Liberty Updates

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

As recounted by Lewis Carroll in his timeless parody “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Alice discovers her surroundings to be “curiouser and curiouser.” In many ways, the fictitious world conjured by Carroll more than a century and a half ago aptly describes the state of affairs in our nation’s capital after only the first weeks of the Biden Administration.

The speed with which the new administration and its Democrat cohorts in both houses of the Congress are undermining substantive historic and common-sense norms of behavior and law, is deeply disturbing.

For nearly two months now, since the violence on Capitol Hill in early January, Washington, D.C., has been turned into an armed compound. Thousands of armed military personnel patrol its streets, and miles of razor wire and metal fencing encircle the Capitol building itself and several blocks in every direction. This militarization of the Capitol, clearly with the approval of the president himself, is not only unprecedented but pointless from a substantive security standpoint, insofar as no threat as might come close to warrant such massive response has been cited and no evidence in support thereof has been produced.

But what has been happening inside that secured perimeter is stranger still.

Just last week, for example, Merrick Garland, nominated by Biden to serve as the next attorney general of the United States, stated with quite a straight face that he simply was unable to decide whether the act of entering our country illegally should remain an unlawful act. Other matters clearly appropriate on which a nominee for this high office would have views, confounded him as well.

At the very same confirmation hearing at which he could not state with certainty whether an illegal act should remain an illegal act, Garland declared that during his past 24 years as a federal judge leading to his being on the threshold of becoming our country’s 86th attorney general, he had never given sufficient thought to whether federal law would protect biological female athletes against unfair competition by male athletes who declare themselves to be “female.” Hmmmm.

Members of Congress seem to share the attorney general nominee’s unfamiliarity with or disdain for fundamental principles of fairness and the plain language in the Constitution. For example, last week two Democrat House members, both from California, sent letters to all major cable, satellite and streaming video providers demanding to know why those providers were continuing to carry conservative-oriented news outlets. The principle that the First Amendment to the Constitution protects recipients of those demand letters against just such congressional interference, obviously was alien to at least this pair of lawmakers.

Earlier last month, Democrats in both Houses of Congress introduced legislation to give $300 million of taxpayer dollars to a federal agency that was established three-quarters of a century ago to combat malaria in the southern part of our country – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These most recent funds, however, would be directed to CDC not for combatting malaria, or any disease for that matter, but to study and implement gun control. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

Of course, any meaningful correlation between a federal bureaucracy’s mission and congressional appropriations hardly remains anywhere in the federal government. The nearly two trillion dollar “COVID Relief” bill passed last week by the House confirms this reality with an exclamation mark. Most of the massive spending in the pandemic “relief” legislation is directed to programs and priorities that have no relationship at all with fighting the pandemic that continues to infect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

However, in what has to be the clearest evidence Democrats in Congress have lost whatever touch they might previously have had with an understanding of and respect for historical constitutional and legal norms, on Feb. 22 (three days before Biden sent cruise missiles blasting into Syria), more than 30 House members publicly recommended that the decision whether the United States should respond in the future to a nuclear attack in kind no longer should be made by the president as commander-in-chief, but rather by a committee! On that score, even Alice likely would be perplexed; our adversaries in the real world certainly would be.

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

Last week, members of California’s Oakley Union Elementary School Board were caught in a “hot mic” moment. In a video conference these board members mistakenly thought included only themselves, they mocked and disparaged parents who wanted to see their students finally return to the classroom. It could not have been a more perfect summation of how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed America’s public education system, or “Big Ed,” as the tone-deaf Ivory Tower it truly is.

In fact, “tone-deaf” is the most forgiving way to phrase their conduct over the last year. It would more accurately be described as cowardly, heartless, and derelict; in a word, craven. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the National Education Association, Big Ed’s largest union, seized on COVID as an opportunity to turn in-classroom learning into a partisan wedge issue, which they believed could help put more Democrats into office. Even when data and research began rolling in, suggesting that schools were both scientifically safe for in-classroom learning, and that students – especially poor and minority students – were severely harmed emotionally and academically by the farce of “remote” schooling, the NEA and its membership maintained the charade of refusing to return to work for “safety’s sake.”

This is not to say that school boards, highly paid district officials, and “concerned” teachers were not hard at work during the pandemic. They just had more important matters than spending their precious time getting kids back in the classroom; important matters, like removing names of former American presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington from school buildings.

