From the Desk of Bob Barr

Townhall

by Bob Barr

The Democrat Party in 2020 subjected the United States to a truly grave disservice by hiding from the American electorate candidate Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. The question now is, can the damage to the country be contained; a predicament we have not faced for more than a century, if ever.

There were telltale signs of Biden’s slips during the last campaign, but as a candidate he still did well enough in the debates (where the bar has become increasingly low) and in his limited public appearances, such that it seemed he had enough left in the tank to get through at least one term.

In hindsight, it is clear he was already running on fumes.

It is no secret that the emotional and physical stress of the presidency will rapidly age whoever occupies the office, regardless of how young or old he or she may be. One only need look at the before and after pictures of George W. Bush or Barack Obama – both relatively young men when first elected – to see the changes eight years in the Oval Office will bring.

Biden, who at 78 was the oldest ever to be inaugurated, was already at a distinct disadvantage even before having to deal with the simultaneous challenges of a pandemic, a cratering economy, serious national security challenges in Afghanistan, and now an actual war between an ally and an adversarial superpower.

The burdens of the past 16 months have taken a visible toll and we are not yet near the incumbent’s first term midpoint. His noticeable absences from key moments on the world stage has America leading from behind, and if this trend continues, America will in fact be left behind. Once surrendered, a nation’s position as world leader is not easily reclaimed.

As Woodrow Wilson’s mental and physical decline a century ago revealed, protecting America’s global interests is not a passive duty. Incapacitated by a severe stroke in his second term, historians point to the failure of the League of Nations as due in large measure to Wilson’s compromised health. His inability to drum up sufficient support for the United States to join the international organization led directly to its demise, and ultimately helped precipitate the Second World War.

International diplomacy has grown incalculably more complicated since Wilson’s era, and a United States that is largely absent from global power plays in this 21st Century leaves our national interests extremely vulnerable. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the dynamics of that situation is just one of many ongoing international challenges facing the United States. North Korea once again is threatening to ramp up its nuclear program, China is an increasingly belligerent threat to Taiwan, and the U.S. is currently engaged in sensitive and far-reaching nuclear talks with Iran.

A president operating at anything other than the top of his game for any one of these vital national security issues would be dangerous. A drowsy commander-in-chief attempting to navigate all of them at once is potentially catastrophic.

 Biden fumbling for words even with the aid of a teleprompter, then searching blankly for a staffer to guide him to an exit, are images not lost on our allies or our adversaries. Administration spokespersons pretending publicly that everything is fine in the face of the obvious, makes the problem worse, not better.

Domestically, the challenges are not any easier, and the lack of a head of state slows our ability to respond to domestic emergencies. Critical decisions become outsourced to staff and officials who are neither elected nor accountable for their actions. This is a recipe for unrestrained bureaucratic activism, if not outright corruption.

We have seen examples of this before, as when Richard Nixon surrendered much of presidential decision making to his aides, including Henry Kissinger, as he became consumed with his looming and almost-certain impeachment in 1973. But never have we been forced to suffer under an Administration led by a president undergoing such obvious cognitive decline as facing us right now.

Who is controlling the levers of power in the White House? In Foggy Bottom and at the Pentagon? At the CIA and the FBI? Even on Capitol Hill? Far, far too much is at stake at home and abroad for this series of questions to have anything other than an honest and crystal-clear answer. Right now, we have neither.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Texas is home to the Alamo. It has given America such patriotic heroes as Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, both of whom died at the Alamo.  Iconic business entrepreneurs, such as Ross Perot and Boone Pickens rose to riches in Texas. Many license plate frames warn tailgaters, “Don’t Mess With Texas.” Everything about Texas was over-sized, including its rugged individualism.

But things are changing, and not in favor of the Lone Star State’s cowboy legacy.

Earlier this month, for example, the Houston City Council approved an ordinance forcing businesses, including bars, nightclubs, sexually oriented businesses, convenience stores, and game rooms, to install exterior security cameras and government-approved lighting, and turn over captured video footage to law enforcement on demand and without any warrant.

An ordinance like this would not be a shock were it enacted by Nanny Staters in New York City or San Francisco, but in Texas? Even considering the liberalism that has taken hold in almost every major American city today, a privacy-invasive ordinance such as this becoming law in Texas illustrates just how far leftward the state has shifted.

