From the Desk of Bob Barr

Townhall

Governments love to tax. It matters little if it is your local county commission looking to raise the millage rate on property taxes, or the federal government searching for new ways to tax income pursuant to the authority granted it by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution – the default for government is to increase revenue.

There may, however, be a bit of light at the end of the tax tunnel.

Predictably, of course, the Biden Administration and its cohorts on Capitol Hill and in lobbyist offices on the K Street Corridor remain adamantly opposed to any talk of tax “cuts.”

The cautious optimism many experts see on the tax horizon, is thanks to the reality that Republicans maintain majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and in state governorships and legislatures. Tax policies that are supportive of both families and businesses are reasons why states including my home state of Georgia attract jobs, while high-tax states such as California are losing both people and businesses.

Even at the international level, where President Biden two years ago embraced a G-7 plan for a global minimum tax of 15%, recent pushback by the GOP-controlled House has thrown a monkey wrench into Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s plan to move the United States closer to that competition-killing policy.

Few public policy issues define more clearly the divide between Democrats and Republicans than taxes, and thankfully the GOP by and large remains the party that understands if you reduce the tax burdens on individuals and on businesses that create jobs, sufficient funds will still flow into government coffers with which to provide essential services. Democrats, on the other hand, consider tax-cuts such as those implemented by former President Trump and which now are being implemented at the state level by many “Red State” governors, to be inherently “regressive” — a “worrisome trend” symptomatic of a “fever” that must be broken before it does more harm to the citizenry.

The degree to which Biden’s party abhors tax cuts was displayed starkly in 2021 when Senate Democrats included a provision in the President’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that actually would have prohibited states from cutting taxes if they accepted funds made available through the Plan. This absurd restriction finally was struck down by the federal appellate courts early this year, but it serves to illustrate just how far Democrats will go in their drive to keep taxes high.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam is being hoisted on his own petard. By pushing consumers to buy electric vehicles rather than gas-powered cars and trucks, fuel tax revenues have dropped noticeably. This has caused Biden and several states to turn their greedy eyes at taxing vehicles based on miles driven rather than the amount of gas purchased at the pump.

Biden’s predilection for a gas mileage tax was evident in his 2022 infrastructure spending bill, which included $125 million for a pilot program. As gas tax revenues diminish, the lure of increased taxes that could be reaped by way of a mileage tax is becoming ever more desirable

Speaking of taxes, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case in its 2023-24 term that may determine whether it is constitutionally permissible for the IRS to continue taxing unrealized gains on investments. In other words, whether the government can force an individual to pay taxes on income based solely on profits earned by a company in which an individual has invested but never themself received any income.

A professor at Chapman University has noted that this tax case, which will test the limits of the federal government’s 16th Amendment power to tax income, is the most important to be decided by the High Court in a century.

If the Supreme Court in fact places such a common sense limit on the reach of the government’s power to tax income; if the House continues to resist opening new tax avenues for the executive branch, such as taxing corporations by way of a global minimum tax; and if Red State governors continue to reduce state income taxes, that faint light at the end of the tax tunnel could grow considerably brighter by the time next year’s elections arrive.

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

In 1959, a young screenwriter named Rod Serling created what would become one of the 20th Century’s most iconic television series. “The Twilight Zone” has become so much a part of our culture that contemporary dictionaries include the term “twilight zone” as a defined noun, meaning “an area just beyond ordinary legal and ethical limits.”

Considering recent cultural changes, America’s political system quite easily can fit within that very definition, insofar as “ordinary legal and ethical limits” seem no longer to apply.

In one of the most recent examples of this phenomenon, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, declared something that historically, ethically, and legally would in the past have been considered laughable — erasing official actions taken previously by the Congress of the United States.

Townhall

The ubiquitous term “smart device” often is employed without seriously considering the implications of devices that are, in the context of the Internet of Things, “a wired or wireless context-aware electronic device capable of performing autonomous computing and connecting to other devices for data exchange,” with the key phrases being “autonomous” and “connecting.”

Writing his dystopian novel, 1984 nearly 75 years ago, George Orwell could only dream of such technology. Today, however, governments and companies that make and use “smart” devices, fully understand the power of such technology and eagerly embrace its use by individuals in the real world.

First, there are companies that develop, manufacture, sell, and maintain “smart” devices – everything from “smart” phones to “smart” homes and numerous “linked” devices inside the dwellings. There is now a market for wearable, “smart” clothes.

