From the Desk of Bob Barr

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Much ado last week was made of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s leniency as a federal trial court judge in sentencing defendants convicted of certain crimes, especially those facing prison for child sex offenses. It was, however, the nominee’s staunch unwillingness to answer questions about her knowledge of basic facts that unmasked Judge Jackson as a truly woke individual; a student of the law unwilling to state the obvious for fear of divulging details that might cause the left to doubt her bona fides as one of them.

In reviewing the manner by which the nominee steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there were in fact “differences between men and women that are enduring” — as premised in a series of questions posed by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn – I was reminded of an article describing what might be considered a “New Legal Order,” published even as the confirmation hearings were being televised.

“The Takeover of America’s Legal System,” authored by Aaron Sibarium in Common Sense, describes the manner by which Millennial (and younger) lawyers are being taught; namely, that objectivity as a foundational underpinning of our legal system, no longer is to be considered a constant. Woke lawyers, law professors and even judges now are openly declaring that certain individuals harboring disfavored social views (e.g., those considered “racist” or misogynistic) no longer are entitled to competent legal counsel because of those views or acts. In this environment, law professors holding traditional, contrary views must “self-censor” their lectures so as not to incur the wrath of “woke” students and law school administrators.

As Sibarium further describes this deeply disturbing trend (especially evident at top-tier law schools, such as my alma mater, Georgetown, and Judge Jackson’s, Harvard), he quotes a number of lawyers and law professors who refused to be identified for fear of retribution, but who no longer are willing to represent “controversial cases” such as those involving religious liberty or 2nd Amendment rights.

One bold law professor who was willing to be identified in Sibarium’s lengthy analysis is well-known constitutional lawyer Nadine Strossen, who for several years headed the American Civil Liberties Union and is a long-serving professor at New York Law School.

Strossen stated that she “massively self-censor[s]” as if operating in a “panopticon” where every word, phrase and “facial gesture” she makes, will be used against her by adherents of the prevailing woke orthodoxy.

Such is the legal environment from which Judge Jackson has emerged, and it should have raised serious red flags during her vetting process and her now-concluded confirmation hearings. Sadly, but predictably, only a handful of Senate Judiciary Committee members dared start down that road, including Blackburn, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham. All were denounced by their Democrat colleagues as partisan and, by some media, as downright “racist” for asking nothing more than to have the nominee acknowledge, for example, that:

• There are differences between men and women
• Punishment deters crime
• Releasing Guantanamo detainees poses a potential danger to our national security

The most Judge Jackson could manage acknowledging, after repeated questions by Sen. Cotton, was to admit that “Congress” appears to have concluded that there may be a deterrent purpose to punishment. To her, deterrence was simply a “theory” too “difficult” for her to answer with any specificity.

Similarly, and even more obviously evasive, were the judge’s repeated responses to Sen. Blackburn’s questions to determine if Jackson agreed with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who stated in a 1996 majority Supreme Court opinion that such differences [between men and women] do indeed exist and are relevant for determining whether actions based on such distinctions violate federal gender discrimination statutes.

These and other examples of Judge Jackson’s recurring refusal to answer questions revealing her – not Congress’ or someone else’s — understanding of basic, even immutable principles, fails to clarify for the American people where the nominee might stand with regard to possible Supreme Court opinions to come in the years, if not decades, ahead during her almost certain tenure as an associate justice.

The disappointing exchanges last week, however, did reveal with great clarity that in her refusal to answer legitimate and relevant inquiries, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woke child of the “New Legal Order,” in which subjective perception trumps objective reality, and where punishment for criminal acts depends on the subjective correctness of the perpetrator’s ideology.

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

Townhall

by Bob Barr

As the oft-described Party of “Law and Order,” criminal justice reform tends to take Republicans out of their comfort zone. The continued, politically motivated prosecutions of January 6th participants, however, illustrates clearly why criminal justice issues must serve as a prerogative for conservatives, rather than a partisan blind spot.

The federal government determines what is “legal” and what is “criminal” for purposes of federal policies and jurisdiction. Its agents then enforce that legality based on the administration’s interpretation of the law, and then deprive citizens of their life and liberty for crossing that line. Our Founders understood the huge responsibility of such power, and of the consequences when abused. This is precisely why much of our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, concerns itself with the judicial process.