Storied Texas politician Billy Clayton once said, “A born Texan has instilled in his system a mindset of no retreat or no surrender” – clearly not a political perspective that would succumb to a city government’s mandate forcing private businesses to serve as snoops for the police.

It would be easy to blame policies such as this on the influx of refugees from California, or the hipsters who frolic in Austin, but it is not just urban liberals who are pushing Texas into the arms of Big Brother. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has revealed himself to be less of a principled conservative leader than in his recent past.

Last October, as debates over COVID vaccines raged across the nation, Abbott attempted to draw a line in the sand by issuing an Executive Order prohibiting any entity in Texas, including private businesses, from implementing a vaccine requirement for either employees or customers. Populists on the Right celebrated the order, seeing it broadly as a shot across the bow of the Left. On the other hand, limited government conservatives were appalled that a self-proclaimed conservative Republican governor would dictate to private businesses what they can and cannot do.

More recently, Abbott’s Administration began to implement rigorous screenings of commercial trucks entering from Mexico, in response to the Biden Administration’s effort to end “Title 42,” a tool used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to swiftly deport migrants detained at the border. The inspections, since suspended, came over the loud objections by the private sector as delays in the inspection process increased dramatically. In addition to finding neither illegal drugs nor illegal immigrants, Abbott’s gambit is estimated to have cost the Texas GDP more than $4 billion.

Abbott’s recent, and well-publicized plan sending a few busloads of migrants from his state to Washington, D.C. as a way to prove his conservative bona fides, was seen widely as a political ploy that achieved nothing of substance.

As I wrote in 2018, much of the illiberal, Big Government trends we are seeing at the local level, including in traditionally “Red” states, are the result of Republicans loosening their principles against government hand-outs and big spending. This “soft” pandering to voters may net Republicans short-term gains at the ballot box, but over the longer term it actually fuels the liberal political agenda — enabling Democrats to claim they are simply doing better at what Republicans themselves are doing.

Populist grandstanding such as by Abbott in Texas may play well to a populist base concerned more with “owning the libs” than actually restraining the government behemoth, but in the long term it actually sets back the conservative agenda.

Unmoored to substantive conservative principles, Republican populism is simply “lite” liberalism, which actually is more dangerous to the country than transparent, in-your-face leftism as pressed by the likes of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a governing agenda that can be identified, opposed, and beaten back.

If the GOP regains a majority in the U.S. House, and perhaps even the Senate come January 2023, the real question will be whether the Party governs as lite liberalism or true conservativism. Recent history of the GOP makes this a very legitimate question to be asked.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Few people realize that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was founded in the immediate aftermath of World War II for a limited and very specific purpose – to eradicate malaria. In recent decades, however, the Atlanta-based bureaucracy has become the poster child for regulatory mission creep.

Its huge regulatory wings need to be clipped.

CDC was established in 1946 to attack and control malaria, which at the time was endemic in the southern United States (hence the agency’s being headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, rather than Washington, D.C.). The bureaucracy set out to accomplish its limited mission with 369 employees and a budget of $1 million. The CDC actually was quite successful at eradicating malaria as a significant health concern, largely by attacking breeding areas for mosquitos with the insecticide DDT (which, since the early 1970s has been banned by the EPA).

After achieving its statutorily defined goal within a few years, like any worthy bureaucracy, the leadership of the CDC set about searching for new responsibilities to assume, and for which – of course – more taxpayer funding was needed. Thus was launched one of the great examples of government “mission creep.”

From that early staff of 369 employees, the CDC has mushroomed into a sprawling bureaucratic behemoth with myriad components, populated by more than 21,000 full-time employees and a budget as proposed for FY 2023 of nearly $47.5 billion. Along the way it has managed to pull into its bureaucratic orbit such non-disease related responsibilities as traffic accidents, obesity, and, of course, gun control.

The bureaucratic staying power wielded by the CDC is best illustrated in the fact that, despite repeated and successful efforts by Republican-led congresses to defund the agency’s forays into gun-violence prevention over the past two decades, the Biden administration resurrected the mission and made it a top priority.

