From the Desk of Bob Barr

Townhall

There is a climate revolution happening across the world right now, but not exactly the type for which liberals had hoped. From the Netherlands to Sri Lanka, citizens fed up with government-imposed “green” mandates are pushing back, sometimes violently.

Images last week showed more than 100,000 angry Sri Lankans storming the presidential palace in Colombo. Half a world away in the Netherlands, normally calm Dutch farmers angrily blocked roadways and sprayed government buildings with manure.

Such moves as these result directly from government mandates forcing farmers to reduce nitrogen emissions or to stop using chemical fertilizers that have been widely used for decades around the world as a means of protecting crops and increasing yields. Predictably, farming then becomes costlier and consumer prices rise.

The Sri Lankan fertilizer ban, implemented without any transition plan, has pushed the country near starvation as crop yields plummet and food prices soar.

The mandated “green” initiatives in the Netherlands, which include cuts to both fertilizer and livestock, are making farming far more difficult for one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.

The consequences of these policies are made worse because they are taking place in the context of a developing global food and energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Europe’s rapid and ill-advised push for “renewable” energy left it dangerously reliant on Russia, and dramatically limited European countries’ options to respond to Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

In nearly every way, the global push for “green energy” has left citizens and democracies worse for the wear — energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, and now, starvation.

This forces one to ask, what aspect of the “green” agenda has made the lives of people anywhere in the world better?

California’s energy policies targeting nuclear power and traditional fuel sources have made blackouts routine in the Golden State. The federal government mandate for ethanol additives in gasoline has cut the lifespan of internal combustion engines while reducing the miles-per-gallon of vehicles that use it.

Even if citizens sincerely care about improving environmental stewardship — which most people do, whether on the left or the right — the costs of current climate policies, especially when hastily implemented, are significant. The supposed benefits, on the other hand, are theoretical and largely reflect political spin. Families, whether in Colombo, Amsterdam, or Los Angeles, cannot feed themselves with hypothetical plans, optimistic charts, and vague promises.

Making the situation worse has been the cynical manner by which those in power often respond to citizens’ concerns; blithely dismissing them with an arrogant wave of the hand. For example, in response to increasing gas prices, President Biden’s Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, cavalierly suggests simply going out and buying an electric vehicle.

Such a purchase might be an easy option for someone reportedly worth $8 million, but telling the average working-class family, already struggling to fill both their car and their pantry, to run out and purchase an expensive electric car, is nothing more than a cruel joke.

Truth be said, Granholm and others in this Administration consider the high price of fuel not so much of a problem as it is part of the solution – a necessary step on the road to a glorious future no longer reliant on fossil fuels.

Democrats may not see it, but the tide is turning against climate change tyrants who place political agendas above what is best for citizens in the here and now. What we are seeing in Europe, Africa, and Asia is a very real preview of what may happen in the U.S. if Democrats continue pushing Green New Deals that add to the inflation misery and supply-chain shortages already hurting businesses and families.

The Radical Left hoped to jumpstart a climate revolution; it succeeded, but instead of a massive shift towards green energy, their dangerous cognitive blend of hubris and paranoia has blinded them to the timeline needed for such a transformative change to energy and agriculture infrastructures, while deafening them to the concerns of the people most impacted by these plans.

The growing worldwide rebellions we are witnessing are as much about the disastrous consequences of climate change policies as they are about government elites who have long forgotten who they really serve – the people. Hopefully the fight against such destructive policies does not quickly wane.

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 

The “wokeness” that has distorted how America’s history and culture are presented has received a great deal of analysis and media coverage in the past biennium. It now has sunk to a truly idiotic level at George Washington University (GWU), one of the most expensive universities in the country and, at least in years past, considered by many to be one of the more prestigious.

It is a truism that in modern times, colleges and universities across the country have served as incubators for the teaching of left-wing worldviews to students. Such perspective is further solidified in the professional realm via academic journals and government-funded research projects reflecting similarly liberal biases.

Such woke nonsense has infected even the curriculum at  West Point, where cadets now are forced to spend time learning about Critical Race Theory (CRT). In decades past, our nation’s oldest military academy focused on producing Army lieutenants schooled not in the continuing evils of slavery in America, but in how to win wars and protect our nation’s security. Times and priorities change.