COVID quite clearly has demonstrated that the welfare of school children and the quality of their education, is not a top priority for Big Ed. Those in charge would rather mock parents and students concerned for their children’s educational futures, than admit they made a mistake with COVID and get to work repairing the damage. Tragically, however, these teachers are able to get away with behaving so disgracefully because their political power insulates them from accountability. Politics, money, and power are the motivating factors for what public education has become under the watch of Democrats.

It is time for that to change.

For those teachers truly called to the profession for the purpose of education – not activism – it is time to “burn their NEA cards” and stop funding what is now less a union than a Democrat super PAC. Instead, these teachers should look for alternative means of professional development, support, and legal assistance, such as the Association of American Educators or other professional organizations not affiliated with the NEA.

For parents, especially conservative parents, it is time to regain control of districts currently in the hands of out-of-touch charlatans who vilify anyone daring to question the Big Ed orthodoxy, by running for local school board seats. This will necessarily include quickly nipping in the bud cockamamie “social justice” programs masked as educational curriculum, as well as ridding bloated district offices of the overpaid salaries of those responsible for coming up with such schemes.

Finally, citizens must use their votes to hold Democrats and Republicans alike accountable for what is being done to the public education system on the taxpayer’s dime. The COVID-era travesties within public education did not occur just inside heavily Democrat districts, but in so-called “red” ones as well. While districts in far-Left cities like New York City, Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco face both momentous political and cultural challenges, the monopoly Big Ed has created within the education system will need to be broken up from Miami to Seattle, and everywhere in between. Private schools (and needs-based voucher programs), charter schools, and home-schooling alternatives are essential to ensuring a quality education is able to survive the political gamesmanship of public ed officials when the next “crisis” occurs.

To be sure, few jobs are as noble and require as much sacrifice as teaching, particularly in public schooling. However, as parents and taxpayers, we must not let the carefully crafted “martyrdom mystique” of teaching distract from holding these individuals accountable if they take advantage of our appreciation by holding hostage the education of our children, especially when their ransom demand is more partisan power. We have a duty to demand accountability from them, and in failing to get it, a duty then to clean house.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Governments hate Bitcoin. In fact, several countries, including China with the world’s second largest economy, prohibit its use for transactions in their country or banking systems. While the U.S. government has not joined the ranks of nations banning Bitcoin, it has made clear in recent years that it does not like the so-called “cryptocurrency.”

Why is Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency or “convertible virtual currency” (CVC), so disliked by the government? Uncle Sam and his counterparts in many other countries dislike such digital currency for the simple reason it is virtually impossible to control; and if there is one thing any government loves above all else, it is control.

In a move designed to gain at least some measure of control over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the Treasury Department is proposing a federal regulation that would require banks and other “money service businesses” (MSBs) to file reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or “FinCEN,” whenever they engage in a cryptocurrency transaction above $3,000. MSBs include not only traditional banks and credit unions, but also casinos, stock brokerages, mortgage companies and insurance companies, among other businesses.

Requiring financial institutions to file reports with FinCEN is nothing new. Such businesses for decades have been required to file what are known as “Suspicious Activity Reports” or “SARs” whenever a customer engages in a transaction that appears to be, you guessed it, “suspicious.”

The extremely broad and vague nature of what might constitute a “suspicious transaction” by a banking customer, for example, and the fact that MSBs are prohibited by law from telling their customers that their transactions have been flagged and reported to the federal government, makes the use of SARs particularly problematic; notwithstanding the tool has proved useful in uncovering several serious criminal endeavors over the years.

If the rule proposed last December by Treasury and which currently is open for public comment takes effect, individual users of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies would lose the benefit of one reason why many people like such currency in the first place — its anonymity. If the Feds have their way, financial institutions that allow transactions in CVCs would henceforth be required to report all such transactions over $3,000 to the government; in addition to verifying the identity of customers using such currency, something they do not now have to do.

Since Bitcoin first appeared more than 12 years ago, many officials in Washington have sought to control it and other cryptocurrencies. For example, Sen. Chuck Schumer, now serving as the Senate Majority Leader, in the past has tried to “shut down” the digital currency. However, the elusive nature of cryptocurrency – is it really a “currency,” or is it more of a “commodity,” or even “property” – has foiled previous efforts to subject it to government control.