It is the CDC’s actions over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that have thrust it into the public limelight as never before, in a way that highlights the need to clip the wings of this bloated bureaucracy.

While the most notorious public face of the federal government’s COVID mandates has been Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is not employed by the CDC but rather by a sister health agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – which in many respects duplicates activities of components of the CDC – it is the CDC that earlier this month requested that the Department of Justice appeal the ruling by Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle that the agency lacked legal authority to mandate mask wearing on common carriers, most notably, commercial air carriers, which the agency mandated by administrative fiat in February 2021.

The 59-page opinion by Judge Kimball Mizelle is rich with historical, statutory and legislative analysis. While the judge does not explicitly label the CDC mask mandate decision as “arrogant,” she does characterize as “breathtaking” the manner by which the CDC concluded that its regulatory authority allowed it to impose a nationwide mask mandate for all manner of public travel without any public input whatsoever. This is the clearest analysis to date of why this agency needs to be reined in.

Exhibiting its well-known hubris that it and it alone decides what is best for the health and safety of 332 million American citizens (and many millions more visitors to our country), the CDC statement tells the Justice Department to appeal Judge Kimball Mizelle’s order simply because it considers its earlier actions fully “lawful” (and therefore, unquestionable).

Interestingly, in the two-paragraph statement, the CDC noted that its continued authority is based on the fact that masks are “most beneficial in crowded or  poorly ventilated locations, such as the transportation corridor.” This statement is demonstrably false, insofar as commercial airline cabins are expertly and continuously well-ventilated, even according to federal government studies by the U.S. Department of Defense.

True to its exalted status as a self-centered federal agency enamored of its own mission, the CDC does not let facts stand in the way of its regulatory powers. Perhaps Congress will do so if the GOP regains control of the Legislative Branch in the November elections. If not, the CDC will continue to increase its already massive regulatory footprint in the name of “public health” as it defines it.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

By any reasoned measure, Elon Musk should be a liberal icon. Among other accomplishments, he single-handedly moved electric vehicles from niche product into the automotive mainstream (granted, with a not-insignificant amount of government incentive), built what could be a cheap and efficient solution to internet connectivity in rural areas, and is the living embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s vision for the future of America’s space industry.

Yet, the Left treats Musk like the villain from Harry Potter – he who should not be named!

What reason has Musk given liberals to hate him so? None, other than growing wealthy from the products of his genius and labor. In the liberal world, where “profit” is a four-letter word, this is a cardinal sin. There are exceptions, of course, for members in good standing of the liberal tribe, where you can be fabulously rich so long as you kowtow to the party line, or stuff your wallet with mega speaking fees a la Stacey Abrams or misdirect  donor funds to personal use like the former leaders of Black Lives Matter.

Musk is a visionary entrepreneur and unapologetic capitalist who refuses to bow at the altar of liberalism.

The South Africa-born naturalized U.S. citizen actually has contributed greatly to furthering many of the erstwhile goals of the Left, such as electric vehicles to replace those powered by fossil fuel, and in many ways more than any Democrat in the modern era. Still, he is treated by them as a pariah.

Take, for instance, Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live last year. Despite the ratings bump he would bring to a wholly mediocre era of the show, cast members rushed to social media in protest, citing his wealth as his primary offense.

While SNL crybabies try to “change the world” with dull comedy, and Democrats in government dole out billions in taxpayer funds for “green” boondoggles, Musk is actually getting it done, even if the Left refuses to award him any credit.

Prior to the release of the Tesla Model S in 2012, EVs like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt were, to put it mildly, as bland as a kale smoothie. Because of its styling and performance, the Model S was a market hit, and later models have continued to pace the industry.

However, making EVs “cool” was not Musk’s only contribution to an industry that once was in danger of flatlining altogether. To sell his cars, Musk had to fight tooth and nail to upend a long-standing, archaic regulatory environment that limited competition by forcing manufacturers to sell vehicles only through approved middlemen – dealers. The legal battles were tough and expensive, but Musk’s victories paved the way for other upstart EV companies today.

Then there is Starlink, a satellite-based internet access project of Musk’s company SpaceX. In addition to providing Ukraine with a reliable means of internet connectivity as they defend their land from Russia, Starlink is perhaps the most efficient and cost-effective way to deliver high speed internet access to rural areas of the United States – another major social initiative pushed by Democrats.

