From the Desk of Bob Barr

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.

When the Surgeon General of the United States this month issued an official “Advisory” on  Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, I was inclined to dismiss the paper as just another example of the federal government spending taxpayer money on an issue over which it has no reasonable jurisdiction.

While the Loneliness “alarm” published by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is in fact another taxpayer-funded project over which there is no reasonable basis in the Constitution giving Uncle Sam legitimate jurisdiction, the nation’s “Top Doc” is actually onto something here, even if he fails to consider one of its primary causes.

Humans are fundamentally “social animals,” and for millennia social relationships have provided the context in which cultures develop and thrive (or not). Social discourse is the medium in which advances are made, in everything from the sciences to philosophy and from medicine to government structure. Failure to engage socially on both individual and collective levels can be, and demonstrably are, factors contributing to stagnation at the micro and macro level.

The very form of government and social structure embodied in our Constitution is framed as a “social compact.” Without social interaction, interpersonal discourse, and mutual understanding, the relationships between the citizenry and government, and the checks and balances incorporated into our constitutional republic, will no longer provide the essential ingredients for us to remain free.

There are, as Dr. Murthy describes in his Advisory, other very real benefits to social interactions.

The Surgeon General notes that isolation from fellow humans has been shown to diminish an individual’s mental and physical health, even leading to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia. The good doctor goes a bit far in declaring that loneliness can contribute to a person’s mortality to the same extent as “smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day” – a claim that led to headlines, but which lacks sourcing that clearly provides evidence for the conclusion. However, his thesis that socially active people generally are more likely to enjoy healthy lives than those who live apart from others, is well-made.

Additionally, Dr. Murthy correctly identifies that among the loneliness epidemic’s primary causes is the pervasive influence and easy availability of alternatives to inter-human interaction – namely, social media and other forms of non-personal communication. As illustrated graphically in the Advisory, over the past nearly 20 years, individuals’ “social engagement with friends” and with “others” have dropped dramatically, even as evidence of “social isolation” has increased significantly.

While the two-year long COVID pandemic increased both individual and social loneliness, the trends noted by the Surgeon General long predate the onset of COVID and the socially disastrous government responses to it (a valid topic for a far more lengthy “advisory”).

Dr. Murthy does not limit himself to identifying the problem and causes of loneliness and social isolation. In his Advisory and in subsequent interviews, he offers a number of ways to begin what will be at best a long road to recovery. Among these are recommendations to “scale back on social media” (an understatement), to actually “listen” and pay “attention” to other people (in my view, a completely lost art in today’s hyper-partisan political arena), and to “serve others” by civic volunteerism.

Kudos to Dr. Murthy for emphasizing the importance and benefits of such activities.

One factor that exacerbates the isolation and loneliness pervasive in contemporary America, but not discussed by the Surgeon General, is the divisiveness that results directly from the fact that in today’s society, great emphasis is placed on driving people and groups apart based on all manner of real or perceived factors.

It actually makes it harder for individuals to interact positively with each other when they are bombarded with signals if not demands that people must be differentiated and categorized according to artificially designated barriers such as race, gender, or political preferences.

Dr. Murthy’s Advisory did not touch on this major cause of social disruption, and perhaps it was beyond the scope of his effort; but if we are to take his warning to heart and actually endeavor to solve the problem he identifies, it is imperative that we openly and actively resist the ongoing drive for social tribalism and ostracism.

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

Last week, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee publicly outlined a series of financial transactions possibly implicating various Biden family members in corrupt financial dealings involving millions of dollars.

What the American public does not realize is that the information uncovered and made public by the committee, came primarily from what are known as Suspicious Activity Reports or “SARs.” These reports are secret and are routinely filed against private citizens by banks and other financial entities (including casinos and mortgage brokers) as mandated by federal law.

The grounds on which each SAR is filed can be for something as significant as a large international wire transfer, or as mundane as a deposit of a cashier’s check or cash by a bank customer who just sold an automobile and simply wants to place the money in their account.

The bank customer will almost never know that such a report has been filed with Uncle Sam, because under the 1970 law that created SARs the financial institution is prohibited from informing the customer.

SARs forms have been modified over the past half century, but still require all employees of financial institutions to file a report whenever they consider that a customer’s transaction has “raised suspicion.” While neither the SAR itself nor the SAR Instructions explain in detail what constitutes a legal basis on which to conclude that a customer’s activity is sufficiently “suspicious” to warrant filing a SAR, the sweep of the law is extremely broad.

