly and honestly communicate or interact with others, insofar as doing so may get them in trouble; in trouble with government regulators and snitches (usually referred to as “whistleblowers”), in trouble with social media, in trouble with co-workers, in other words, everyone out there.

Chicken Little would feel right at home in today’s America, because wherever she might turn the proverbial sky is primed and ready to fall.

The causes of this pervasive sense of fear and foreboding infecting our society are many, but topping the list would be the rise of social media and the expansion of government regulations (backed up with threats of fines and jail).

Query: is there any aspect of a citizen’s daily existence that does not include within it the potential violation of some government regulation or law, be it federal, state, or local? Criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate answered that question with a resounding “No” in his 2009 book, “Three Felonies A Day, How the Feds Target the Innocent.”

The research on which Silverglate premised his conclusions predated 2009, and he limited his analysis to only federal laws that ensnare the unwary. Considering the quantum leaps in the numbers and reach of regulations and laws since then, it becomes even more clear why everyday citizens today have good reason to fear being punished for actions they and common sense would deem innocent.

The advent of social media, in its infancy when “Three Felonies A Day” was published 13 years ago, dramatically underscores just how right Silverglate was to educate us about the growth of the federal government’s police powers.

Ironically, as our society has become increasingly regulated both officially by governments, and unofficially by social media companies, the powers that flow from those public- and private-sector regulators are being and perceived as being enforced selectively, unfairly, and even, as during the COVID-19 pandemic responses, haphazardly; at times with unforeseen consequences.

Such inherent uncertainty, unfair as it is, serves to exacerbate the fear factor with which citizens must be mindful as they navigate their interactions with other individuals and organizations.

As presented in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984,” knowing that the government possesses the absolute power to catch and punish you, but not knowing when it will do so, is among the most useful tools by which a tyrannical government maintains control of the civilian population.

These are lessons well-known to government, to large corporations with their now-feared “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) monitors, and to the Lords of Social media as they control the platforms they created. Being de-platformed or charged with DEI “insensitivity” or “racism” in whatever context, can devastate a user’s personal life or livelihood every bit as much as being indicted for a criminal offense.

Furthermore, as seen in the evidence presented against many, if not most of the January 6th defendants prosecuted federally, the power of the government to access individuals’ phone and social media communications in real-time as well as in retrospect, is opening the eyes of many individuals far beyond those actually charged with crimes on Capitol Hill that day.

America, once the consensus “Land of Opportunity,” no longer occupies that position in the eyes of eight out of ten of her own citizens. That is not a happy position to be in.

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

During the Cold War, which lasted for nearly half a century following the end of World War II, the small number of prisoner exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union were deadly serious affairs. Not so much now.

Today, 31 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is a potential prisoner swap much in the news that bears no resemblance to the serious manner by which such exchanges took place in the past.

In Russia’s corner, you have professional American female basketball player Brittney Griner, who recently pled guilty to the charge of bringing hashish oil into Russia. As a result of her plea, the six-foot, nine-inch player is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony.

In our corner is Russian citizen Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who, in 2011, was convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill Americans, and is mid-way through his 25-year sentence.

In a bizarre twist to the widely publicized potential swap, former NBA star Dennis Rodman this week interjected himself into the thick of it.

During the Cold War, such exchanges were taken most seriously at the highest levels in both Washington and Moscow, involving as they almost always did, clandestine espionage activities between the two superpowers. This was the case in the first and most famous of all spy-for-spy swaps — the 1962 deal that returned CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers to America from a Soviet prison and sent convicted Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel from a federal penitentiary to retirement in his native Russia.

Negotiations for the Powers-Abel exchange, and the several other swaps that followed over the next several decades, were hush-hush affairs, in keeping with the serious nature of the underlying subject matter.

In contrast, the Griner affair is being orchestrated by the Biden Administration in the full glare of media spotlight. The publicity that continues to surround these discussions may simply reflect the reality that in the Internet Age it is far more difficult than in decades past to maintain the confidentiality of high-level government negotiations. It is, however, more than that.