Even Musk’s less well-known companies, like the Boring Company, have massive value to Democrats. Liberals have long bemoaned urban growth in cities, which brings traffic congestion and allocation of scarce real estate for roads that could otherwise be used for parks and “affordable” housing. The Boring Company bores safe and what eventually will be cost-effective commuter and utility tunnels; with the potential to transform cities by moving traffic underground. Compare Musk’s solution to Boston’s union-controlled “Big Dig,” which took almost a decade longer than projected to complete, and a budget that soared to an adjusted-inflation of nearly $21.5 billion.

These are but a few examples from a 50-year old CEO who is just now hitting his stride. It is hard to overstate just how important have been Musk’s contributions already to humanity, based on his intellect and work ethic.

Unlike so many on the Left who demand worship and praise for doing far less, Musk requires only that his detractors inside and outside government stay out of his way, and that he be paid for his achievements – two irredeemable character “flaws” that drive liberals to despise him even more.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Just as “communism” is no longer seen in a negative light by many younger Americans, “atheism” no longer carries with it the adverse connotations that it held in the 1960s. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, won the sobriquet the “most hated woman in America.”  In fact, according to recent studies, atheism, Wicca and other forms of paganism are growing faster among Millennials and Generation Z than any other demographic groups.

Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein has studied these matters at length, and as noted in his new book, “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,” America’s youth clearly seem to no longer possess the “spiritualism” that Alexis de Tocqueville recognized as a national strength in his seminal work, “Democracy in America.”

As the “metaverse” increases in popularity and as the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans increases, the trend about which Bauerlein writes is likely to accelerate, and with it, the further erosion of an historic and moral underpinning of our representative democratic political system.

Regardless of whether one practices or is affiliated with one or another of the world’s great religions, being thus affiliated provides at least the nucleus of morality and ethics on which a freedom-based political and social system can grow and prosper. Becoming unmoored from both history and religion will, again as Bauerlein posits, result in citizenry, particularly the younger generations, searching for “happiness” in all the wrong places, especially the digital world.

Interestingly, there already are emerging debates about whether “committing” criminal acts in the metaverse can, or even should be punished. Regardless of how such a question as this may be answered, the simple fact that users immersing themselves in the metaverse are committing acts that would be considered punishable as crimes in the real world, should be a concern to parents and educators (if only the latter would take a momentary break from their fixation on students’ sexual identity).

Other arenas increasingly attractive to Millennials and Generation Z, and which openly disdain traditional religion and politics, include Satanism (now recognized by the IRS as an organized “religion”), Wicca (included in the lengthy list of “religions” recognized by the Department of Defense) and “Humanism.”

The movement’s 1973 “Manifesto” includes many of the shibboleths openly espoused by the Left today, including among many others, free education at all levels, abortion, and globalism

Of these decidedly nontraditional belief systems, Humanism (sometimes referred to as “Free Thought”) in recent years has made the most significant moves toward legitimacy in the political arena. Although no Member of Congress admits openly to being an atheist, since 2018 there has been a “Congressional Freethought Caucus” that currently counts 16 representatives as members.

All members of the Freethought Caucus are Democrats, including two members of the extreme left “Squad” (Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state). This membership characteristic reflects the accuracy of one of the key findings of a 2019 Pew Research Center study on atheists. In addition to concluding that atheists tend to be young, male and well-educated, they tend to align with the Democratic Party and harbor liberal political ideas.

Bearing all of this in mind, we can expect to see persistent efforts by the Democratic Party to foster and press ideas that appeal to these demographics; that is, younger, college-educated Americans with no or very weak ties to organized religion. This process will be facilitated by the rise of the metaverse, which its chief architect, Mark Zuckerberg, sees as an “immersive digital world” where “we live our lives and spend our time.”

Buckle up and pay attention, conservatives.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Gun control measures enacted in recent decades have failed to stop mass shootings. This has baffled Democrats in much the same way a dog chases its tail but never quite catches it. Even the liberal Los Angeles Times appeared exasperated by the latest criminal mass shooting near the state Capitol in Sacramento, lamenting that, while state “lawmakers have enacted the nation’s toughest gun control laws [they] remain confounded by how to stem mass shootings.”