This latest gambit by FinCEN, requiring cryptocurrency financial institutions to gather and report to Washington on transactions involving the digital currency, may be the crack in the door long sought by federal regulators.

Despite concerns with the proposed FinCEN regulation, many cryptocurrency experts are cautiously optimistic that President Joe Biden’s financial team appears more favorably disposed toward cryptocurrencies than his predecessor Donald Trump, who declared himself “not a fan” of digital currency.

Still, while some in the cryptocurrency arena may favor moves by the new administration that could bring regulatory “clarity” to the sector, they would be well advised to remember that opening the door ever so slightly for government regulators, in virtually every instance results in less freedom and always a loss of privacy.

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.

FullMAGnews

by Bob Barr

In my column last week, I argued the needs-based defense of the Second Amendment by conservatives had failed to adequately repel attacks on gun rights through the years; a situation that looks only to deteriorate with both Congress and the White House controlled by Democrats. And, with the news last week that President Joe Biden was ready to move on sweeping gun control proposals, conservatives have no time to waste in adjusting tactics.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Next month will mark effectively one-year suffering under the COVID-19 virus. Here is the good, bad, and ugly about what we have learned about ourselves, and our country, when the chips are down.

The Good: Free Markets. With the exception of the genuinely unforeseeable panic-buying of paper supplies and disinfectants during COVID’s initial days, the free market did an outstanding job rising to meet spikes in demand. A flurry of new products hit the market, helping to fix product shortages of crucial items. Even breweries and distilleries, crippled by government-mandated closures, stepped up to make hand sanitizer at a time when supplies were strained. Most astoundingly, thanks to advancements in internet broadband technology (the result of keeping government out of the way by Republicans fighting odious regulatory measures like “Net Neutrality”), tens of millions of Americans were able to instantly pivot to “remote” work, saving the economy from certain collapse as government attempted to shut down virtually all in-person business.

However, the crowning achieve of the private sector during COVID was its development of COVID vaccines at historic speed, thanks to both technological developments and a demand by the Trump Administration that bureaucrats step out of the way as much as possible. Additionally, the private sector is developing not just vaccines at record speeds, but advanced treatment methods like synthetic monoclonal antibodies as well, which will potentially address new COVID variants far quicker than developing new vaccines – saving countless lives over the years.

None of these things would have been possible even a few years ago but are today only through private sector innovation and a push to rollback regulatory red tape.

The Bad: Bureaucratic Incompetence. There is perhaps no greater example of bureaucratic incompetence than the egregiously mismanaged distribution of lifesaving COVID vaccines. One would think that with nearly a year to prepare, health officials from local, state, and federal levels would have coordinated to make distribution quick and seamless. This could not be further from the truth. To be sure, health officials had their hands full with COVID in its initial phases, but their continued strategic and tactical decisions have been nothing short of disastrous – conjuring inexplicable and arbitrary guidelines about which businesses could stay open and which forced to close, lurching from “masks don’t work” to “double mask,” and generally shaming anyone who dared to question the human and economic damage behind “following the science.” However, one would think that the end game – vaccines – would have been given every resource needed to ensure smooth distribution. Instead, navigating the process for getting a vaccine appointment is like wandering blindfolded through a maze, and finding an open slot is more akin to playing the lottery than what is to be expected in a matter of life-and-death. Ironically, the vaccine process appears to be worst among states where government officials were most sanctimonious in their finger-wagging at citizens during COVID’s peak, like New York.

The Good: Return of Self-Reliance. The threats of COVID to disrupt both food supplies, as well as strain medical services to their limits placed a renewed focus on the importance of self-reliance. This was especially true as in the midst of the COVID pandemic, America also suffered through a frightening period of social unrest, where in many large cities citizens were left to fend for themselves as police resources were stretched impossibly thin, sometimes by government officials purposefully. While all of these critical systems bent to nearly their breaking points, we were lucky that they did not fully break. Nevertheless, there may come a time when we are not so lucky, but at least now citizens are more prepared for this contingency.