There are the tech companies that develop the software that enables the “smart” devices to communicate with the owners and users, with other “smart” devices, and most importantly, with the really “smart” people associated with companies that monitor the myriad devices.

Then there are the government entities with wide-ranging interests in “smart” devices. This universe includes federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, from the FBI and 50 state bureaus of investigation to thousands of county and municipal police and sheriffs offices across the country.

Beyond all those law enforcement agencies keenly interested in having access to such “smart” information to assist in preventing and solving crimes, there are agencies with interests in the devices for reasons other than law enforcement; interests that relate to such goals as reducing energy or water usage or changing consumer habits.

All these entities – from the FBI to the Atlanta Police Department (which maintains one of the largest and most pervasive camera surveillance systems in the country), and from Amazon  to Bosch and other major companies involved in the “smart” manufacturing market – share one thing in common: the unquenchable thirst for data.

It is that drive for information harvested from “smart” devices that runs headlong against the privacy rights of Americans. Here is where the contradiction between privacy concerns and convenience manifests itself. While a significant majority of Americans – as high as 84% in a recent survey – express some level of “concern” about the privacy of their personal data, the market for information-hungry “smart” devices controlled by third parties keeps expanding.

Convenience and fear of crime drive much of the civilian market for “smart” devices, and there perhaps is no better example of this than the exploding market for “smart” doorbells, such the Amazon-owned Ring devices. It is that fear of crime and the yearning for a sense of security that appears clearly to be driving the sale of Ring doorbells; a policy that has for the past several years been reinforced by law enforcement agencies that encourage homeowners to install “smart” doorbells and allow police to have access to the information they gather.

It is that sense of fear that overrides individuals’ privacy concerns that might otherwise augur against installing such devices in one’s home.

Few Ring customers are likely to be familiar with the company’s poor record for protecting the security of users’ data, a history that precipitated the filing of a lawsuit against the company by the Federal Trade Commission last month. Even fewer customers would likely have any awareness that the doorbell camera company maintained an apparently unsecured manufacturing company in Ukraine, known as “Ring Ukraine.”

Despite problems of hacking, company misuse of customers’ supposedly private data, and sharing of private data with innumerable police agencies, sales of “smart” doorbells and other devices continues to climb.

Interestingly in this regard — and as a perfect example of what Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein has described as “the dumbest generation” — a recent poll shows that nearly 30% of Americans under the age of 30 would have no problem with the government directly surveilling the interior of their homes with “smart” devices.

All things considered, it truly should surprise no customer of such devices when a device and the company that monitors them, decides to punish a user by shutting down all their “smart” devices, even if the vindictive action is premised on a mistake. After all, every one of those “smart” devices is made, monitored, and ultimately controlled not by the “smart” customer, but by other , far “smarter” persons and entities whose interests may not coincide with the customer’s.

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 this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles.

—“Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley (1932)

“’Isn’t it amazing?’ she said. ‘It’s what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love.’”

— Harriet de Wit, quoted in “How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist,” by Rachel Nuwer, BBC (June 14, 2023)

Some things don’t change, as they say. So it is with attempts to alter human behavior. For millennia, people of various cultures and for various reasons — some good, some evil — have experimented with ways to alter human perception and behavior as a way to improve society. This was the premise of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World, published in 1932 and which described a society uniformly and purposefully addicted to and controlled by the drug “soma.”

Now, almost a century later, there still are those trying to accomplish what Huxley wrote about as fiction.

A recent study conducted by Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Harriet de Wit at the University of Chicago used not the fictitious soma but a real drug — MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) – in a study to determine its usefulness for increasing the “pleasantness of social touch.”

MDMA has been around for quite some time, having been discovered early in the 20th Century by German chemists for possible pharmaceutical purposes. Decades later, the CIA conducted experiments with the drug, known commonly as “Molly” or “Ecstasy” rather than its lengthy scientific name. The experiments were part of the Agency’s notorious, top secret “MK-Ultra” program to discover the limits of humans to withstand torture and other forms of pressure.

After the CIA’s program became public knowledge in the 1970s, and knowing the serious and potentially fatal side effects of the drug, the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1985 placed MDMA on the list of Controlled Substances, with criminal penalties for its unprescribed possession or use.