The way this administration has chosen to conduct the negotiations about a potential prisoner swap with Putin’s government, reflects the skewed priorities underlying the Biden Administration’s decision-making.

Unlike earlier prisoner exchanges, this one has nothing to do with national security, at least in any way that would benefit the U.S. It has everything to do with Biden seeking to score political points with key Democrat interest groups here at home. Official statements from administration officials, including Biden himself, however, would have observers around the globe conclude there is nothing more important to the United States of America than ensuring that Griner is free to come home.

Biden himself, his Secretary of State, and other officials inside our government, repeatedly have denounced as wrong and utterly unacceptable Russia’s decisions to charge and then sentence Griner to jail following her guilty plea. In fact, to our government, there is “no higher priority” in our relations with Russia than freeing Griner.

While Ms. Griner is an unquestionably excellent basketball player, having the president of the United States publicly declare her confinement and release to be a matter of the absolute highest importance to our government, is absurd. The statement does, however, bring into sharp focus the priorities of this administration.

These credibility issues become even more serious concerns when considering that, in exchange for Griner’s release, the U.S. would be freeing Viktor Bout, a notorious and truly dangerous individual known for good reason as the “merchant of death.”

The glaringly obvious inequality between the two main beneficiaries of the swap under consideration leads to one of only three conclusions:  (1) the administration truly believes Griner is that important; (2) there is far more to the story than meets the eye (a second U.S. citizen in Russian custody, Paul Whelan, reportedly is being included as a side bet to Griner’s release); or (3) the Biden Administration is simply being played for a sucker.

Given last year’s debacle in Afghanistan, and the way Communist China is flexing its muscles and intimidating Biden’s own military leaders, I leave it to the reader to decide which is the more likely scenario.

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

Uncle Sam’s irresponsible management of the massive student loan program, accelerated by the Biden administration’s loan “forgiveness” policies, will cost American taxpayers in excess of $311 billion – more than triple the annual budget for the sprawling U.S. Department of  Education.

The ballooning cost of the loan program, which includes previously projected income that will never materialize, plus nearly $200 billion in direct losses, has been calculated not by a Republican policy group aiming to undercut Biden’s pet student loan forgiveness policy, but by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

Both Democrat and Republican administrations have endorsed and funded the government’s direct student loan program, first launched 30 years ago. Since then, it has grown beyond a secondary source of funding for students’ post-secondary education into the single largest source of federal funding for such pursuits. It has also become the second-largest consumer debt category nationally after home mortgages, but with an astronomically higher default rate — projected to reach 40% by next year.

It is these troubling aspects of the loan program that have fueled pressure on the Biden administration to pursue a reckless loan forgiveness policy.

Biden faces significant pressure from within the Democrat Party, most vocally from its hard-left wing, to take the leap and simply “forgive” the outstanding loans — or at least a significant portion of them for certain classes of borrowers or up to certain amounts. While the president appears both philosophically and politically inclined to jump into that financial morass, his actions so far have been more tentative.

For example, the administration already has written off the books more than $30 billion based on allegations that certain borrowers’ were misled or defrauded. Already forgiven also are loans taken out by individuals working in certain favored or “qualifying” occupations.

As things stand now, there is a loan repayment “pause” instituted by Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, which Biden has extended four times.

The current loan repayment suspension is set to expire at the end of this month, and Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, most recently has hinted it is likely to be upped yet again, along with other “forgiveness” as a way to help alleviate the just-announced shortage of teachers at the start of the new school year.

Whatever steps the administration takes in this regard necessarily must be considered in the context of the looming November mid-term elections.

If Biden moves aggressively to forgive the financial burden on an expansive group of former students and their families who voluntarily applied for and received taxpayer dollars to further their education, it would solidify his Democrat Party support base. Those voters, however, are unlikely to leave him were he to postpone significant action in this regard until after the November elections.