The Ugly: Disastrous Political Manipulation. From using the education of our children as a political weapon, to hiding the deaths of elderly citizens in New York nursing homes, COVID has brought out the very worst in Leftist political opportunism; and the consequences of this gamesmanship have been catastrophic for the most vulnerable among us. The Nation Education Association flexed its muscles ahead of the 2020 elections by intentionally making in-person schooling a partisan football. According to widely accepted medical and scientific data, in-person schooling was safe, even as other research revealed that students suffered greatly both academically and emotionally by being forced into “remote” schooling. Still, the NEA and its teacher members continue to refuse to go back to work. Given the monopoly Big Ed. has on the education of our children, keeping private alternatives away as a matter of law, their political manipulation of the education system is unconscionable.

One of the key questions moving forward, is whether these lessons will be not only learned but remembered and institutionalized. It also means holding those who deliberately failed in their duties, like New York Gov. Cuomo, accountable — a task likely to be far more difficult than developing a vaccine.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Although our Founders correctly recognized that the overriding responsibility of the president is to secure our liberties by “protect[ing] and defend[ing] the Constitution,” in this modern era most Americans likely would consider that the most important job of the president is to serve as “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces, and thereby protect the nation’s security. If so, the new Biden administration is establishing a rather odd vision for how the Department of Defense will meet its responsibilities in this regard.

The national defense priorities of this administration, as revealed in public documents issued already by the president and his chosen Secretary of Defense, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, reflect a sharp departure from his recent predecessors and from historic norms.

In one of his first executive orders, Biden chose to exercise his power as commander-in-chief not to affirm or reaffirm the need for a strong military defense against our nation’s adversaries or to announce an important national security initiative as a way to send a message to a particular adversary. No, the most important national security issue on the mind of the new president, insofar as official public pronouncements reveal, is protection of transgenderism in the military. This was affirmed in presidential Executive Order No.14004 signed just five days after he assumed office.

At the Pentagon, the first publicly revealed priorities regarding the operation of the world’s most powerful military under the Biden Administration were similarly unusual.

On Jan. 29, four days after Biden’s transgender executive order, Secretary Austin followed with a military-wide order that all restrictions on transgenderism would be lifted, at least pending a thorough review of this issue which he and his boss obviously consider crucial to America’s national security. The secretary’s memo reflected the view that such a move was an essential step to reverse limitations placed on transgender personnel by the previous administration. Public analysis of and reporting on the Secretary’s memo affirmed such partisan purposes.

The following week, Austin continued his focus on domestic policy matters, issuing another services-wide memorandum ordering a “stand-down” across all branches of the armed forces in order to address “extremism” in the ranks.

While links within military ranks to white supremacy groups is a valid concern and should be addressed, it remains unclear whether the stand-down order will extend more comprehensively to encompass ties by military personnel to non-traditional groups such as Black Lives Matter, with its clear socialist agenda and Marxist underpinnings and its involvement with last year’s riots in cities across the country.

The announcement of the highly unusual step of ordering such a broad “stand-down” reflected obvious and appropriate concerns over involvement in the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol by current military personnel and veterans, but raises fundamental questions about Defense Department priorities. Most notably, there is the obvious question of whether these domestic-oriented policy priorities by both the president and the defense secretary, come at the expense of focusing on the numerous and serious external threats facing our country.

Neither Biden nor Austin have issued major public policy statements relating to how they intend to deal with China, which in recent years has been identified consistently by national security and intelligence experts as the Number One security threat to the United States. China’s continuing, if not accelerating, bellicosity toward our ally Taiwan, would seem to merit at least some priority attention ahead of transgenderism and what Austin himself has indicated is a “small” number of examples of domestic extremism in the military.

The list of continuing external national security threats, whether from China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, terrorist organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere, is exceptionally long as adversaries probe U.S. strengths and weaknesses for advantage. The fact that the Biden administration appears fixated at least publicly on domestic military concerns, could very well embolden foreign troublemakers with potentially serious consequences.

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.

FullMAGnews

by Bob Barr

As I wrote last week, the Biden administration is just getting warmed up when it comes to attacks on the Second Amendment. In fact, Biden will test the Second Amendment like never before in U.S. history; both in the ferocity of attacks, and in finding new ways and methods to undermine its place in American culture. Making matters worse, conservatives are woefully underprepared to properly defend it.