As with many activities prohibited by the government, declaring MDMA a Schedule I Controlled Substances did not diminish its attractiveness for individuals desiring the “high” it offers. Since the 1990s, ecstasy has remained a drug of choice for many young people and celebrities, especially at “raves” featuring loud, electronic music and crowds of dancers. Users crave the sense of euphoria it provides, along with the burst of energy it brings.

While the drug appears to have some therapeutic potential for those suffering PTSD and other serious anxiety disorders, the federal government has not yet downgraded MDMA from a Schedule I Controlled Substance, largely because of its many serious side effects, which includes hallucinations, distorted perception, memory loss, impaired ability to engage in motor skills such as driving a vehicle, and potentially fatally high body temperature.

The 2020 study of MDMA’s effects on social behavior by Prof. de Wit is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the optimism recently expressed by BBC author Rachel Nuwer when she wrote about it and interviewed one individual who had volunteered to take the drug as part of the study.

The individual, identified only as “Brendan,” came to the study as an avowed white nationalist and left it as someone who reportedly now sees the world not through a racial lens but through the eyes of “love” as “the most important thing.” As related in her account of de Wit’s work, Brendan’s perceived world morphed into one where he had “connection” with everyone, including even the Antifa activist who had previously outed him and caused him to lose his job.

While author Nuwer admits that the example of Brendan’s conversion from white nationalist to flower child does not establish our readiness for the government to begin the mass distribution of MDMA as with soma in Brave New World, she seems clearly to hope this is the direction in which the studies by de Wit and others take us.

Nuwer and de Wit correctly lament the absence of qualities such as “compassion, kindness, empathy, gratitude, altruism, fairness, trust, and cooperation” in today’s society. The absence of these attributes, however, reflects deep, negative changes in our culture, and cannot be resuscitated by soma, MDMA, or any other mind-altering drug; thinking otherwise would seem to be a side effect of viewing the world through a soma lens.

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

Shoplifting, including organized retail theft, has been surging in cities across America, and a new generation of woke CEOs and state legislators are implementing unusual methods of addressing the epidemic. Actually, they are coming up with ways not to deal with the problem.

In 2022 alone, it is estimated that retail stores lost more than $94.5 billion to shoplifters. Retail industry analysts estimate that the average loss per shoplifting incident is $1,178.57; that was in 2021, which represented a 26.6% increase over 2020.

Despite the prevalence of anti-theft technology and ubiquitous surveillance cameras supposed to stem the shoplifting tide, a mere 2% of shoplifters are caught and far fewer ever prosecuted.

The CEO of one major retail company, Lululemon, has implemented a “zero tolerance” plan by which to deal with shoplifters. Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald’s company-wide “zero tolerance” policy, however, does not punish the shoplifters. Instead, it calls for firing any employee who tries to impede a shoplifter. Two employees (in woke speak, the company calls them “educators” rather than “employees”) recently were summarily fired from the Lululemon store where they worked in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, for no reason other than they confronted a couple of shoplifters and demanded they leave the store.

Common sense actions as confronting shoplifters caught in the act of pilfering expensive clothing at a retail store in years past would be considered standard response to shoplifters caught in the act, and praised by management. Now, at least from the perspective of the highly educated and generously paid Calvin McDonald, the preferred way to protect the company and its shareholders, is to simply “step back, [and] let the theft occur.”

Strange as Lululemon’s policy is, it is consistent with a piece of legislation recently passed overwhelmingly by the California State Senate — S.B. 553, which would prohibit employers in the state from “maintaining policies that require employees to confront .  .  .  suspected shoplifters.”  The legislation focuses largely on ensuring that retail employers implement labor policies to promote employee “safety” by not confronting or challenging shoplifters. A modern version of the “leave the inmate in charge of the asylum” adage.

Adding to the cost of shoplifting borne by businesses and consumers alike are the soft-on-shoplifting prosecution policies of woke district attorneys including those in a number of Democrat-run cities.

Over-the-counter drugs are a favorite target for shoplifters.  This presents a very practical challenge for stores that carry these easily concealable items – how to prevent theft but also make the items viewable to prospective consumers.

Some efforts by heads of major chains such as Walgreens who, unlike their counterpart at Lululemon, actually and responsibly strive to stem the crime wave in hard-hit cities like Chicago, are resorting to placing most items behind locked glass doors. Not surprisingly, such efforts have not been met with favor by shoppers, despite the store describing the design as a way to “enhance the experiences of [its] customers and team members” (i.e., employees).