America’s historical landmarks have not been immune from woke revisionism. Especially hard hit has been Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, author of the Declaration of Independence and founder of the University of Virginia. The foundation responsible for preserving and maintaining Jefferson’s beautiful estate outside Charlottesville, Virginia previously and unashamedly lauded his genius and his myriad contributions to our nation. Its current left-leaning board now considers it more important to highlight slavery in virtually every aspect of how the former president, his house and its grounds are presented to visitors.

Ultimately, it is our universities and colleges that take the cake for some of the silliest examples of woke-ism, a process that began a half century ago when student activists began demanding that nicknames or mascots for their schools’ sports teams be changed to be more politically correct and sensitive.

One of the first major schools to succumb to this pressure was Stanford University. Prior to 1972, the prestigious university’s sports teams were known as the “Stanford Indians.” The perceived slight to Native Americans by such nomenclature demanded a change. Thus, for the past half century the school’s teams have been known simply as the “Cardinal” (not the bird, just the color). Its logo is even less exciting than a color — a tree.

In the ensuing decades, various schools have followed Stanford’s woke example and changed their mascots or monikers based on similar pressures. At times, such changes reflected a degree of common sense, as when Ole Miss in 2003 bid farewell to its longtime mascot, “Col. Reb.”

However, and without a doubt, the institute of higher learning that most deserves to be awarded the Woke Dunce is GWU, which has just decided to retire its moniker, the “Colonials.” Just how a word that simply and factually refers to those in the 13 American colonies as what they were – “colonials” – remains a mystery to me as a graduate of GWU (M.A. ’72) and to many others. However, no less prestigious a body than the GWU Board of Trustees has decided the name is sufficiently offensive and “divisive” as to warrant being tossed aside.

The University Trustees did not undertake the process of discarding the moniker lightly. Consistent with being a body nestled in the heart of Washington, D.C., the trustees proceeded in meritoriously ponderous bureaucratic fashion that eventually will consume five years of its precious time to settle the Great Moniker War once and for all.

Beginning with a “Task Force on Naming” in 2019, and continuing via a “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker” the following year, this June the august body revealed to the world that “Colonials,” which apparently many of its students and alumni misunderstand to refer to “colonizers” or to slaveholders (hence the derogatory connotation), was just too divisive and not harmonious with the sense of “community” at the heart of GW’s “values.”

The world now breathlessly awaits the unveiling of a new, “unifying” nickname. In the years after the 2023-24 academic year, the university’s 27,000 students, who cough up around $75,000 per year, can rest easier knowing they no longer will be saddled with such an offensive moniker. All hail academia!

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

Polls illustrating the depths of the American public’s dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden are likely to have devastating short- and long-term consequences for his Party’s electoral successes this year and beyond. That is, unless the GOP, as it has been known in the past to do, loses its focus.

The recent escapade between the White House and the oil and gas industry is a perfect example.

When Joe Biden tweeted to “companies running gas stations” his demand that they immediately lower prices at the pump, it was not the U.S. Oil & Gas Association’s satirical response that stung. It was a highly critical tweet from liberal billionaire donor Jeff Bezos.

There have been so many Biden blunders, big and small during his 18 months in office, that they no longer surprise most observers. Importantly, however, the real extent of their cost to the Democrat Party is finally beginning to register with the Party leaders and influential supporters.

The collateral damage of Biden’s incompetence is showing serious cracks within the top ranks of his own Party. The lack of acceptance, much less control, over the numerous crises facing his administration – including those that are self-inflicted – are impacting voters Democrats desperately need in order to retain power.

The Commander in Chief’s obvious incompetence and ineffectiveness does not occur in a vacuum, and whether his fellow Democrats like it or not, they are tied to Biden as their standard-bearer (much like Republicans with former President Trump).

This puts the Party between a rock and a meatgrinder. Democrats could use what may be their last few months of congressional control to push an agenda independent of the White House. Doing so, however, would undermine Biden’s remaining credibility ahead of the 2024 presidential contest. This leaves them basically two options, one of which divides the country even further, and one that is not fully within their control.

Democrats’ first strategy would be to use its many media allies to stoke culture clashes as a way to push Biden as a “leader” of the resulting, even though engineered, public outcry. Such strategy presents its own set of problems, considering that pressing such culture clashes as we have witnessed over the past two years can easily get out of hand, and work to Republicans’ advantage. Moreover, such moves would require appeal to the Party’s reactionary progressive wing, which is as much out of touch with reality as Biden.