Notwithstanding those many constitutional limitations, the unmistakable trend over the past half century has been to expand government power to criminalize all manner of behavior.

Contrary to recent rhetoric from the Right, this is not a “guilty man’s” problem exclusively. Examples abound of law-abiding citizens being swept into federal investigations for nothing more than carrying large amounts of cash through an airport checkpoint, or making bank deposits the government considers to be “suspicious.”

In fact, the federal criminal code has ballooned to the degree that legal scholar Harvey Silverglate posits that the average, “law-abiding” citizen commits three felonies a day. This makes criminal prosecution not so much a matter of if, but when the government decides its interests are advanced by enforcing one or more of the several thousand criminal laws on the books already.

Defending oneself against the full weight of a federal prosecution is an enormous, often impossible task, even if innocent. Citizens can spend years and a small fortune establishing that innocence. Those without financial means often will take a guilty plea for no reason other than to spare themselves a lengthy and difficult fight, the outcome of which is always far from certain.

When innocent people are forced to take prison sentences simply to avoid personal and financial ruin, it can hardly be considered a true “law and order” system of justice. It becomes one of “law and power.”

It is no secret that the Biden Administration has made it a point to use the Department of Justice as a bludgeon against political foes in a way that makes the Nixon-era prosecution of its “enemies” pale in comparison. Examples range from January 6th Capitol protestors, to aggrieved parents of school-age children.

We have seen all too clearly in recent years who the federal government wants to be at the defendant’s table in a federal district court.

There also is an economic cost to such overbroad use of prosecutorial power. Packing prisons with individuals who pose no real risk to society has created a safety crisis that threatens not only the lives of the incarcerated, but prison guards and staff as well. Working on criminal justice reforms is more than a social issue; it is an opportunity to protect taxpayers and civilian workers alike.

One such example is the EQUAL Act, which is designed to correct the sentencing disparity in crack cocaine offenses. While many conservatives may be reluctant to get behind bills such as this, the legislation would bring a needed degree of balance and fairness to sentencing. In addition, it would generate significant savings for over-stretched prison systems, by allowing thousands of incarcerated individuals to be considered for sentence reduction under certain defined conditions. For these reasons, the EQUAL Act already has nine Republican co-sponsors in the Senate; but that number should be much higher.

Bipartisan work on criminal justice issues is critical to ensuring an accountable and restrained judiciary; something that must remain a cornerstone of our representative democracy for citizens of all stripes. In virtually every respect, abandoning the criminal justice playing field to the liberals is dangerously short-sighted.

Supporting limited but meaningful criminal justice reform does not mean adopting the social agenda of the radical Left; far from it. Joining with non-radical Democrats (yes, there are some) to craft and support reforms to a justice system that has become far too government-heavy, actually is the true core of conservative governance.

Many Republican governors, including those from Texas and my home state of Georgia, have recognized this. Republicans in Congress should as well.

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

Following World War II, the prevailing Allied powers agreed to convene an International Military Tribunal, commonly referred to as the “Nuremburg Trials.” The deliberations leading to this unprecedented undertaking, as well as the trial itself (which lasted nearly one year), were painstakingly comprehensive, and consequently have achieved lasting credibility.

The ongoing public debate as to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s culpability as a “war criminal” because of his invasion of Ukraine has rekindled the debate about what constitutes a “war crime.” Sadly, the level of this current debate has been superficial and not worthy of its importance to the foundations of international law or of serious public policy (though likely making for good politics).

The issue deserves far more serious consideration than an off-hand remark by President Joe Biden last week to a reporter that, “He [Putin] is a war criminal.” The next day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed the president’s statement, stating at a news conference, that he “personally believes” the Russian president has committed war crimes in Ukraine.

Has Putin committed “war crimes?” By ordering the invasion of Ukraine and then appearing to deliberately target civilian population centers, probably so. But if the United States is henceforth going to start labeling foreign leaders to be “war criminals” without amassing evidence and presenting a case beyond news videos, the credibility of such an important endeavor will diminish, and with it, the value of employing the term itself.