Moreover, while independent-voting and Republican-leaning loan recipients might applaud such a move, they would be unlikely to switch their votes to Democrat congressional candidates in November. It also would amplify Republican charges that this is a dangerously spendthrift administration – an allegation with which Democrat congressional candidates in close races do not need to be saddled.

In the final calculation, Biden likely will continue tip-toeing around the elephant in the room – full student loan repayment forgiveness for most if not all borrowers – until early in the coming year, leaving it as a major potential 2024 campaign issue.

Regardless of when Biden acts and notwithstanding how far he goes (even if he were to do essentially nothing further), the fact remains that this federal program, as currently configured, will stick American taxpayers with a tab in the hundreds of billions of dollars, for which the vast majority will have received nothing of value in return.

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.

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With citizens across the country understandably focused on increased rates of urban violent crime, and with local and state law enforcement agencies suffering under manpower shortages, another crime headache could not come at a worse time. This is, however, what law enforcement may be facing in the coming months; and in fact, already is facing in Atlanta, Georgia – the resurgence of eco-terrorism.

Just outside the bustling downtown environs of Atlanta, in a still-heavily wooded area known as “Intrenchment Creek Park,” a group of anarchists, environmental extremists, and anti-police activists have declared war on the construction of a new and desperately needed police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department.

Breaking with the largely non-violent measures employed in recent years by environmental absolutists, this new generation of “forest defenders” has returned to the violent tactics that characterized the movement decades ago and saw multi-million dollar arson campaigns from Oregon to Colorado and beyond.

While the overarching goal of these environmental extremists is claimed to be reducing the “threats” to the environment causing global warming, the group in Atlanta has updated and expanded that mission statement.

In a new wrinkle on the environmental focus of these “green defenders,” the still-loose “movement” that has reared its head in Atlanta, claims as part of its mission protecting minority and native American communities against harm allegedly caused by law enforcement and by commercial development (in this case, the construction of a new movie studio in the same area as the police training center).

The tactics of these post-2020 anti-police activists, however, are well-known to law enforcement officials who have followed the trail of burned buildings and vehicles dating back to the destruction of a ski resort development in Vail, Colorado in 1998 by a group known as the “Earth Liberation Front” or “ELF.” These tactics include torching police and construction company vehicles, throwing Molotov Cocktails at police and other personnel attempting to effect arrests, and guerrilla actions using everything from bricks to firearms.

These new eco-terrorists also have vandalized construction companies’ offices in a number of cities, including in the Atlanta area; and in moves eerily reminiscent of the manner by which pro-abortion groups recently targeted the homes of disfavored Supreme Court justices, they have publicized the names and addresses of executives of those companies, and even harassed them at churches they attend.

Recent arrests at the Atlanta police training site show clearly that perpetrators are being recruited from cities across the country, and include individuals apparently involved in other environmental campaigns such as targeting the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The wide-ranging recruitment base of the extremists has brought federal law enforcement into the picture, with both the FBI and ATF now involved in the expanding investigations, although only to a limited degree for the time being.

The resurgence of eco-terrorism also has drawn the attention of the Congress, although as with virtually every action or suggested action by a member of Congress from one Party, the move will immediately be discounted and belittled by those across the aisle. This was the case last Fall when a group of House GOP members moved to formalize and expand the work against violent eco-extremist groups by the FBI. The Republicans cited public comments in prominent New York magazine interviews by one of the longtime leaders of the eco-extremists, Andreas Malm, who brazenly called on his followers to “move away from .   .  .  polite [and] peaceful civil disobedience” to “intelligent sabotage.”

Even in the face of these new threats and actual violent campaigns by environmental extremists, the problem remains largely under the national radar, with law enforcement at all levels having its hands full with spikes in urban violence in major cities from coast-to-coast, even as their departments face heavy criticism from minority communities.

History has shown, however, that allowing such violence to go unaddressed will only increase the organizational underpinnings of the movement, as well as the incidence and scope of the violence.

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.