At least this one Democrat mouthpiece actually seemed for a brief moment to recognize that gun control is not the answer to criminal gun violence. Yet, they remain afraid to say so out loud.

In this conundrum, what does the Left do? That’s an easy question to answer — they call on President Biden (as they did with presidents Obama and Clinton before him) to propose more gun control. This scenario confirms once again the definition of “insanity” often attributed to Albert Einstein, as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.”

The latest gun-control boogeyman for the Left is the “ghost gun” — an apparition with no more actual substance than were the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future that tormented Ebenezer Scrooge. Unlike the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, however, the “ghost gun” apparition on which Biden now has seized, is a political maneuver rather than a morality play.

The term “ghost gun” is a moniker conjured by gun control advocates to scare the uninformed into believing such devices are extremely dangerous, are the weapon of choice for mass murderers, and that if regulated, will stem the tide of such criminal activities as took place recently in Sacramento (where stolen handguns were used in the murder spree). That the narrative does not fit the facts matters not at all; what matters is the narrative as a means to open further the door to restricting the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

So, what are the facts? It is actually quite simple. Criminals most often obtain firearms in one of three ways, all illegal: they steal them, they purchase them on the black market, or they have someone who is not a criminal purchase the guns for them (the “straw purchaser”).

Homemade guns, that is firearms constructed by individuals from parts legally purchased or manufactured with 3D printer, are occasionally used by criminals, but not often. After all, why take the time to assemble a gun from numerous parts when it is far easier to steal one or buy one from a fellow criminal?

What is it that makes homemade, or “ghost” guns strike such fear into Democrats’ hearts as to require the heavy hand of federal regulation? The problem is that such firearms do not bear an imprinted serial number traceable by federal law enforcement. To the Left, the only firearms that deserve to be protected by the Second Amendment are ones that are traceable (and therefore, reachable by government). This is not a new idea.

The European Union, for example, has long sought to force manufacturers to stamp every component part of every firearm with an identifying serial number. If Biden’s proposed regulation concerning serial numbers stamped on every “ghost” gun part stands, it will almost certainly push the European plan across the finish line (which then will become the template for further traceable markings in the U.S.).

By taking the regulatory redefinition route, Biden is following the precedent set by Donald Trump, who in 2018 directed his then-Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to change the wording of the regulatory definition of a “machine gun,” so as to include bump stocks with no moving parts at all. That regulatory sleight-of-hand is still today working its way through the federal court system.

At the same time as he announced his regulatory crusade against ghost guns, Biden revealed his intention to name as head of the ATF, former Obama United States Attorney from Ohio, Steve Dettelbach.

The stage now is set for a lengthy legal battle over this latest, side-door effort to further limit the guarantees enshrined in the Second Amendment. If eventually upheld by the Supreme Court, the “ghost gun” maneuver will open the door to countless more regulatory restrictions.

It will be a constitutional ghost that keeps on taking.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

The increased defense spending in the Biden administration’s recently released FY 2023 Budget may have upset the radical left wing of the Democrat Party, but U.S. military policy continues to flounder under the leadership of President Biden and his “woke” Defense Department team.

The setting for what has become an embarrassing national defense posture was laid out at the very start of Biden’s tenure and has only worsened since then.

But first, the numbers. In the budget sent to the Congress at the end of March, the president proposed to spend $831 billion for defense, a number that drew a harsh rebuke from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is all for show.

While the administration’s proposed 4% increase in defense spending angered the likes of Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, the fact is that a 4% increase in spending for the next fiscal year does not come even close to accounting for loss of military buying power due to the record level of inflation we are experiencing; now close to 8%.

The actual weaknesses in the proposed defense budget are now becoming clear. For example, immediately after the anemic 4% defense spending increase was announced, the Department of the Army stated that its active-duty troop strength would be reduced to what is reported to be the lowest number since just before WW II – 473,000.

A top Pentagon official, Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo, declared that cutting the service’s active troop strength was not a “budget-driven decision.” If not in fact budget-related, such a statement raises major questions about precisely what factors are “driving” this administration’s national defense policies.