In the decades since the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-1946, there have been a number of international judicial proceedings designed to identify, try and punish civilian and military leaders who engage in atrocities against other countries or civilian populations. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established at the start of this century, specifically to provide a permanent forum for such proceedings.

Although President Bill Clinton endorsed the formation of the ICC, every subsequent president, including Joe Biden, has declared our country’s opposition to the ICC. The primary grounds on which the U.S. has refused to formally join the ICC include the arguable lack of due process it affords defendants, and its fundamental incompatibility with our Constitution as the “supreme law” of the United States.

If the United States is to be consistent and serious — and to be seen as consistent and serious — with regard to international law, including that which defines and punishes individuals who commit “war crimes,” it requires more than an off-hand presidential remark to a reporter.

Either we are serious about this, or we are not. Talk is cheap, and when it comes to something as important as alleging the leader of a major, nuclear power to be a “war criminal” – if that term is to be afforded real meaning going forward — our leaders need to do far more than refer, as Blinken did at his March 17th news conference, to televised images of destruction in Ukrainian cities as the basis for such a serious assertion.

Constructing a case that the leader of a major world power is a war criminal is far more difficult than doing so against any of the less than three dozen individuals, almost all from Africa or Middle Eastern countries charged with relatively specific and defined acts of atrocities, that have been indicted thus far by the ICC. Moreover, insofar as the founding charter for the ICC does not permit trial in absentia, there is an obvious and major impediment to trying Putin in that venue, despite the fact that some European nations have called on the ICC to initiate a case against him (as similarly occurred following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014).

While U.S. criminal law does define and prohibit “war crimes,” its jurisdiction does not reach the leader of a foreign country alleged to have committed such acts in another foreign country.

Despite the awful acts being committed by Russia in Ukraine — acts which in all likelihood could be proven to fit within both U.S. and international law as “war crimes” — cavalierly tossing around the term without understanding its scope, applicability, or practical consequences, as this Administration appears to be doing, serves no meaningful or lasting purpose. In fact, doing so lessens the credibility of the allegations and of those making them.

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

Townhall

by Bob Barr

The “Green” Kool-Aid Democrats continue to guzzle is truly making them incomprehensively detached from reality. It has sunk to the point at which one senior Democrat congressional leader, Sen. Ed Markey from Massachusetts, openly (and with a straight face) declared that energy independence achieved by producing more natural gas and oil, is “one of the biggest lies.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a doomsday scenario for radical environmentalists. The war has exposed just how weak “going green” has made Europe, forcing leaders to choose between economic disaster, and subsidizing Putin’s barbaric war. On our side of the Atlantic, Democrats should be paying attention to the lessons of linking one’s national security to the cooperation of despots, but they would rather keep chugging their green Kool-Aid beverage.

Europe’s fate will be America’s if Democrats continue to follow their radical environmental agenda. Decades of environmental activism, ironically funded in Europe by Russian money, destroyed Europe’s energy independence. This short-sighted policy has made the continent largely unable to absorb even minor disruptions to supply from the Russian-controlled energy spigot.

The situation is so dire in Germany, one official said a boycott targeting Russia would lead to “mass poverty” for the world’s fourth-largest economy. While America is not in quite so precarious a position as Europe, it is certainly nowhere close to where our country should – and could – be. Consider how long it took the Biden Administration to finally pull the plug on our country’s imports of Russian crude following that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

If it was that hard to replace just eight percent of our total oil supply, where exactly does the Left think it would make up the 19 percent we import from the Middle East, if that source were to be – again — disrupted? Or how will the U.S. keep up with electrical demands as electric vehicles become more popular, when Democrats are closing nuclear power plants, rather than building them?

Questions like these went unanswered by Europe before selling out their national security in return for promises of “climate change.” Here at home Democrats are refusing to answer those same crucial questions, because doing so would force them to admit they were dead-wrong about an issue that has become a cornerstone of their Party’s 21st Century identity. Confronting the damage they have wrought would require them to address, even indirectly, that:

• Crippling domestic oil production has again rendered the United States captive to international market disruptions.

• Maintaining costly regulatory mandates like the century-old Jones Act, makes shipping domestic oil from one domestic port to another more expensive than importing oil from overseas.