Democrats’ ability to implement such a strategy is rife with examples of their inability to do so.

For example, the zeal with which the Biden Administration implemented its post-Trump COVID plan alienated much of the American public that was more than ready to return to normalcy. Their social “re-education” campaigns in schools, under the guise of gender education and Critical Race Theory, prompted a national backlash against school district officials and made school board races a priority in local elections (to the clear benefit of Republican candidates). Even criminal justice reform, which was gaining momentum with Republicans, came to a grinding halt as progressives hijacked the narrative and turned it into a “defund the police” movement with no appeal to moderates on either side.

This leaves the Democrats with their other “option” – hoping that Republicans lose focus this election year, and shift their vision backwards to 2020, or forward to 2024.

Given the many and serious problems the Biden White House has created or worsened — from crime to inflation and from immigration to national security — the pathway to a resounding Republican victories this November would seem to be crystal clear to every incumbent, challenger, and Party leader:

• Fix the Economy

• Stop Illegal Immigration

• Repair our Military, and

• Protect Communities Against Rampant Crime

Should Republicans veer from repeatedly articulating these key issues and solutions therefor, by reigniting arguments about who stole what in 2020, or who should be the GOP standard bearer in 2024, they will have squandered an opportunity for historic victories this year, and helped Democrats regain momentum to which they are not entitled for 2024.

It remains to be seen whether the GOP responds to this call by staying focused on 2022 or allows itself to be pulled off track either by clever Democrat ploys or by its own internal squabbling. Considering the GOP’s uneven history in staying focused on the real enemy, how it handles the next, crucial four months remains 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.

Daily Caller

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling late last month that New York’s 110-year-old concealed carry law was unconstitutional, the Empire State’s Democrat-controlled legislature and left-wing accidental governor, Kathy Hochul, wasted no time reaffirming that they will go to any lengths to prevent its citizens from lawfully carrying firearms outside the home for personal protection.

The new law, signed over the weekend by Hochul, almost certainly will ultimately be thrown out by the federal courts. However, the state’s lawmakers know that such a process likely will take many months if not years to be finally decided, and that for at least that period of time, they will be free to continue denying citizens the right to protect themselves in public.

The immediate impetus for New York’s latest anti-gun maneuver was the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, issued June 23. As recited by Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority opinion, the prior law, known commonly as the “Sullivan Act,” was constitutionally defective because it placed far too much discretion in the hands of local state officials to arbitrarily deny an applicant a concealed carry permit unless he or she convinced them that they had a unique, “proper cause” to carry a concealed firearm outside their home.

For more than a century, this provision worked to prevent all but a very select few New Yorkers from carrying a gun to protect themselves in public (open carry is not permitted in the state, so concealed carry is the only alternative).

In signing the new and highly restrictive legislation over the Independence Day weekend, Hochul and leaders in the legislature openly threw down a gauntlet to the Supreme Court, declaring that its Bruen decision was an “assault on our democracy” that would not deter New York in its continuing mission to enact “sensible gun regulations.”

By any objective measure, however, the provisions in state Senate Bill S.51001 are anything but “sensible.” In some respects, the new law is even more restrictive than its predecessor.

Beginning Sept. 1, when the new law is to take effect, no law-abiding New Yorker would be eligible to obtain a carry permit without first convincing the state police that he or she possesses “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself or others.”

This vague and undefined criteria is but one of many conditions an applicant must meet to the satisfaction of state law enforcement officials. Others include character references, family background information, and access to their social media accounts for three years prior. These and many other criteria are buttressed by a catchall requirement that allows the permitting authority to demand, “such other information required by the licensing officer that is reasonably necessary and related to the licensing application.”

Were a New York carry permit applicant ever successful in meeting these burdensome and arbitrary roadblocks, the places where he or she could actually and lawfully carry a firearm are so limited as to render the permit almost useless. For example, the permit holder could not carry a gun:

• In a subway station
• In Times Square
• In any public park
• At any public or private school
• On any restricted sidewalk
• Into any private property unless the owner thereof has publicly posted a notice that such carry is expressly permitted

In yet another unreasonable, if not absurd restriction, if a permit holder has a gun in their vehicle that happens not to be in their “immediate possession or control,” it has to have the ammunition removed and then secured in a “safe storage depository” (not the glove box) that cannot be seen from outside the vehicle.