At the very same time that the Army undersecretary was claiming (with a straight face) that the troop strength cuts were not in any way budget-related, he asserted (also with a straight face) that the cuts were essential for “maintaining high quality of our talent and recruiting.” Say What?

Just days before Camarillo’s blathering at his March 28 press conference, his boss – Army Secretary Christine Wormuth – announced that the Army was discarding plans to employ the same physical fitness test for all soldiers, regardless of gender or age, and instead use a weighted test. The relaxed physical fitness standards according to which active-duty Army personnel would henceforth be gauged, lower the requirements for female and older soldiers.

So much for objective standards in the soon-to-be-smaller Army ranks.

America, however, should not be concerned with a less-than-physically-fit Army because, as asserted by Wormuth, these new standards are supporting a more important goal – the Army’s “ability to continue to retain women.”

The goal of ensuring that America’s Army moving through the third decade of the 21st century will have more female soldiers in the ranks, is but one of the several problematic national defense goals heralded by Biden and his national defense team, headed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The Pentagon chief has not been shy about declaring that among the Defense Department’s top priorities are rooting out “extremism” in the ranks; defeating COVID-19 (in part by removing any and all personnel who object to a COVID vaccination); ensuring that “diversity, equity and inclusion” is built into every aspect of national defense policies; and ensuring that (just as on college campuses) every Department “member” has a “safe and supportive place” to protect them as they protect us.

Priorities such as these are overtly reflected in “woke” Army recruiting ads such as last year’s “two mommies” video. And, while Austin and his boss took great umbrage at a recent congressional hearing during which Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz challenged the Pentagon’s “wokeness,” our national defense policies — as articulated and as implemented – the evidence is everywhere.

Whether viewed through the lenses of military wokeness, or as an adjunct to placing “climate crisis at the center of U.S. foreign policy and  national security,” the muscular national defense strategy of “peace through strength” that led to the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in the final years of the 20th century, is nowhere now to be found.

How far down this dangerous route we will travel before making a major course correction, or before we face a perhaps existential challenge from abroad, are questions that should be receiving far more attention on Capitol Hill than they have been.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Why has the U.S. Postal Service been permitted to develop a domestic spy arm? And will the Congress ever rein it in?

Red flags were everywhere regarding the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program, or “iCOP” for short. But no one in Washington cared enough to heed them

The first clue was that an agency supposed to deliver mail – that is, a postal service — was engaged in online surveillance. The next red flag was that in conducting surveillance, the postal service was employing controversial technology, including facial recognition, fake profiles, and social media scrapes of terms involving constitutionally protected activities (like “protest”). Finally, there was the fact that a recent audit by the USPS Inspector General concluded that none of this was legal to begin with.

It gets worse.

The most frightening aspect of the Post Office’s latest snooping program was not so much the tools the agency was using, but that their tactic, in the words of a Vice.com report, was “casting the widest net possible then working their way backwards” to determine who and what was a relevant catch in their high-tech fishing expeditions.

This happens to be the polar opposite of what is constitutionally required of law enforcement agencies; namely, reasonable suspicion must at a minimum exist and precede an evidentiary search. Here, the postal inspectors would search for a potential target, and if one was found, work back from that to gather evidence justifying the search.

Have we learned nothing about the nature of federal of law enforcement since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency? Apparently not, as in the subsequent nine years, the same “investigate first, apologize later” mentality applied to ostensibly international surveillance programs appears to have become the norm for domestic activities as well.

Congress deserves much of the blame. There has been little pushback against the significant and ongoing abuses that now permeate even well-respected investigative divisions like the USPIS. When revelations of iCOP abuses first surfaced last year, Congress performed its perfunctory duty of issuing a stern warning and calling for investigations into the investigators, but then went back to sleep.

Despite the occasional hand slapping, meaningful congressional oversight of Executive agencies engaging in improper if not unconstitutional behavior, is exceedingly rare. In 2015, Sen. Rand Paul forced the (temporary) expiration of Sec. 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act with a filibuster, which resulted in limited reforms of the NSA’s surveillance powers with the USA Freedom Act passed thereafter. Finally, after nearly two decades of Sec. 215 snooping,  the House in 2020 let the provision quietly expire.