• Liberal states are dismantling existing nuclear power generation with no plan to compensate for this loss.

• Failing to clean house at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has long behaved like an enemy to nuclear development, has severely hampered efforts to expand or even modernize nuclear energy production.

These, and other critical failures illustrate that Democrats have neither the courage nor the vision to pursue energy policies that actually use America’s abundant natural resources to achieve energy independence in the short-term, while stabilizing the natural market transition away from fossil fuels and traditional energy sources down the road.

The simplest measures requiring almost no effort or expansion of domestic drilling – such as repealing the Jones Act and revamping the NRC – are nowhere to be found on the Democrats’ radar. Preserving the status quo of high gas prices and unreliable energy production appears to be the sole path they have chosen.

This green obsession has become nothing less than a cult, in which the truth is obvious, but admitting it would mean accepting responsibility for putting the U.S. on the same ill-fated trajectory as Europe.

Fortunately, voters are not the gullible rubes Democrats pray they are, and cheap ploys such as temporary “gas tax holidays” and silly responses to serious questions, such as “Putin’s price hike,” are not going to mask the failure of decades of green energy policies to provide anything beyond political theater.

Voters will be taking their gas pump receipts to the voting booths this year, and perhaps finally we will have a Congress that tosses out the green Kool-Aid and removes the green-colored glasses, that for far too long have severely damaged American consumers and businesses with anti-energy energy policies.

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

When President John F. Kennedy made his bold declaration in 1961 that America would, before the end of that decade, send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth, there was little doubt our country would meet that lofty goal, and absolutely no doubt we would do it on our own.

Now, six decades later, America’s ability to send astronauts into space, including to the International Space Station (ISS), clearly has been hobbled by a short-sighted (if not foolhardy) U.S. government decision at the turn of this century to rely on Russian-built rockets to launch heavy payloads into space.

The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting U.S.-led sanctions targeting Russia is proving the folly of allowing our country to have become dependent on a potential — and now demonstrably real — adversary in a key national security area.

With the head of Russia’s space program late last month threatening to leave an American astronaut aboard the ISS with no way home, the stupidity of our space program becoming dependent on Russian heavy launch vehicles and space capsules has come into sharp focus, regardless of whether Putin’s government would actually follow through on such a threat.

For decades, Russia and the United States have cooperated in their civilian space programs, especially in manning the ISS. This relationship has permitted both nations to reap the benefits of the space station’s breakthroughs in medicine, telecommunications and many other arenas, while sharing the expense of such dangerous and costly activities.

There is, however, a pronounced difference between cooperation and dependency, and it is in the matter of launching the heavy space capsules to the ISS only by using Russian rockets where the real problem lies.

Our Space Shuttle program ended more than a decade ago, in 2011. For the next nine years, astronauts needing to be ferried to the ISS relied entirely on Russian launch vehicles to make the trek. That problematic and short-sighted dependency eased a bit in 2020, when a pair of American astronauts successfully docked with the ISS after being launched into orbit by an Elon Musk-built “Falcon Heavy” rocket carrying the “Crew Dragon” capsule.

That 2020 launch represented a milestone for American rocketry, reflecting the fact that in recent years, the U.S. has made significant strides in the development of private launch vehicles, including Musk’s Space X Falcon Heavy and Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Origin.” No longer are we as a country dependent only on NASA and federal appropriations for building large launch vehicles capable of sending astronauts into space, including to the ISS.

However, these civilian versions of NASA’s long-discontinued Saturn V heavy launch vehicle (still considered the most powerful rocket ever produced, and the one that sent the first humans to the surface of the moon in 1969) are not yet available routinely to carry men and women to the ISS. Hence our continued dependence on Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos) for carrying our astronauts to the ISS at a cost of close to $90 million per passenger (far more than the projected cost of seats on U.S. space capsules).

The cooperative relationship between our two countries in manning the ISS has itself been bumpy since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine that year prompted the Congress, in a move led by former Sen. John McCain, to at least temporarily prohibit use of Russian rockets to launch American satellites with national security purposes. That dispute also resulted in Russia declaring it would end the bilateral ISS cooperation several years earlier than had been agreed previously.