Surprisingly, the new law does provide an appeal process; not surprisingly, however, it is virtually meaningless. Any appeal goes to the superintendent of state police, which would have been the denying authority in the first instance, and then to the state attorney general, who also has been consistently opposed to citizens being able to carry firearms.

Law-abiding New Yorkers who wish to be permitted to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right defend themselves with a firearm in any public place likely to present a threat, had best be prepared for yet further lengthy and costly battles in court in order to do so.

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

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen was a historic moment for gun rights in America. Lest Second Amendment advocates engage in a lengthy celebration, however, they had best prepare for more pitched battles at the state and local levels, where firearms opponents will fiercely defend their turf.

An individual right to possess a firearm was – finally – recognized by the Supreme Court in its 2008 Heller decision, and extended to all the states two years later in McDonald. Extending that fundamental natural right to self-preservation outside one’s home, which is the essence of last week’s ruling, serves also as a welcome update to the Court’s almost plodding effort to reclaim gun rights from decades of liberal encroachment.

Nevertheless, the decision, important as it is, merely shifts the theater of operations from the national to the state and local levels where Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in Bruen, excellent in form and substance, in effect ushers in a new phase of Leftist scheming on gun control.

Like Heller, Bruen is pivotal in impact, but limited in scope. In a concurring opinion supplementing Thomas’ six-member majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh (joined by Chief Justice Roberts), stressed that the ruling would not necessarily limit the ability of states to establish requirements for concealed carry – only that they cannot arbitrarily deny the right to carry. As with Heller, in the uncertainty created by Kavanaugh’s opinion, we now will be forced to contend with myriad regulatory tricks by local and state governments to undermine this latest ruling.

Immediately after Heller, for example, District of Columbia officials went to work finding loopholes around the “individual right” to keep and bear arms affirmed by the Supreme Court.

As documented by journalist Emily Miller, D.C. enacted a costly 17-step process for gun permits, including “five hours of mandatory training that had to be completed outside the District, and multiple trips to D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) headquarters during business hours.” This was in addition to the city’s ban on semiautomatic firearms, a requirement that gun owners re-register firearms every three years, a limit of registering only one handgun every 30 days, and a ban on both open and concealed carry, all of which deeply undermined, the High Court’s ruling.

It took multiple court challenges and nearly a decade to undo post-Heller gun control measures concocted by D.C. officials, costing taxpayers a fortune to partially restore constitutional rights thought to have been “guaranteed” by the 2008 decision.

Even today, D.C. regulators continue to make it nearly impossible for commercial firearm stores to operate within the city. Aside from the police department itself, which for a time was the only federally licensed dealer in the jurisdiction, there are currently only two active FFLs for citizens to use to take possession of firearms lawfully purchased online.

D.C.’s persistent gaming of Supreme Court rulings is not an outlier example of what anti-gun bureaucrats will do to obstruct what they see as a hostile legal landscape. It is the new playbook.

Extreme laws like New York’s have now been deemed unconstitutional by the highest court in the land, but the Left is not going to suddenly surrender and accept the constitutionality of the Second Amendment. In states like New York, Washington, California, and Connecticut, led by politicians who see banning firearms as a moral imperative and a response to a “national emergency” of gun violence, the strategy remains one of pushing the limits of Supreme Court rulings and forcing citizens to challenge them in expensive, years-long court battles.

The gun control movement considers it has nothing to lose, and even if they find themselves about to lose in court and facing yet another national precedent for gun rights, they can always do as New York City did in 2020, and change the law right before a judicial decision is rendered.

In a very practical sense, the Bruen decision is not the end of the fight for the primacy of the Second Amendment. It is just beginning, and every election at every level and for every position on the ballot, from sheriff to district attorney, and from judge to governor, will play a role.

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

It is now the law of the land, signed last Saturday by President Biden – the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” Hidden deep within one of its most controversial provisions, dealing with Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), more commonly known as “Red Flag Laws,” is language that provides a clever way for judges to ignore the “constitutional rights” that purport to guard against abusing these problematic provisions.