Where this all will lead remains to be seen, but the prospects for more effective control of rampant shoplifting in the current environment does not appear bright.

The mix of “restorative justice” prosecutors, woke and timid CEOs, state laws and corporate policies making it increasingly difficult to stand up to shoplifters, deteriorating civil social bonds, increased gang and organized retail theft rings, legalized drug use, homeless camps on doorsteps of retail businesses, widespread propensity toward violent behavior, street-based mental health issues, reduced police presence, periodic rampages by gangs, and shuttering of retail establishments on the losing end of heightened shoplifting, combine to create a truly toxic mixture.

The Lululemon approach may salve the conscience of woke companies and government officials, but it will do nothing to solve the problem of rampant shoplifting.

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

When he is not wandering aimlessly across a stage, President Biden is leveling the most vile of curses in his vocabulary at news stories with which he disagrees – “Malarkey!” This was his retort last week to a reporter’s query about allegations that he corruptly profited to the tune of $5 million while serving as Barack Obama’s Vice President.

Meanwhile, former President Trump has been relentlessly and, as always, loudly, insulting Special Counsel Jack Smith for bringing an indictment against him for unlawfully possessing and disclosing highly classified documents after his tenure as Commander in Chief expired. For good measure, the former president also has been insulting anyone, including the man he appointed as his last Attorney General, who fails to similarly discount the 37-count indictment filed against him last week in the U.S. District Court in Miami.

Actually, both cases have merit, both raise extremely serious questions about the competency of each man to serve in such high office, and both matters should be pursued seriously.

The case against Trump was laid bare in the 44-page indictment returned against him last Thursday. The document is resplendent with details, including photographs, demonstrating the cavalier, and certainly un-presidential manner with which the former president considered classified national security information.

Trump’s supporters argue, with perhaps a degree of validity, that charging a former president with nothing more than mis-handling classified papers is, in the broad scheme of things, not among the more serious issues facing America at home and abroad right now. Trump defenders declare also —  and with a degree of cogency — that charging him but not Hillary Clinton with such offenses represents an un-level and two-tiered system of justice. They decry also that other office holders, Joe Biden among them, are not being treated as harshly as is Mr. Trump.

All these responses to the indictment are, to a degree, valid. None, however, erases what is at the foundation of the indictment – an inappropriate and dangerously lackadaisical attitude respecting information on which our nation’s military and intelligence leaders rely when making decisions of war and peace.

Whether one likes or dislikes those serving in our Foreign Intelligence Community, and regardless of whether a president or an ex-president is or is not a fan of the top brass at the Pentagon, the fact remains that the security environment within which decision-making at those levels occurs, must be respected and is disregarded at very real risk of endangering lives, relationships, resources, and strategic options. This is not a game.

The notion that a president should be permitted to declare on a whim that highly classified intelligence information is no more worthy of legal protection than a Rand-McNalley roadmap, should not be among the attributes of someone seeking to be president, much less someone who has served as president. And blindly defending a former president who exhibits such callous, almost gleeful disregard for established and statutorily founded procedures is unbecoming a major political party.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the unfolding contest between the still-new GOP majority in the House of Representatives and the very well-established FBI concerning evidence of high-level corruption involving the then-Vice President and now President of the United States, is anything but “malarkey.”

The allegations that, while serving as Obama’s Vice President, Joe Biden benefited financially to the tune of several million dollars as quid pro quo for acting in his capacity as vice president, are among the most serious charges that could ever be levelled against a sitting vice president (or president). If true, such acts would be staggering in their implications for our country and its standing in the world.

Thus far, the American public is not privy to anything beyond a reported “credible” FBI document or documents that such untoward behavior took place. The mere possibility that evidence not yet discounted by the FBI or the Department of Justice exists, merits the most thorough and timely assessment of which our government is capable.

If, instead, we witness a process stymied by the partisan gridlock that has infected virtually every meaningful investigation engaged in by any congressional committee in either the House or the Senate by either the Republicans or the Democrats in recent years, the stench of corruption will extend far beyond our borders, and linger long past the tenures in office of either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump.

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

A surprisingly unanimous Supreme Court decision last week finally clipped the ever-expanding wings of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

For more than half a century, imperious regulators at the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, with which it shares regulatory jurisdiction over “wetlands” and “navigable waters of the United States,” have worked to prevent citizens and businesses from taking common sense steps to develop privately owned property in ways that benefit them and which have no significant negative impact on the environment.