Whether this year’s far more serious Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the extensive sanctions levied on Moscow in its wake, will result in a complete break between American and Russian cooperation in launch vehicles, manned space capsules and the ISS remains to be seen. Recent events, however, should serve as a wake up call to the Biden Administration and to congressional leaders that continuing such dependency carries unacceptably serious risks.

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

Anyone caring to see the folly of allowing the government to decide what is “fake news” or “disinformation,” need look no further than what Russia is doing right now with information emanating from the battlefronts in Ukraine.

Republicans are angry with arbitrary bans by social media giants against conservative users of their platforms, while the GOP’s Democrat colleagues still remain upset with so-called “disinformation” on COVID-19. In response, both sides have taken aim at the tech industry by suggesting, if not demanding, greater government involvement; in the name of truth and fairness, of course. What is happening in Russia today illustrates vividly that such moves would be a grave mistake.

Big Tech, and in particular social media companies, certainly are not blameless for the storm that hangs over them. Bowing to pressure from Woke Scolds and do-gooders in Congress and state legislatures, they established arbitrary rules, enforced by secret algorithms, to police subjective political content. Not unexpectedly, such “soft” censorship prompted backlash that has worked its way up to Congress.

All of this could have been avoided if, as Elon Musk recently tweeted about his own policies on Starlink, social media platforms had maintained a “free speech absolutist” approach to content and let users drown out bad speech with more speech. Why conservatives, who historically have been averse to government regulatory intervention, would lift the privacy tent to allow the nose of the government camel to poke through, is mystifying, but it clearly is present.

What the government would do with such control is written into the pages of history – and current events. As Russia’s military blunders in Ukraine pile up, Vladimir Putin is realizing the resulting public relations nightmare is too large to manage with traditional propaganda and has suspended social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, while cracking-down on independent news that cannot be trusted to toe the Party line.

All of this is being justified by the Putin regime using the same language we hear in the U.S. – “fake news” and “disinformation” are threatening the domestic order, and someone (government) had to take action to stop it. Putin shutting down entire social networks and silencing independent journalists under threat of arrest (and likely worse) may be an extreme example, but all the elements making Russia’s sweeping crackdown possible can be seen in the United States today – eager government agencies, interest groups clamoring for action, and the technical ability to execute content crackdowns on demand.

The Right’s calls to “break-up” Big Tech, and the Left’s constant demands for content censor of speech it does not like reflects a growing public acceptance of government involvement in social media regulation; a role government is more than willing to play. The Biden Administration already is openly, even if unconstitutionally, pressuring private companies to remove content it sees as “harmful.”  And Donald Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok in 2020 via Executive Order suggests a roadmap to shutting-down social media companies already exists in some form.

None of this is new. Since the early 1990s, the Deep State has been fighting for a legislative green light to construct backdoors into the communication streams of private citizens, circumventing the ability of communications carriers to prevent such intrusion. Federal law enforcement and its congressional supporters have for those many years waged an all-out war against private encryption, citing “national security” as the justification for legally mandated “backdoor keys.”

The reality today, on display in Russia, is that private encryption is the only way for citizens to communicate freely. Give the Russian government – or any government – the power and tools to evade private electronic encryption, and the window to ubiquitous government control of private communications is opened wide.

It is not too late the reverse the path we are on, which will inevitably lead to what we are seeing in Russia. But such a course correction will require a shift in our attitude toward fixing issues with Big Tech away from government intervention, and back to the concept of leaving the power to log on or log off, or to view or to ignore, where is always has best been placed – in the hands of individuals. Otherwise, what seems like the innocuous nose of the camel will quickly morph into an unwanted visitor with no intent of leaving.

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

Hopes that the current Supreme Court might at long last place even the mildest of limits on the federal government’s ability to hide behind a broad, virtually impenetrable “national security” shield were dashed last week when, in a pair of decisions, the High Court refused to make even a dent in the so-called “state secrets privilege” behind which Uncle Sam has hidden for nearly seven decades.