The bill itself – S.2938 – is 81 pages long; somewhat short by today’s standards, when bills running to hundreds of pages are not uncommon.

It is not until a reader is well into the text of the bill that the “Firearms” provisions are laid out in any detail, and this is where the real problem becomes clear – clear, that is, if you read carefully the provisions regarding ERPOs.

As is standard operating procedure for federal legislation, S.2938 does not directly mandate that states or local governments implement red flag laws. It does so by offering states money to do the federal government’s bidding. Uncle Sam knows that state and local governments are always eager to receive federal largesse, even with the inevitable strings attached.

In this instance, the “bipartisan” legislation (14 House Republicans joined with 15 of their colleagues in the Senate) provides that “Byrne” grants, which have been a vehicle to shovel money to states for criminal justice programs since 1988, can be used to establish “extreme risk protection order programs.” This authorization is linked directly to a list of “due process rights” that attach to such grants. This laudable language is expansive, and warns that no such program can “violat[e] or infring[e] the Constitution of the United States, including but not limited to the Bill of Rights .  .  .  ”

A quick review of this language would lead the casual reader or skeptic to heave a sigh of relief. The recital of constitutional rights, including those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, would seem to provide a robust defense against abuses of the ERPO process, sufficient to prevent an individual’s firearms from being confiscated without any opportunity first to be heard and able to present evidence against such a drastic and otherwise unconstitutional move.  Not so.

Following the listing of explicit constitutional guarantees with which any ERPO established with Byrne grant funds must comply is a possible caveat, sufficiently wide to drive the proverbial “Mack truck” through; a side door by which a judge presented with an application for such a “risk prevention” order can justify ignoring them altogether, at least temporarily.

Here’s the potential catch: all the measures enumerated and designed explicitly to “prevent any violation of constitutional rights” are available only “at the appropriate phase” or “phases” of such proceedings. One does not have to be a legal eagle or rocket scientist to see where this judicial “safety valve” can lead.

Thus, a police officer or other individual applying for a red flag order to seize an individual’s firearms because someone claims the person is an immediate risk of harming his- or herself or someone else, might very well claim that “time is of the essence.” In such event, a judge predisposed to use such power (or afraid not to), can hang his judicial hat on the new law’s “appropriate phase” language and deem the situation of sufficient urgency that it would not be “appropriate” to delay signing the firearms seizure order at the initial “phase.”

In other words, notice to the gun owner that would allow him opportunity to contest having his guns seized could be delayed until a more “appropriate phase” of the proceedings; that is, after the firearms have been “safely” seized by law enforcement.

Whether any of the 29 Republican legislators who voted for S. 2938 read this deeply troubling language, or whether they did so but failed to understand it or simply ignored it, is unknown. Regardless, there now is a provision in U.S. law allowing states to use taxpayer money to implement measures to unilaterally confiscate a law-abiding citizen’s firearms,  without even affording him guarantees against such action to which he would be entitled in any other context.

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.

RealClear Politics

From dialysis to chickens, the U.S. Department of Justice and its regulatory compatriot, the Federal Trade Commission, are flexing Uncle Sam’s antitrust muscles, notwithstanding strong headwinds from skeptical judges and juries. As the United States Chamber of Commerce recently warned in a brief filed with the courts, “Allowing [DOJ] to retroactively criminalize behavior strikes at the heart of the ordered liberty guaranteed to all Americans.”

The work of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division receives far less public attention than its bigger brother, the Criminal Division, and the 93 U.S. attorneys who prosecute the vast majority of cases brought each year against individual and corporate defendants. Still, the broad reach of modern federal antitrust laws, dating to the early 20^th century (the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1909 and the Clayton Act five years later), can strike fear into the hearts of major corporations and their executives, who can be targeted for either civil or criminal prosecution, with hefty fines possible in either context.

While far smaller, the FTC can employ its regulatory reach in tandem with the Antitrust Division to boost policy initiatives favored by an administration intent on punishing the business sector. In this regard, the Biden administration has been particularly aggressive. Fortunately for the free market, the results of this push have been less than impressive. However, recent actions by both the FTC and the Antitrust Division clearly signal this administration’s intent to continue using both its civil and criminal powers to attack the business sector.