Without direct, comprehensive, and aggressive reform from Congress, stopping illegal federal snooping is simply a game of “Whack-a-mole;” wherein a court challenge or congressional action may stop one program here, while another one pops up other there. The USPIS iCOP program is just another mole in the hole.

Herein lies the rub of limited congressional action. Targeting one specific program, like iCOP, whenever Congress catches wind of snooping malfeasance that is at least bad enough to grab its attention, does not address the far more pressing issue of illegal programs continuing to pop-up across the myriad agencies of the federal government. This also includes quasi-private sector fusion centers and outsourcing surveillance to non-government entities, which are not bound by the same constitutional requirements as government agencies.

To address the issue, Congress must look beyond any individual program and consider the problem for what it is – a broad, government-wide disdain for both the rule of law, and the fundamental right to privacy of citizens. Therefore, rather than going after each program as they pop out of the hole, Congress should consider Bill Murray’s strategy in Caddyshack, and dynamite the entire network of unaccountability that provides cover.

This approach would include far greater transparency, meaningful and stringent reporting requirements on agency operations, and statutory civil and criminal accountability for officials who knowingly break the laws.

This is, of course, a tall order for both Members of Congress and their constituents who, collectively since 9/11, have allowed fear of terrorism to override previously salient constitutional norms that provided at least a degree of protection against abusive government surveillance. As a result of this constitutional laziness, even the Post Office now enjoys a piece of the surveillance pie.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Recent headlines cause me to wonder seriously, where is the FBI?

In the late 1980s, during my service as the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia, I worked closely with the FBI, which had a large regional office in the city manned by top-tier special agents. Led often by the local FBI office, and in conjunction with investigators from other federal agencies, including IRS, DEA, Immigration, HUD, HHS and Labor, our office successfully prosecuted numerous corrupt public officials, drug kingpins, money launderers and all manner of white-collar criminals.

In those days, the FBI was viewed widely as the country’s premier law enforcement agency. Despite the Bureau’s penchant for self-publicizing its operations, I recall no instance in which the fundamental ethical or nonpartisan nature of the Bureau’s work was called into question.

I have no doubt today that the overwhelming majority of career FBI Special Agents today continue that long and honored tradition. However, a review of recent policy decisions by top-level bureaucrats and political appointees within the Bureau and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, calls into serious question whether the FBI has veered wildly off track.

A major turning point certainly would be the shenanigans by top-level FBI officials to use the Bureau’s powers to thwart the 2016 election and subsequent administration of Donald Trump. This effort went from senior special agents like Peter Strzok all the way to the former Acting Director of the Bureau, Andrew McCabe. While these two collaborators eventually were fired during the Trump administration, under Trump’s successor McCabe’s full pension has been restored and his firing cleared from his record.

As for Strzok, his pending lawsuit against the Justice Department may be quietly headed toward a settlement (probably monetary).

In other words, politics continues to infect cases involving top FBI officials who clearly used their positions of power to engage in anti-Trump activities.

The problems at the Bureau, however, run far deeper than the sordid details of those two disgraced public officials.

In a major policy shift, the FBI announced last month that it would no longer be reporting quarterly crime statistics. These statistics have been compiled for decades and provide law enforcement and civilian agencies at all levels of government with useful and actionable crime data. The FBI’s claim that it is unable to compile the crime data solely because some major cities are failing to transmit underlying statistics to the NIBRS (National Incident-Based Reporting System), rings hollow.

It is only for the past year, for example, that the Bureau has decided to rely on this single source (NIBRS) for its statistical analysis. Claiming that the world’s premier law enforcement agency is hopelessly hamstrung in its ability to compile crime statistics because some lower-tier law enforcement agencies suddenly are not cooperating begs the question about why the FBI has decided to no longer provide such data to the American people.

It is hardly the case that the FBI lacks the personnel or the budget to perform such a task, with 30,000 to 35,000 employees and an annual budget of some $10.5 billion. The decision to stop reporting quarterly crime statistics represents a policy decision by the Biden administration to not disclose the facts showing just how badly crime has continued to increase since January 2021.