The two decisions – one unanimous and the other with one of the more “conservative” justices (Neil Gorsuch) joining with one of the most “liberal” (Sonia Sotomayor) in dissent – leave intact a legal maneuver that since 1953 has permitted Uncle Sam to block any legal action that might reveal evidence the government does not want to be made public, even if for no reason other than to avoid embarrassment or if the information sought to be disclosed has already been made public.

The so-called “state secrets privilege” (or “doctrine”) is not enshrined in any law, but is simply a judge-made rule that stops cold in its tracks any lawsuit or subsequent legal action brought against the federal government alleging official wrongdoing (including violation of an individual’s constitutionally guaranteed rights). All that government lawyers need do in order to invoke its protection is to claim that disclosure of material sought by private parties would harm “national security,” and ask the federal court hearing the matter to dismiss the proceedings out-of-hand. They can do this without having to disclose precisely what the actual “harm” to national security might be.

I was among those who had hoped last December that the Supreme Court would use the opportunity of being presented with a case in which a federal law (the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or “FISA”) appeared to actually require disclosure of evidence of unlawful electronic surveillance and place at least some limit on how extensively the state secrets privilege applied.

Unfortunately last week, not a single Supreme Court justice was willing to lend their name to such an opinion, with all nine opting instead to continue extending carte blanche to the FBI (the agency that had conducted surveillance of the individuals in alleged violation of FISA more than a decade ago) and other federal entities, to carry out surreptitious electronic surveillance regardless of whether the surveillance was alleged to have been unlawful.

The Court’s decision last week in the FISA case comports with arguments made in support of the state secrets privilege by Republican and Democrat Attorneys General dating back to the Truman Administration. The doctrine was first asserted as a way to prevent survivor spouses of three civilian contract personnel killed in the crash of a government plane testing classified electronics from being able to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit. Decades later, when the information thus protected was declassified, it was confirmed that the sole reason the government had fought disclosure was to avoid the exposure of embarrassing information and to avoid having to pay survivors’ benefits.

The other Supreme Court opinion last week involving the state secrets privilege regarded a site in Poland that had been used by the CIA in 2002 and 2003 to torture an individual thought to be a high-level al-Qaida operative with information about post-911 attacks (it was later determined he did not possess such information).

Even though the fact that the site in Poland had already been identified publicly in unrelated legal proceedings in Europe, six members of the Supreme Court joined with retiring Justice Stephen Breyer last week to extend the state secrets privilege to shield our government from having to admit a fact already in the public domain.

Taken together, these two Supreme Court opinions clearly show that even today, more than two decades after 9/11, federal judges, including those on the U.S. Supreme Court, remain afraid of being accused of endangering the “national security,” even if all they might be called on to do would be to hold the federal government accountable for engaging in actions that violate American law or the Bill of Rights.

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

Among the bleak, often harrowing images coming to us from Ukraine as it suffers a vicious invasion by Russia, there are images of hope and strength. Pictures of civilians lining-up to receive firearms or forming makeshift assembly lines to assemble Molotov Cocktails, are examples of something that many Liberals simply fail to grasp as a moving force of human nature – acts of self-preservation against those who would take away individual liberty.

“The first and strongest desire God planted in men, and wrought into the very principles of their nature, [is] that of self-preservation,” John Locke wrote in 1689. The response of Ukraine citizens (who just days before might have been planning vacations or running errands) to arm and fight against Russian invaders, is perhaps one of the best examples in modern history of what Locke meant.

Survival is an instinct of humanity, and self-preservation is its natural mechanism. Government, as our Founders clearly understood (and they knew Locke’s writings well), is – should be – instituted in order to preserve freedom and human life, not limit, or restrain it, whether by force or decree.

This is a principle the Left seems never to understand or accept about the Second Amendment.

Although liberals want to pretend the scope of the Second Amendment is a collective right only applicable to militias, or hunting at the most as an individual right, such a position is wholly at odds with the Amendment’s philosophical and historical foundation.

The Second Amendment was, and continues to this day to be, a codification of the natural right to self-preservation, and self-defense.

Regardless of whether a nation codifies that right in its laws and founding documents, and as we see on display in Ukraine today, preserving and defending oneself and family against a violent aggressor with the one instrument most suitable for such endeavor, remains today as in 1791 (the year the Second Amendment was ratified) an immutable fact of human nature.