One ploy the EPA and the Army Corps often have used in their war on private property owners, is to assert expansive jurisdiction over small or occasional bodies of water and “wetlands” — claiming these constitute “navigable waters of the United States,” and are therefore subject to regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA).

This was the predicament in which Michael and Chantell Sackett found themselves in 2007, when the EPA moved to stop them from improving their small parcel of property near Priest Lake, Idaho. The Sacketts had, in the eyes of Uncle Sam’s regulators, committed an egregious offense by failing to first obtain a Corps of Engineers permit before taking preliminary steps to improve their property. The government claimed the property contained “wetlands” that in some way and at some point in time had a “nexus” to a navigable waterway of the United States.

The Sacketts’ position was simple — property with no waterway at all, much less one that is “navigable,” does not transmogrify into “navigable water” simply because it is near such a waterway and might contain some occasional “wetlands.” Despite this common sense interpretation of the scope of the Clean Water Act, the federal government continued for 16 years to harass the Sacketts.

Unlike many private property owners who have neither the money nor the time to wage a multi-year legal battle with the EPA or the Corps of Engineers, the Sacketts were represented in their struggle by the conservative public interest law firm, Pacific Legal Foundation, which enabled them to continue fighting until their historic victory.

Justice Alito, who authored last week’s Sackett opinion, identified clearly what was at stake. He noted, for example, that literally hundreds of millions of acres of “wetlands,” and virtually every piece of land with a channel or conduit for rainwater runoff would be subject to arbitrary government permitting control unless the EPA was reined in.

In fact, had the Sackett family been forced to throw in the towel, the Biden Administration was prepared and ready to implement an even broader regulation on “wetlands” and “navigable waters” it had proposed last January: “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States.’” The gobbledygook in this proposed regulation is utterly, and purposefully undecipherable.

Biden’s proposal, which thankfully will now have to be redrafted in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, would have forced a landowner wanting to develop a parcel of land, to first determine if it contained any “wetland” that might have either a “continuous surface connection to a relatively permanent” waterway, or have a “significant nexus” such as might “significantly affect .  .  .  traditional navigable waters.”

Even if a property owner could figure all that out, they would still need to obtain a permit before taking any steps to develop their property — a process that often takes years.

Alito’s opinion stops the EPA from forcing property owners to comply with its breathtakingly expansive wetlands position. In its place is a significantly narrower jurisdictional power that limits the EPA and the Corps of Engineers to only those wetlands that truly are “as a practical matter indistinguishable” from larger (i.e., “navigable”) bodies of water nearby; not those with some occasional or vague “nexus” to, or potential impact on actual “navigable waters.”

While environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, see an environmental disaster in the wake of the Sackett decision, in reality all the Supreme Court has done is to put the EPA back into the constitutional lane as intended by the 1972 law. It’s about time.

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

Daily Caller

Students are learning less and fighting more. The Biden Administration, which seems to view virtually every policy matter through a racial lens, however, is making it more difficult for schools to actually protect teachers and students.

The dispute over how to discipline disruptive students is nothing new. Unfortunately, this Administration, like its predecessor under President Obama, has made it a cultural and legal flashpoint, with little  regard for the actual safety of those involved, including teachers.

The current and ongoing debate about school discipline was teed up in January 2014 when President Obama’s Education and Justice departments issued a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining how Uncle Sam wanted schools to administer “discipline” without racially discriminatory effect.

Four years later, the Trump Administration rescinded the Obama “guidance” on school discipline and issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter on December 21, 2018, returning primary responsibility for disciplining students back to local schools and school boards.

For the past two years, the Biden Administration’s departments of Education and Justice have been “reviewing” Trump’s 2018 guidance letter, and on May 26th, issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter, re-focusing on federally determined “racial disparities” in school discipline.

Each of these “Dear Colleague” letters, although not possessed of direct legal power, carries significant weight in alerting state and local schools how the federal government will come down on them if they fail to follow the “guidance” contained therein. The Obama-Biden approach to school discipline was and now remains, one that presumes racial discrimination in any discipline policy where minority students are disciplined at a higher rate, or more harshly, than their non-minority counterparts.

Thus, starting in January 2014 the Department of Justice was empowered, if not encouraged, to sue a local or state school upon receiving a complaint that a disciplinary action or policy was “discriminatory.” Schools were advised not to mete out direct disciplinary action, but rather to assess the “root causes” of a student’s “misbehavior.”