Federal law requires, for example, that any transaction of $5,000 or more must be reported via a SAR whenever the bank employee concludes it “has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage .  .  .”

Let that last part about a transaction in which the customer would not “normally” engage sink in.

If an otherwise fully law-abiding bank customer goes to their bank where they have maintained an account for years or even decades, and makes a deposit of more than $5,000 while their normal deposit might be for, say, $1,500, the bank will secretly file a SAR with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”).

All that is required to trigger such a filing is a transaction that does not fit the normal pattern of transactions for the particular customer. Regardless of whether such a report was filed because the bank management instructed the employee to do so, or because the employee decided for themself “on a voluntary basis” to send it in, neither the employee nor the bank can ever be sued by the customer or otherwise held liable for any SAR filings. They have complete immunity from being held accountable.

What the FinCEN does with the millions of SARs it receives and databases is, of course, up to the Treasury Department of which FinCEN is a part, but unless a customer is later charged with a crime, or, as in the most recent matter of the House Oversight Committee making SARs on the Biden family public, customers will never know their transactions are on file as being “suspicious.”

While some of the over-arching purposes of SARs – to identify drug cartel money laundering or financing of terrorist activities – are laudable and appropriate, the extremely broad sweep of the power the underlying legislation gives the federal government (including the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act and the 2001 USAPATRIOT Act) is far broader than needed to accomplish those purposes, and raises fundamental Fourth Amendment concerns.

Moreover, SARs can be used to assist the government investigating virtually any law enforcement policy priority, including gun control. As reported in November 2022, for example, SARs are under consideration as a vehicle to aid in pre-identifying “mass shooters.”

There was a time long, long ago, when conservative and liberal members of Congress on both sides of the aisle would join forces to rein in such broad, unnecessary, and privacy-invasive federal law enforcement powers as reflected in SARs. Unfortunately, that constitutional concern has almost totally disappeared – swept under by partisanship and fear of being labeled “soft on crime.”

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

“Gaslight” — psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator –Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Neither history nor common sense mean anything to those demanding “racial reparations.”  

Slavery in America was definitively outlawed upon ratification of the 13^th Amendment to our Constitution in 1865. The right to vote was secured against racial discrimination by way of the 15^th Amendment just five years later. Federal legislation, including the 1871 criminal deprivation of civil rights law, the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and many other statutes, provide robust legal vehicles by which to ensure the principles embodied in the Constitution had real meaning, and were enforceable in courts of law.  

Judging by the way the “racial reparations” movement is gaining steam in California, none of these several constitutional and statutory mechanisms ever really existed. Reparations proponents are attempting to gaslight the American people into believing our country sleepwalked through those eras and never addressed the evils of slavery or racial discrimination.  

That this reparations movement is gaining notoriety mostly in California, which still ironically claims the moniker of “the Golden State,” should not surprise us. One of the state’s former chief executive, Jerry Brown, was known as “Governor Moonbeam” for his eccentricities and “hippy” image during his first two terms, from 1975 to 1983.  

However, the fact that the state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom (who sees a future U.S. president in his mirror each day as he shaves), has elevated such a scam to an official policy level, truly is a wonder to behold.  

In much the same way that “junk science” has provided the justification for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to ban the use of natural gas in new construction, “junk history” is at the center of the racial reparations movement. And, as the July 1^st deadline for the Newsom-created “California Reparations Task Force” to issue its final report approaches, the rhetoric becomes ever more inflammatory and unhinged.  

For example, at a recent public forum where Californians could comment on the proposed handouts, a “Reverend Tony Pierce” boisterously demanded that the only fair dollar figure to be apportioned to him and his fellow Black citizens, was $200 million apiece. The response to such inanity by the Task Force spokesperson was a meek, “Thank you, Reverend.”  

That episode encapsulates the junk history on which reparations advocates appear to justify their case – that the anecdotal “40 acres and a mule” of 1865 is today worth a cool $200 million.   It is doubtful Rev. Pierce or many of the others clamoring for massive monetary reparations for past – and, in fact, continuing — wrongs understand or much care about the actual historic context or meaning of the “40 acres and a mule” narrative.  

The idea of taking 400,000 acres of coastal land seized by Union forces and apportioning it to a limited number of freed slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, was in fact incorporated in a January 1865 “Field Order” signed by Gen. William T. Sherman.  