As Americans, we are fortunate not to have fought a war against a foreign army on our soil for more than two centuries. Still, in times of violent domestic unrest, whether 1992 Los Angeles or 2020 in cities across the country, the Second Amendment’s guarantee for defense of one’s life and property remains as important today as in every previous era. Israel, which faces constant dangers to its citizens and its national existence, understands this; and the people of Ukraine clearly understand it today.

True law enforcement officers — that is those in police departments not controlled by namby-pamby, “woke” political appointees – understand this maxim.  In one such instance in 2020, New York resident Scott Kaufman called police to report a “dangerous standoff” between his neighbor and protestors. “Sir, the city is under attack,” he says the police told him. “Do what you have to do.” Nobody was coming to “de-escalate” the situation or protect Kaufman if it spiraled out of control. In that moment, he alone was responsible for his survival, as were millions of Americans across the nation during those turbulent months. The institutions Democrats have told us for decades supplanted the need for the Second Amendment failed, as they have before, and certainly will again.

Democrats live in a fiction, where safety and peace are achieved through social control via laws and forced behavior. In their fantasy world, should those controls fail, government is fully equipped to step in and save the day. The rest of us know this is simply not true. Riots. Natural disasters. Pandemics. Terrorism. War. These are all unpredictable and often unstoppable forces that disrupt the social order and force citizens to self-reliance.

In such situations, the philosophical arguments about what citizens “need” to defend themselves collide with an unavoidable reality that laws cannot instantly change to meet the situation. In states and cities governed according to oppressive gun-control measures, that decision would already have been made. As a violent mob marches towards the doorstep, there would be no magic AR-15s that suddenly appear in one’s closet, nor would police appear in a flash.

Whether war, or riots, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time – taking ownership for one’s safety in the best manner one can is the exclusive, natural right of citizens. 21st Century Ukrainians understand this, and Russian invaders are finding it out.

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

Virtually every facet of civilian society in America has become openly and deeply politicized. It was only a matter of time before the curse of politicization hit the armed forces. The tipping point came in late January with a Department of Justice court filing in Connecticut, in which the Biden administration officially gave the green light for National Guard troops to unionize when on active state duty.

Is this a terrible idea? Yes. But is it surprising? Not really. Once Lloyd Austin, President Biden’s Secretary of Defense, commenced his service at the Pentagon in early 2021 by declaring that “extremism” in the ranks is a top priority for the Defense Department, the political die was cast.

The political football has now been passed from the Defense Secretary to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who gladly ran with the ball in the Connecticut case, announcing that the Department sees no problem with state-controlled National Guard personnel joining unions. (Currently, more than 400,000 men and women are subject to being called up for such state service.)

The repercussions of this decision already are being felt in Texas, where groups upset with Gov. Abbott’s use of the Texas National Guard to assist in protecting the state’s border with Mexico (“Operation Lone Star”), are moving to enlist Guard members in that state to meet and organize collectively. The Abbott administration is fighting the move, which almost certainly will result in contentious and lengthy legal wrangling.

The issue of unionizing National Guard units has been percolating quietly for several years, though not until the Justice Department’s January court filing in Connecticut has it reached the front burner.

For example, a relatively small number of civilian technicians serving in state guard units have been allowed to join unions, but their uniformed colleagues have not. The basis for this prohibition is a 1978 federal law prohibiting union activity among the ranks of federal military, including the National Guard.

This broad federal law prohibition, however, was attacked in the Connecticut case last fall by a number of National Guard members who were upset that they were not provided what they considered adequate protections against COVID when called on to assist in that state’s pandemic prevention activities. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME — the country’s largest trade union of public employees, with a membership of more than 1.3 million) filed a complaint in federal court challenging the prohibition against unionization, aided by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School.

The Justice Department sought to dismiss the guard members’ complaint, but agreed with and appeared to welcome AFSCME’s argument that the unionization prohibition in federal law did not apply to guard units under state command.

There actually was no necessity for Garland to stake out the position he did, but insofar as the administration of which he is a part has strongly opposed Operation Lone Star and the use of Texas guardsmen for its enforcement, the Connecticut lawsuit was a tailor-made opportunity for the administration to throw a monkey wrench into that endeavor, which it has.