Meanwhile, the Bureau continues to tout its ability to use overwhelming force against disfavored but clearly non-violent targets, such as the massive pre-dawn raid of Roger Stone’s home in early 2019 and the November 2021 raid of the apartment belonging to Project Veritas’ head James O’Keefe. The latter raid was premised on the need to recover a “diary” alleged to have belonged to Ashley Biden, coincidentally the niece of the current president of the United States.

And, while the Justice Department is busy studying ways to implement “guardrails” for officially approved “safe” facilities at which individuals shoot up with illicit drugs, the FBI is busy losing key pieces of evidence, such as the Hunter Biden laptop which was turned over to it in December 2019.

Today’s FBI clearly is not the FBI of decades past. Much like our foreign intelligence agencies, it has become badly infected with partisan politics, and is showing itself unwilling to stand tall and resist such pressures.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a website known as “TheFacebook” based on the value of enhanced human connectivity. Two decades later, however, Zuckerberg has a new project based on the complete opposite idea, something he calls “metaverse.”

More than just “a place,” Zuckerberg intends for metaverse to be the centerpiece of “immersive digital worlds [that] become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time.” In other words, Zuckerberg’s vision for the future is one in which humans are permanently tethered to digital technology, while the physical world becomes a secondary distraction around them.

It would be easy to dismiss his vision as the moonshot project of a Big Tech CEO long detached from reality, but  Zuckerberg’s comments should instead be viewed as a red flag that his nihilistic perspective of “living” is now entering the mainstream, especially and most concerning, among young people.

The evidence of this is undeniable. Online dating, sex robots, remote work and schooling, and “streaming” church services have become popular alternatives to in-person experiences. While some do have benefits, for instance remote work helping save the economy from the worst ravages of Democrats’ COVID “lockdowns,” their cumulative cultural impact undermines the very essence of human-to-human connectivity.

The use of technology as a surrogate for actual experience is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies,” movie-like events in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are exposed to manufactured, full-sensory environments wherein they become conditioned against the ability to experience truly genuine emotion. When highly customized, on-demand experiences can be delivered instantly in a digital world, it dulls the imperfect yet nonetheless genuine experience of living.

This makes digital existences akin to a drug habit (actual government-provided “soma” in Huxley’s dystopian novel). Users keep looking for new stimulation – which is quick, easy, and seemingly without consequence – to stay entertained (a product of dopamine rushes that are notable parts of Big Tech social engineering). This inevitably spirals downward, with digital experiences becoming darker and more dangerous, resulting in behavioral changes that follow users into the real world.

For example, social media has normalized grotesque personal attacks on individuals because digital targets of harassment seem less real, so the “high” from attacking them is not dulled by the guilt of harming a living person. The harm, however, is most certainly real, and psychologists are discovering mental health disorders, particularly in children and teenagers, tied directly to social media use. Additionally, numerous studies have shown the growing prevalence of online pornography has created unrealistic expectations in relationships that lead to unsafe sex practices, disappointment, and even domestic violence.

This is just scratching the surface. What else is in store for our society when the true meaning of living – found in acts of creation, cooperation, production, and achievement – become just a matter of clicking a button or the output of an algorithm, as opposed to challenges that forge character and build crucial developmental skills? Moreover, what happens to critical societal guardrails, including morality and religion, when we all become gods of our own digital worlds chasing only what makes us feel good, including simulated violence and rape, because there is no readily apparent consequence to it?

Perhaps Zuckerberg believes all of this is controllable in a digital world with code tweaks and algorithm updates, but stopping fondling attacks by implementing “personal spaces” (yes, this was a real problem on metaverse) is meaningless if the root cause is deteriorating behavioral standards of users beyond Zuckerberg’s code. In fact, it is a problem that will worsen exponentially with the weakening of human relationships as society moves towards his “immersive digital worlds.”

Human-to-human connectivity is the foundation of essential social systems like religion, family, and friendships, which in turn serve to limit deviant behavior.

This may not be of consequence to nihilists like Zuckerberg who have given up on the real world in favor of a digital one (which they control), but for the rest of us who must endure rising crime, violence, and a general environment of anger and incivility, it is a very real problem that cannot be repaired with a simple code patch.

Metaverse may promise Utopia, but as Mark Bauerlein notes in his most recent analysis of Millennials in the digital age – The Dumbest Generation Grows Up – Utopia’s reality is much darker.

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.