In a highly unusual if not unprecedented move, the head of the Antitrust Division, Jonathan Kanter, declared that its lawyers would try for a third time to convince a jury that two of the country’s largest poultry producers, Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. and Claxton Poultry Farms, conspired to share pricing data in order to unlawfully restrict competition. The trial actually began earlier this month, despite the fact that two prior jury trials of the companies’ executives resulted in mistrials – a strong sign that the government’s case lacked requisite evidence, and a sentiment echoed publicly by one of the second trial’s jurors.

Such back-to-back defeats will almost always convince the feds to drop criminal charges in favor of far more standard civil remedies. But not this Department of Justice.

In a sense, the handwriting on the wall should have been obvious to the Department before starting the third poultry collusion trial on June 6 . In mid-April, a federal jury found DaVita Inc., a major kidney dialysis specialist, and its former CEO innocent of all charges alleging they conspired to restrain trade. The company had simply required its top executive employees to notify the company if they were seeking jobs with the company’s strategic partners – who often weren’t even in the same business sector.

Such non-compete and non-solicit agreements between executive employees and companies in the same fields, known as “non-poaching” agreements, have long been immune from criminal prosecution by the Justice Department, so long as they are reasonably constructed. Interestingly, however, a federal policy to subject such agreements to criminal prosecution appears to have been created out of whole cloth not by legislation or by the courts, but by a Human Resource “guidance” memo issued jointly by the Justice Department and the FTC in October 2016, just prior to that year’s presidential election.

The Department’s decision now to put that policy to the test via criminal prosecution in the DaVita case, and a second similar case, blew up in its face when juries rendered not guilty verdicts in both cases the very same week.

Still, Kanter’s prosecutors persist in pressing the limits of the Department’s powers over what most observers consider normal and acceptable business practices.

The zeal with which this administration intends to continue attacking free market business practices through regulatory edicts is on display also at the FTC.

Although the Commission lacks independent criminal prosecution authority, it has plenary power to issue regulations and to investigate myriad aspects of business practices, including perhaps most notably mergers and acquisitions. It can itself bring costly civil processes against offending businesses and executives, and refer cases for criminal prosecution to the Justice Department.

The ideological perspective of the current 3-2 Democrat majority on the FTC can best be understood by considering that one of Commission Chair Lina Khan’s close allies is Barry Lynn, executive director of the George Soros-funded Open Markets Institute.

With this trio – Lisa Khan at the FTC, Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department, and Barry Lynn at the OMI – leading the administration’s war against corporate America, we had better gird for many more pitched battles over the next 2½ years.

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

This month’s public bruhaha among Washington Post writers, stemming from a colleague’s retweet of a banal joke, was a sight to behold. One of the most prominent newspapers in the nation became a national headline itself, as “professional” reporters jumped to social media to air dirty laundry and call each other names. Where were the adults in the room? Where indeed.

The dust-up illustrates the progressive playbook. First, take any perceived slight and assume the evilest intent. Then claim it represents some fantastical hyperbole of doom “if not addressed.” Every incident becomes an outrage campaign that makes the participants, who seem perpetually dour and unhappy, insufferable as individuals and ruinously disruptive as employees.

This most recent Washington Post drama was unusual only in how public it became, but it is far from unique in its suffering from a plague of progressive employees whose “woke” zealotry bleeds across the workplace. The “cancel culture” mentality leveraged by progressives against their enemies, including those from its own ranks, has become a paralyzing maelstrom within organizations that employ them.

As one recently resigned executive director of a Leftist organization told The Intercept — “So much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bull____ that it’s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver .  .  .  I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife.”

The Intercept paints a picture of what you might imagine if the same people pushing Cancel Culture were all put into a room and then expected to come up with solutions for cultural issues. Navigating a minefield wearing a blindfold would be easier – and lead to better results.

In practical terms, paralyzed by in-fighting, progressive organizations are seeing fewer results in the halls of government in Washington, D.C. even though Democrats hold the reins of power in Congress and the White House.

Even worse than the steep drop-off in effectiveness, is how progressives have also hijacked traditionally liberal organizations and run them straight into the ground with their toxic culture.

Not long ago, the American Civil Liberties Union was an organization that although leftist at heart, still found common ground with the Right; in particular, privacy rights and government surveillance. In fact, for a few years after leaving the Congress in early 2003, I worked with the ACLU on data and privacy issues. Such collaboration seems unattainable in today’s take-no-prisoners environment.