This is the central thesis of my report on firearms published this month at The Heritage Foundation. In it, I assert the current “needs-based” defense of the Second Amendment not only is inadequate to withstand today’s onslaught by Democrats but also fundamentally misinterprets the spirit of the Amendment. Instead, conservatives must learn to defend the Second Amendment as their natural right; one that is far beyond the reach of gun-grabbers at all levels of government.

Consider what is the most common response from liberals when arguing whether a particular firearm or accessory is covered by the Second Amendment’s guarantee. It is almost always some version of, “nobody needs that;” as if there is some unwritten, but obvious list indicating which specific items are protected by the Amendment and which are not.

The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban was based on the argument that citizens did not “need” modern sporting rifles; a sentiment that persists to this day, long after the legislation expired a decade later. Bans on high-capacity magazines and certain types of ammunition, monthly limits on purchases of firearms, and similar legislative efforts are all premised on the same justification of a perceived lack of “need” by law-abiding citizens.

Kevin Drum, a contributor to Mother Jones, encapsulated the extremes to which this mentality is applied when responding to calls to ban all semiautomatic weapons – leaving just revolvers, pump-action shotguns, and bolt- or lever-action rifles available to citizens – by saying, “that’s plenty for self-defense and for hunting…no one outside of the military or law enforcement really needs the high-speed shooting of a semiautomatic” (emphasis added). There is no limit to how, why, and when liberals use this “need” standard, and conservatives attempting to defend on the liberals’ playing field only play into their hands.

Take, for example, when in 2019 a Twitter user responded to singer Jason Isbell’s ignorant comments about the “need” for “assault weapons,” with a question about how otherwise he was to “kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into [his] yard within 3-5 mins while [his] small kids play?” To Midwesterners or Southerners for whom this is a very real problem, it was a legitimate question; but to progressives who just saw it as “gun nut” craziness, it quickly became pop culture fodder to mock and ridicule. This is precisely how liberals have constantly won through the years, by nibbling away at what people “need” or don’t “need.”

It is not only what Democrats have taken away using a needs-based argument against the Second Amendment, but also how they use it to manipulate Republicans. For instance, in spite of the objective health and safety benefits of firearm suppressors, Republicans for years have failed to pass the Hearing Protection Act – even when they had majorities in Congress and controlled the White House – because they did not know how to counter Democrats’ claims that citizens do not really “need” such devices.

Then there was the “bump stock” controversy following the 2017 mass shooting at an outdoor concert on the Las Vegas Strip. Because such a device was used by the assailant during his rampage, President Donald Trump directed that the Department of Justice ban them by regulatory fiat (which it did), because such devices were deemed not “needed.”

Clearly, defending against this “needs-based” gun control strategy is not working for defenders of the Second Amendment, and it will continue to fail with disastrous consequences as gun control advocates up their game with the anti-Second Amendment Biden now in the White House – such as going after pistol braces. It is time for a change in strategy, and next week I will outline why a natural rights defense of gun rights is the approach conservatives should adopt if they want to preserve gun rights in America.

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

More consequential than 10 Republican House members voting last month to impeach former President Trump, was this month’s vote by 11 GOP members to strip their colleague, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of her committee assignments. The freshman member had been targeted by Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority because she had – before her election last November – engaged in social media communications that ran afoul of today’s political orthodoxy. The fact that 11 GOP members voted with the Democrats and against a Republican, reveals serious leadership, unity, and discipline problems within GOP ranks.

But first, to the impeachment vote. Many Republicans understandably were upset that 10 GOP House members broke ranks and voted to impeach Trump during his final days in office. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was singled out for especially harsh rebuke because she occupies one of the top leadership positions in her Party’s caucus.

If one considers what happened on January 6^th not objectively, but in the light most adverse to the former President, one could construct an argument that something he said or did provoked the violence that occurred on Capitol Hill that day. It boils down to questions of opinion, bias, and perspective. As is their prerogative, 10 Republicans decided to adopt this view and vote for impeachment, a decision for which they will have to answer to their constituents.

On the other hand, the highly unusual vote by the full House on February 4^th stripping Ms. Greene of her new committee assignments, had nothing to do with evidence, ethics, competence, or legalities. The vote was simply a move by the Democrat majority to punish a new GOP member. There was no evidence or even an allegation that she had done anything unethical or unlawful; simply that in the past she had crossed the line from political correctness to communications deemed verboten by the new cancel culture, including “retweets” of other people’s messaging about controversial and later debunked theories.