Sherman’s Field Order, signed while he was headquartered in Savannah, Georgia, after completing his “March to the Sea,” was never intended to have any effect beyond the coastal area his forces then occupied (much less thousands of miles away in California), and its terms were never enshrined in law (it was in fact revoked by President Andrew Johnson the same year it was issued).   Such factual historic details, however, have no place in the increasingly bellicose rhetoric surrounding the call for reparations to atone for all manner of economic, medical, educational, property, law enforcement, and other wrongs on the long list of factors to which reparations proponents have assigned arbitrary – but extremely large – dollar amounts.  

Notwithstanding Newsom’s recent vacillating about the massive monetary payments recommended by the Task Force he established, the political storm he launched is not likely to subside anytime soon. In fact, a former chairwoman of the “mostly peaceful” Black Panther Party already has called on reparations supporters to start protesting. Buckle your seatbelts.  

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 1989, the mega-band Queen sang, “I want it all, and I want it now” – a refrain that perfectly captures the latest budget request sent to the Congress by Lina Khan, President Biden’s top regulator at the  Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The request, sent just last month, seeks a whopping 37% budget increase for the coming 2024 fiscal year.

The $160 million increase over last year’s budget is undeserved and unjustified, and should be swiftly deep-sixed by Congress.

The FTC Chair, long a critic of big businesses, disingenuously recited in her budget request cover letter that the additional taxpayer money was needed so the regulatory agency could “continue to meet the ongoing challenges of its mission to protect consumers and promote competition.” In fact, the FTC under Biden has been moving in the exact opposite direction.

This was made clear recently when the Commission’s leadership moved away from four decades of operating by legal consensus and rescinded an existing, fundamental policy statement that had affirmed the “consumer welfare standard” as the litmus test for whether federal action against companies is or is not warranted.

As noted recently by former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, the consumer welfare standard has been the “guiding principle” of federal antitrust policy for more than 40 years, reflecting the view that the government should intervene in the marketplace only if the consumer is being harmed.

The American people got a firsthand look into the FTC’s new operational standards recently, when the commission appeared to target Elon Musk for disclosing how Twitter’s former leadership colluded with Uncle Sam to restrict and censor Americans’ speech. The Commission issued Musk a subpoena to divulge his communications with journalists that provided evidence of Twitter’s past censorship partnership with the government — a move that the new, Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee accurately viewed as politically motivated.

With the consumer welfare standard now discarded by regulatory fiat, private businesses seeking to lower prices and increase competition through pro-consumer mergers and acquisitions likely will find themselves similarly targeted by the regulatory bullies at the FTC.

The Commission’s recent blocking of the planned merger between Microsoft and game developer Activision, which Japan, Brazil, Serbia, Chile, and other involved jurisdictions already had approved, shows clearly that this new partisan regulatory mission already is accelerating.

Although details of this case suggests this proposed merger will increase consumer choice and improve users’ experiences by reducing Sony PlayStation’s monopolistic marketplace position, such factual data is no longer sufficient for the current FTC, which seems intent on breaking up private companies for purely ideological reasons.

The Committee for Justice went so far as to write, “this case demonstrates how the FTC has strayed far from its consumer protection mission, opting to use antitrust enforcement as a vehicle for micromanaging the economy” instead. Indeed. Given this troubling reality, why would Congress, especially the House under GOP majority control, even consider granting this FTC an additional  $160 million?

The FTC’s staff appears to have concerns with the Commission’s current, standard-less and anti-consumer operating policy, with top-level officials leaving the agency at a record pace.

Former FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson resigned in February because, “[u]nder President Biden, FTC leadership has abused the merger review process to impose a tax on all mergers, not only those that hinder competition.” Wilson is far from alone. Recent reports show that over five dozen senior staff attorneys left the commission between 2021 and 2022, making it the most significant staff exodus in over two decades.

Congress most definitely should not increase the FTC’s funding. In fact, its budget should be reduced until the Administration commits to refocus its regulatory powers back to where they should be and have been — protecting consumers’ interests.

Inflation is already causing consumers to pay record prices on everything from eggs to fuel oil. The last thing American consumers need is for Congress to give the White House $160 million more to, among other moves, hire 100 new staffers in the FTC’s misnamed “Bureau of Competition.” This will only further undercut the free marketplace and weaken private businesses even more — a situation in no one’s interest, especially considering the systemic weaknesses in our current economy.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he served as a Member of the Judiciary Committee and chaired the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. Barr also 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.