Rather than holding firm on foundational principles and messaging that appealed to civil libertarians on both the Left and Right, the ACLU opted to embrace positions that years before would be seen as violative of their core mission. Looking at the ACLU’s Twitter feed, it is clear the organization has become another standard bearer for progressive rhetoric, indistinguishable from any other run-of-the-mill progressive organization.

While the downfall of progressive organizations is hardly a reason for tears, there are important lessons for today’s conservative movement that could help it avoid a similar fate. Conservatives, whether traditional or MAGA, should remember then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s 1967 speech about the need for cooperation and diversity of ideas within the GOP; and how without this cooperation, ultimate victory is impossible.

“There is room in our tent for many views,” Reagan said. “It is the duty and responsibility of the volunteer Republican organizations, not to further divide, but to lead the way to unity.”

Infighting among the Left has provided an incredible opportunity for Republican victories in 2022 and 2024, but only if there is cooperation – even if not unanimous agreement – in Republicans helping to elect Republican candidates. As Reagan warned, we must resist the urge to “tear down, or attempt to destroy, others in the tent.” Primaries can be contentious but undermining the victor after the elections is a surefire way to give Democrats the perfect opportunity to close the gap created by their own internal discord.

Progressives have failed to provide an example of how to win, but they certainly have given us an example of how to lose. If Republicans want to maximize the advantage of this opportunity for years to come, the Party must learn how to bring all sides under the tent and understand the strength of the GOP comes not from making it a homogeneous ideological party like progressives are trying to do with the Left, but rather finding common ground among our different ideas and philosophies and building a lasting coalition thereon.

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

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

–Edmund Burke, 1757

Fear may serve as an effective motivator for individuals facing danger, but as a basis for law-making, it consistently leads to poorly crafted legislation and even dangerous public laws. So it is with gun control, a path on which a bipartisan group of Senators appears now committed.

Fear of domestic terrorist attacks following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and of further foreign terrorist attacks after 9-11, led directly to laws that demonstrably were far broader than necessary to address whatever shortcomings those incidents revealed, and which have seriously eroded individual liberty in the years since.

In the current frenzy to guard against tragic mass shootings such as occurred last month at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, federal lawmakers appear ready once again to use “fear” as a motivating force for legislative action. This week a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, led by Texas Republican John Cornyn and New York’s perennial gun control orchestrator Chuck Schumer, announced a framework for a gun control package aimed at easing the minds of “families [who] are scared.”

Details beyond the initial framework are sparse, but we do know the bill seeks to tackle mass shooting violence by recycling many of the familiar policies of gun control past – red flag laws, “boyfriend” loopholes, and deeper background checks. There does appear to be some attention being afforded to mental health and school safety programs, but initial information indicates these will not be among the legislation’s main priorities.

Begin with the enhanced background checks for gun buyers under 21 years of age. The proposal rests on the questionable ability for the FBI to access juvenile arrest and mental health records, and the ability to connect with various state databases. System architecture challenges aside, juvenile records are typically confidential (for reasons championed by both the Left and Right) and are unlikely to legally be fair game for federal background checks. Verdict: Implausible.

Next, closing the “boyfriend” loophole. Ignoring the trope of yet another non-existent “loophole” in gun laws, the reason the law as currently established considers marriage, cohabitation, or a shared child as bases for denying firearms to individuals with criminal records, is to provide a degree of objective measure as to the seriousness of a personal relationship. Fake or exaggerated allegations of abuse or sexual assault are already a problem in the dating process, without adding a new tool for revenge: depriving a person of his or her Second Amendment rights. Verdict: Dangerous.

Most importantly, there is the issue of so-called “Red Flag laws” (more technically, “Extreme Risk Protection Orders”). As I have noted previously, Red Flags are a crowd-pleaser as a tool to prevent mass shootings, but they often are written in such a way that abuse of individual rights is likely, if not encouraged. Broadly drafted, as many are, the laws permit nearly anyone to enlist local law enforcement and a judge to seize a person’s firearms based on “fear” the individual may in the future commit a bad act with a gun.

The threshold for issuing a Red Flag order is incredibly low, and entirely subjective. Florida, just one state among the 19 (plus the District of Columbia) that have enacted such laws already, has issued nearly 9,000 firearm protective orders since 2018.