Essentially missing from this student-centric approach is any real concern for the safety of teachers, school principals, and other students. Indeed, the just-released “Dear Colleague” letter, which emphasizes the availability of federal funds “to support schools,” is silent on using those taxpayer dollars to protect teachers and school administrators.

The Obama-initiated policy also was intimidating for local and state schools, each of which was under constant threat of being sued if the U.S. Attorney General determined that a disciplinary action or practice was employed more harshly against a black student rather than a white student.

Despite sound constitutional analysis that such a policy as reflected in the 2014 guidance resulting in de facto “racial quotas in suspensions” was itself unconstitutional and at odds with existing federal civil rights laws, the Obama Administration plowed ahead with suing various schools for disciplining students too harshly.

The result of this “restorative justice” approach has been a marked increase in the number and violent nature of student misbehavior, a trend significantly exacerbated by the widespread use of remote learning during the COVID pandemic.

The increases in the number and severity of students engaging in serious “misbehavior,” including the use of firearms and other weapons, has become so obvious that even the left-leaning NPR has been forced to acknowledge the problem. In a program on the topic just last week, experts discussed several examples of violent student behaviors in Democrat-run cities including Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. One expert, Wayne Ivey, noted that students feel empowered to behave violently because they know they face no serious disciplinary consequences. Elsewhere, teachers are quitting their jobs because they are “afraid for their safety.”

Despite all this — and in the face of continuing reports showing that students are failing miserably to achieve proficiency in such key subjects as mathematics, reading, and history — the best the Biden Administration can muster in response is to blame the pandemic and “politicians” (read, “Republicans”) looking to cut school budgets, and to once again issue “guidance” that threatens schools with federal lawsuits if their discipline policies run afoul of its obsessive focus on “racial disparity.”

The Administration deserves an “F” for its policies supposed to encourage learning and to protect teachers and students alike. Parents and teachers across the country should keep this report card in mind when they vote next year.

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

Townhall

Since its founding in 1971 as an organization with the laudable mission of fighting the KKK and other white supremacy groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has raised hundreds of millions of dollars with which it has leveled countless legal and public relations attacks against various “hate groups.”

Money aside, however, the SPLC is today a shell of its former self, beset with internal unrest and displaying a muddled focus. The Center no longer maintains the aura of invincibility that for decades made it essentially immune from serious legal challenges.

Much of the Center’s current troubles can be traced to 2019, when a major scandal centered on sexual harassment allegations forced the ouster of its co-founder and long-time leader, Morris Dees. Perhaps as a result of that major setback, the SPLC appears to have lost its sharp edge, and now appears to be targeting “hate” groups for no clear reason other than because it can.

The Dustin Inman Society, based in a northwest suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, has found itself in those SPLC crosshairs because it has, since its founding in 2005, vocally opposed illegal immigration.

The SPLC on the other hand, has long defended immigration, so it is no surprise that for years, the Center expressed its dislike for the Dustin Inman Society and its founder, D.A. King. That changed, however, in 2018 when the SPLC decided to list the small Dustin Inman Society as a “hate group,” and noted it as such on the Center’s website.

In response to being thus targeted by the SPLC, the Dustin Inman Society sued the Center for defamation. In a decision last month, the federal judge before whom the lawsuit is pending in Alabama, ruled that the SPLC would have to submit to discovery by the Society. The judge’s refusal to dismiss the complaint likely surprised the SPLC’s lawyers, because for the first time it opened the door for a group targeted by the Center to be able to conduct extensive discovery probing how and why it decides to attach the “hate group” label to an organization.

This move will likely have far-reaching consequences for the formerly invulnerable SPLC.

The SPLC’s problems are not limited to the setback it suffered in the Dustin Inman Society lawsuit. One of its own lawyers, Thomas Webb Jurgens, was arrested earlier this Spring and charged with domestic terrorism as one of the suspected Antifa agitators involved in violent disturbances surrounding the construction of a new police training center in Atlanta (in January, another protestor was killed by police in an exchange of gunfire at the same construction site).

In contrast to its listing of the Dustin Inman Society as a “hate group” because of its lawful advocacy against illegal immigration, the SPLC steadfastly has refused to label Antifa similarly.