Garland’s move may also have been viewed as a way to help reverse the longstanding trend of sagging union membership in the United States.

Regardless of the reasons for Garland’s gratuitous endorsement of unionizing state-controlled National Guard units, the idea is a direct challenge to the fundamental nature of military service, whether active, reserve or guard, all of which rely on strict discipline and unquestioned response to lawful orders. Having to run those orders by a union representative obviously runs counter to that good order and discipline of the military.

Down the road, the decision to endorse National Guard unionization will likely turn out to be a headache for liberals as much as for conservatives. Recent and continuing deployment of Guard units for myriad controversial purposes – from border protection to COVID relief, and to placing barbed wire around the U.S. Capitol complex — will provide opportunities to challenge such decisions by groups from across the ideological spectrum.

While Biden may relish the prospect of unionized National Guard units in the short term, it may not be long before he comes to regret the can of worms his administration has opened; as will his Oval Office successors.

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

Except in the months preceding a crucial midterm election, today’s Democrats would argue that high gas prices are a good thing. They see gas prices as a Pigouvian tax on fossil fuels that accelerate the shift to renewable “green” energy. Regulatory and legislative actions such as killing the Keystone Pipeline early last year, and closing off federal lands for oil drilling, were made by the Biden Administration and its congressional cohorts knowing full well such decisions would raise gas prices for consumers.

Democrats were okay with that, until their polling numbers began dipping into the frigid zone. It appears now to have dawned on them that higher gas pump prices are a ballot box killer; this year in particular with Joe Biden’s poll numbers deeper underground than oil shale.

This has left Democrats scrambling to find a way to explain to voters how paying more at the pump is a positive part of their environment masterplan, resulting in one of the dumbest proposals to come out of Congress in decades – which is saying something.

Democrat Brainiacs have concluded that a “gas tax holiday” in this election year is the perfect solution!

Don’t get me wrong. I love tax cuts, especially when permanent and when combined with offsetting cuts in spending. This latest goofball idea of a “gas tax holiday,” however, is neither. Not only is it temporary, but there are no concurrent spending cuts to counter the drop in revenue. In fact, Biden’s enormously expensive infrastructure plan relies heavily on federal gas tax revenue, and the drop in funding for however long Democrats consider “temporary” (the day after the midterms, perhaps?), would simply result in more debt.

The truth is, Democrats want consumers to feel the pain at the pump as an incentive for them to buy expensive electric vehicles. This is a key component of their environmental agenda that Biden has openly and enthusiastically embraced.

Beyond the additional debt a gas tax holiday would create, and while having no impact on gas prices in the future, the proposal is ripe with the intellectual dishonesty that has become par for the course with Democrats. In what way does it make sense to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline, and only months later beg OPEC to produce more oil to help with gas prices, as Biden did last November? Similarly, how does halting permits for drilling oil on federal lands square with panicking now about oil prices?

Democrats want the proverbial cake and be able to eat it, too; but in this instance it just will not work. They want to stop U.S. oil production in order to meet their green political agenda, but at the same time, they want consumers to be able to purchase cheaper gas at the pumps so they will be less likely to vote against them at the polls in November – hence the gas tax holiday farce.

Democrats likely will claim that “nobody could have seen” the Ukraine situation coming (with its negative effect already being felt on the world oil market), which is a bald-faced lie. If America’s energy resources were used responsibly rather than locked away as Democrats have done, America could easily weather disruptions to international oil production, rather than suffering through them with the rest of Europe.

Instead, thanks to Democrats’ radical agenda and inability to process the consequences of their own decision-making, we find ourselves with both of our hands tied behind our back and expecting other countries to bail us out (including Russia, a gas-producing nation from which we still import oil). All Democrats have to offer for their blundering leadership is a cheap gimmick for which voters are supposed to thank them at the polls in November.

If congressional Democrats actually move forward with their federal gas tax holiday proposal, Republicans at a minimum should insist on amendments that would restart the Keystone XL Pipeline, and that would allow federal drilling leases to again be approved (and at the standard cost).

The GOP should at least force Democrats to vote against such commonsense measures and make them earn their election-year gimmick the hard way.

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.