Moreover, the due process remedy available for defending against these ex parte orders is often not clearly defined, leaving the gun owner with little to no legal recourse for restoring his or her Second Amendment rights, and leaving him or her with what is essentially a serious blemish on their record.

Unless the red flag provisions are very narrowly tailored and written to reflect individuals’ constitutional rights (something Democrats appear unwilling to do), all that will have been created by Uncle Sam giving money to states to enact such laws, is to create yet another and extremely powerful tool by which law enforcement and judges are able to summarily deny rights expressly guaranteed by our Constitution. Verdict: Very dangerous.

That leaves the only workable “solution” of this latest bipartisan framework on a gun “deal,” to be funding for mental health and school safety. However, when I read that the proposal proposes to spend taxpayer dollars establishing “Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics,” as a panacea for deeply troubled young men prone to violence, it is hard to take any of this seriously.

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

Despite an excessive degree of regulatory intervention, American-style free market economics remains the gold standard for organizing an economy. Unfortunately, one of Uncle Sam’s favored tools with which to attack the business sector – antitrust power – is being considered by both major parties in the U.S. Congress to undercut that advantage.

American innovators have improved the lives of generations of citizens. Consider, just among recent success stories, the invention of the Apple iPhone, the Twitter method of communication, the Google search engine, Uber’s ride-sharing concept and the use of Facebook to keep up with family and friends. Amazon is a company that was critical in moving goods to people everywhere during the recent pandemic.

While none of these companies are perfect, all are miracles of free market economics and rewards in a nation that embraces entrepreneurs.

Now, those same wildly successful companies are under attack by liberals who have a profound distaste for private enterprise and success, fueled by a deep skepticism of free market capitalism.

There is an emerging effort to give Washington power players even more power to attack so called “Big Tech,” under the pretext of antitrust law. This attack emanates from both major political parties — the populist right and progressive left, in a way that will greatly harm a struggling national economy.

Giving more power to government bureaucrats to micromanage the economy has never been a good idea, but it is especially bad at this juncture.

The current centerpiece of this attack on “Big Tech” is S.2992, mistitled the “American Innovation and Choice Online Act,” which singlehandedly will stifle innovation and limit consumer choice. Worse, it will empower federal government agencies to initiate attacks on business in a way that shifts the burden of proof to companies so they will be presumed guilty of violating the new proposed law.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the bill is “designed to empower unelected officials at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to make critical decisions regarding the organization and function of the American economy.” The major concern is that this will allow government, not market forces, to manage “competitive outcomes in the market instead of promoting competition.”

As always, it will be the American consumer who will be hurt, with higher prices and more limited choices. Companies will pull back from innovation, justifiably fearful of being punished by politically motivated bureaucrats if they vertically integrate services.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his colleagues know their plan to grant new and sweeping regulatory and prosecutorial powers to the executive branch would not be on the GOP’s agenda when, as expected, they regain control next January. Hence, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “the bill has received little debate, yet Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to hold a vote pronto.”

Cleverly, Democrats have used GOP anger towards “Big Tech” to secure a number of Republicans to support their effort. There is a well-documented history of a faction of Republicans slipping away from the defense of free markets for short term political gain.

After all, it was a Republican president, Richard Nixon, who once said, “we are now all Keynesians.” This anti-free market sentiment reflected a tacit agreement between the Republican and Democratic Parties that it is acceptable for the federal government to micromanage the economy. In furtherance of this warped perspective, Nixon infamously ordered the end to the gold standard in 1971 and imposed wage and price controls, creating problems that haunt us even today.

Simply consider the Federal Reserve’s free money policies that have helped cause today’s high inflation numbers as but one outcome of Nixon’s ill-advised removal of the dollar from the gold standard.

A few decades later, there was another offensive against the free market in the form of Wall Street bailouts. Another Republican, President George W. Bush, provided a taxpayer insured bailout of insurance giant AIG followed by a subsequent TARP program that had the support of a significant number of members of both parties. That use of the federal government to bail out bad private sector decisions was an example of crony capitalism at its worst.

If Republicans join hands with progressive Democrats on this legislation to empower the FTC and the  Justice Department to control the tech sector of the economy, what little “free” the free market now enjoys will be smothered to virtual nonexistence.

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.