If in fact there was punishment to be meted out as a result of Greene’s earlier social messaging, such action would fall to the leadership of her party, the House Republican leadership. And if her party deemed her transgressions to be sufficiently egregious to take the highly unusual (but not unprecedented) step of removing her from her committee assignments, it would be her party’s members who would vote to do so. However, after meeting with the House Republican leadership, no reason was found to merit such drastic measures.

That should have been the end of the matter.

Congressional Democrats, constantly on the prowl for pounds of flesh to extract from anyone holding views similar to or in support of Trump, decided they would do what Greene’s own party did not, and she was removed from her assigned committee by majority vote of the full House. No Republican should have voted for that resolution; crossing over to vote with Pelosi strengthened the Democrats’ hand even as it weakened the GOP’s.

There are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and each one belongs to either the Republican or Democrat Party. Each House member was elected with the support and benefit of the party they chose, and each one owes that party their support if and when it is challenged by the opposing party.

This does not mean that a member owes the party their vote if doing so runs contrary to their conscience or the best interests of their constituents. But for Republican House members, this does mean they support their party when it is being attacked by the Democrats who, in this instance, are overstepping the bounds of intra-party administration and responsibility.

The 11 Republicans who sided with Pelosi and against their own party in punishing Rep. Greene should have been taken behind the woodshed by the GOP leadership and reminded in no uncertain terms that loyalty matters and that it cuts both ways. The fact that this apparently did not happen strongly suggests a serious lack of leadership and discipline within the Republican Party. It portends more problems for Republicans in the months to come, as Democrats look for ways to widen these fissures in the GOP ranks.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

America’s true “Greatest Generation” won our nation’s independence only after a costly and bloody war against Great Britain. It took eight years and many thousands of lives, but when the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, the United States was a nation no longer subject to the arbitrary and absolute royal decrees issued by King George III. Now, 238 years later, we are reverting to a nation governed by the modern version of royal decrees – executive orders.

The painstakingly crafted Constitution that formalized our representative democracy in 1788 has continued a tripartite government of checks and balances essential to prevent any one branch from exercising unbridled power. Despite this system having withstood all manner of challenges, there now is a very real danger that the unprecedented use of executive orders by President Joe Biden to bypass the legislative branch will seriously, if not irreparably, damage our constitutional framework.

George Washington, our first and in many respects our best president, truly understood the system he helped create, and was genuinely loath to overstep those constitutional checks and balances. For example, during his two terms in office, Washington issued only eight executive orders. This is an astoundingly small number, considering that his near God-like popularity and the lack of any limiting precedents gave him the practical power to have used the executive order extensively to rule as he might have wished.

To one degree or another, most presidents since then have followed this tradition, using the executive order and other unilateral presidential missives for the limited purposes for which they have been recognized; that is, as a tool to administer the executive branch of government, and not to implement policies or to circumvent the will of the Congress.

In fact, during America’s first 48 years, presidents issued only 30 executive orders – a number America’s current president, Joe Biden, is on pace to exceed during his first month in office. Problematically, many of Biden’s decrees, such as that stopping the multi-billion-dollar Keystone XL Pipeline, have nothing to do with the administrative running of federal agencies, and everything to do with far-reaching public policy preferences.

It would be unfair to blame only Biden for the state of abusive presidential power in which we find ourselves. The problem is multi-faceted and has been building for many years. It is fair, however, to sound the constitutional alarm right now, and to shine the spotlight on him as our country, or more precisely, our Constitution faces the perfect storm of a president more than eager to expand the power of the office he only recently inherited, aided by majorities of his political party in both houses of Congress.

Biden is enabled further in this drive to place his “stamp” on federal policies, by a public largely ignorant of and uncaring about the history of or reasoning behind the limitations on executive power placed there by our Founders.

The significant growth of presidential power in recent years has met little pushback from the other “co-equal” branches of government, other than loud cries of political “foul” issued by members of the political party not able to sign executive decrees. Even in the very rare instances in which the Congress actually pushed back against a president’s executive actions, as when it passed the War Powers Act in 1973, its knees wobbled and it wrote into the law enough leeway for presidents easily to sidestep its requirements.

Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, also have shown little appetite to rein in executive branch overreaches. In fact, of the more than 14,000 executive orders issued by all presidents from Washington to Biden, only two were found to have overstepped constitutional boundaries (one by President Truman, the other by President Clinton).

Recent presidents eager to exercise expanded power have been aided greatly in this mission by the rise of hyper partisanship and congressional gridlock. This has created numerous opportunities for partisan lawmakers to look to the White House to advance policy agendas they have been unable or unwilling to accomplish themselves.

Ultimately, however, such changes so cavalierly made by the “stroke of the Biden pen” are a great disservice (and danger) to the “strokes” of the pens our Founders’ used in crafting the system of limited and defined powers accorded the federal government 238 years ago.

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.

FullMAGnews

by Bob Barr

What the Biden Administration has planned for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is anyone’s guess, other than the certainty the agency’s regulatory power will continue to be used to go after legally owned firearms and ammunition.

In fact, ATF already is on the move. An official request for public comment by ATF just last December provides a road sign as to where the regulatory agency is likely to start now that it is under the command of a gun-control president. Even though pressure from House Republicans forced the ATF to withdraw its public notice at the time, it very clearly outlines the agency’s intent to reexamine the legal status of pistols that use “stabilizing braces.”

Stabilizing braces are a common feature for increasingly popular AR-style pistols that were approved by ATF nearly a decade ago. Manufacturers of the pistol accessory declared to ATF in 2012 that such devices served to facilitate one-handed shooting of pistols — an important feature for individuals unable to do so because of disabilities or other physically limiting factors.

However, in what has become a preferred modus operandi for the agency’s decision-making, it has changed its mind, claiming that the popularity of AR and AK-type pistols featuring these braces suggests the accessory no longer is being used in the “spirit” for which its original approval was sought.

If, as expected, the ATF returns to the issue now that Joe Biden occupies the White House, individuals who currently own the estimated three to four million of these pistols already deemed “lawful” by the government, would be forced to register the firearms as “short-barrel rifles” subject to registry and taxation under the National Firearms Act.

As with other regulatory about-faces by the ATF in recent years, there is no “public safety” basis for this move. Whether the handgun brace fits within the “spirit” of the original approval is irrelevant to the larger issue of whether such pistols present an identifiable and significant public safety risk – factors which could offer at least a colorable basis for the ATF decision. No such data exists, of course, other than a single incident in which an AR-style pistol was used in the 2019 mass shooting outside a Dayton, Ohio bar; hardly a scientific basis for declaring a lawful device to be a public menace.

The ATF claims it would review firearm samples on a case-by-case basis, and consider factors such as caliber, length, weight, and whether the firearms use other accessories that suggest it is to be fired from the shoulder rather than anchored to an arm when determining whether reclassification is warranted. Still, the ATF offers no further commentary on why all of a sudden it wants to reexamine pistol braces, other than it apparently feels such accessories may be skirting NFA regulations on short-barrel rifles.

Questioning whether feelings provide a proper basis on which to limit the exercise of an individual’s Second Amendment rights, is something all Americans who care about the Bill of Rights should be doing. Unfortunately, even Republican administrations have failed to do so, and in so doing have set precedents for what this Democrat administration is contemplating.

For example, the ATF, at the urging of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his immediate successor, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, employed a similar lack of factual basis or common sense when it changed its mind and made bump stocks unlawful in 2019.

From a practical perspective, long-barreled pistols are more difficult to carry inconspicuously, and they lack the effective range of standard-length barreled rifles. Additionally, there is no functional difference between these firearms and any other firearm capable of accepting detachable magazines, such as would make them any more appealing for criminal activity.

In fact, what makes these types of guns less appealing to would-be criminals makes them more appealing for concerned homeowners looking for a firearm more stable than a traditional pistol, but more agile in hallways and furnished interiors than a standard rifle or shotgun. It is these law-abiding citizens, not criminals, who would be punished if ATF proceeds with its wrongheaded plans.

In the past, neither reason nor logic has provided consistent bases for many of ATF’s regulatory edicts, and considering the deep anti-Second Amendment bias of both President Biden and Vice President Harris, this gun control gambit is certain to be one of the first of many regulatory attacks on lawful gun owners and manufacturers.

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.