More baffling even than the SPLC’s double standard for deciding what groups merits the “hate” label, is the Center’s ongoing fascination with “male supremacy.” Earlier this week, for example, an opinion piece featured on the SPLC website declared that the . . . Threat Of Male Supremacy Is Growing. Interestingly, however, for a category of “hate” that is supposedly “growing,” there appears only a single such entity on the Center’s most recent national “Male Supremacy Hate Map.”

That recent article on “male supremacy” was preceded in April of this year by a much longer piece also on the Center’s website, titled Male Supremacy Is At The Core Of The hard Right’s Agenda authored by Cassie Miller. It is this treatise that displays the true motive for the Center’s focus on such an odd topic as “male supremacy” – a vehicle by which to target traditional American culture and those who the SPLC considers to be its supporters; namely, Ron DeSantis (whose picture figures prominently in the opinion piece), Donald Trump, and the Republican Party.

Also featured in Ms. Miller’s screed against masculinity is a photo montage of a traditional American family, consisting of a father, a mother, and two children walking hand-in-hand. That picture appears directly beneath the heading “HATEWATCH,” and it tells you everything you need to know about the true agenda of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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

In 1962, the BBC launched a political comedy show called That Was The Week That Was (“TW3”). While the show ran for only two seasons (cancelled in 1964 for fear it would impact that year’s British elections), it spawned a similarly titled but also short-lived television show in the U.S. that focused on political satire.

Over just the past several days, the Left has provided us with more than sufficient satire to fill an hour-long TW3 show, not even counting the ongoing physical and mental bloopers by President Biden. 

The New York City Council led the most recent comedic parade when it passed a measure adding “weight discrimination” to the city’s growing list of factors that employers and others may not consider in making business or other decisions. The legislation has been sent to Mayor Eric Adams, who himself had written a book in 2020 recounting his journey losing 35 pounds on a “plant-based diet.” 

While illegal immigration and subway crime continue to plague the Big Apple, the city’s elected leaders apparently have concluded that “fat shaming” is a more serious and immediate problem; a position echoed by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) – an actual nonprofit advocacy group, not an organization created for a satire program.

It should be noted that New York is no Johnny-Come-Lately to such Nanny State-ism. In late 2015, for example, the city adopted “guidelines” banning the “misgendering” of individuals. Given its history of woke-ism, it is a virtual certainty that New York City will continue to provide material for many future editions of TW3.

On the west coast, San Francisco’s always entertaining city council joined its east-coast counterpart when it announced last week that it had created the post of “drag laureate.” The nation’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger, who will serve as San Francisco’s drag “ambassador” to the world, has authored such renowned literary classics such as Bitch Slap and Temple of Poon.

The “drag laureate” title is a disparaging take-off on the honor of “poet laureate” afforded truly accomplished authors who have contributed positively to America’s cultural heritage, such as Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, and James Dickey, among many others. California actually has a state poet laureate, Lee Herrick, who likely will henceforth be overshadowed by the drag laureate.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sam is seriously considering banning chocolate milk from school meal programs and mandating that boys must be permitted to compete against girls in school sports programs. These crucial and time-sensitive policy decisions have been joined on Capitol Hill by Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) moving to direct $14 trillion of taxpayer money to eradicate the “racial wealth gap.”

Last week also witnessed the publication of an official memo from the U.S. State Department directed to all its employees world-wide. The memo reflects what obviously is a major concern of the Biden Administration – to ensure that professional counseling is available to any employee who might feel “triggered” by having been erroneously “misgendered” in an official communication. 

The particular misgendering mishap at issue here occurred when a “system-wide email glitch …  temporarily assigned random and often incorrect gender pronouns to staff.” This most serious “glitch” reportedly caused a number of State Department employees to suffer “shock and confusion” that was “distracting” to their diplomatic duties. 

Thank goodness Secretary Antony Blinken’s staff remains atop the misgendering epidemic so as not to impede handling such lesser crises as the war in Ukraine, North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, or China’s moves to supplant the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The award for idiocy of the week, however, must go to the NAACP, which this week issued an “advisory” declaring that because under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become so “hostile” to racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, that it is unsafe to travel to the Sunshine State. 

No member of the TV writers’ guild (currently on strike) could make up such a comedic plot. I would dare them to even try.

But, while these and numerous other recent left-wing actions would make for spectacularly funny episodes of That Was The Week That Was, they reflect an extremely serious skewing of priorities and wasting of taxpayer money at all levels. We need to cancel TW3 for good.

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.