Liberty Updates

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Once upon a time, stock trading served as a way for businesses to raise capital and for traders to make investments. If companies flourished, stocks rose and investors made money; if not, stocks fell and investors lost money. This was the way the stock market was intended to function. Over time, however, more and more rules and regulations were added, each to address something that at the time was thought necessary to prevent cheating and manipulation. Just like the proverbial “Road to Hell,” Wall Street became paved with regulatory good intentions.

Instead of eradicating cheating, manipulation, and fraud every new “rule” or “failsafe” implemented by Congress or government regulators simply created new ways for inside players to game the system. Thus, an event like the “GameStop” phenomenon last week — where the coordinated efforts of a social network group (Reddit’s “WallStreetBets”) drove up the price of GameStop’s stock, thereby costing short-sellers tens of billions of dollars — is both unsurprising and was entirely predictable. The only surprising element was that the new kids on the block (retail investors) quickly turned the tables on the supposed Grand Masters.

“Short selling” occurs when an investor borrows stock from a company and immediately sells it, hoping when it is time to buy stock in which to return to the company, the price has gone down resulting in profit for the investor. On the other side, a “short squeeze,” which is what the Reddit group of retail investors instigated last week, involves buying-up stock to drive the price higher, forcing short sellers to abandon their position before taking a potentially astronomical loss. Normally this too is done for profit, but it appears the folks behind WallStreetBets did it to “teach” Wall Street a lesson.

Neither short selling nor short squeezes are new to the market. According to Investopedia, regulators have allowed short sells in some fashion since 1937. What made the GameStop phenomenon unique is that it appears to be one of the first times a short squeeze has been used against short sellers for “activist” reasons. This is what has the Wall Street Establishment upset and looking to Uncle Sam for help against these new “barbarians at the gate.”

Rather than institutional investors taking their licks caused by the trading “commoners” who messed up their short selling game, Wall Street now hopes it can appeal to friends in the Biden Administration to “game the game” even further; once again stacking the deck in favor of connected institutions under the guise of keeping things “fair.” Making things fair, however, is the last thing that will happen whenever the Feds start tweaking the rules at the behest of large financial institutions.

Democrats may be quick to scapegoat the “rich” because it plays well to their base, but they are no different from any other crony capitalists; for example, when then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden used their clout to funnel more than a half-billion taxpayer dollars to the overtly shady “green” company, Solyndra (a scenario which may be set for a repeat when now-President Biden implements his “Green New Deal”).

Interestingly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed what so far has been the only reasonable government action in the GameStop saga, which is to ensure that Robinhood — the trading app used here by retail investors — did not act unlawfully or against its Terms of Service by suddenly placing limits on users trading stocks caught up in the short squeeze. Beyond that, however, only trouble looms for those looking for Washington to save their bacon, except, perhaps, for those with enough pull to grab a seat at the table when the new rules are crafted.

Ultimately, the GameStop drama is a metaphor for how far the stock market has strayed from its original purpose. While the government does have a legitimate responsibility to investigate and prosecute stock fraud, the role of the Securities and Exchange Commission is not to pat big investors on the back and help them out because they consider themselves, or are considered by the government to be, “too-big-to-lose.”

Whether hedge fund manager, day-trading hobbyist, or Internet activist, investing comes with inherent risks; risks that only increase when government starts meddling with the rules to make things more “fair.”

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

If there was any doubt that Jan. 20 signaled the rebirth of the nanny state, the slew of executive actions signed by President Joe Biden on his first days in the Oval Office confirmed that it has returned with a vengeance.

In addition to revealing his long love affair with regulatory power, Biden made clear that virtually any actions undertaken by his predecessor were ipso facto bad to the bone and must be revoked, rescinded and condemned.

Take, for example, Executive Order No. 13992, signed the afternoon of Jan. 20 and titled, “Executive Order on Revocation of Certain Executive Orders Concerning Federal Regulation.” The document is a paean to the regulatory behemoth that has grown to immense proportions in Washington, D.C., in recent decades.

E.O. 13992 does not even try to disguise its preference for “regulatory tools” to undo the “harmful policies and directives” of the previous quadrennium, especially former President Donald Trump’s failure to enact “racial justice” or address “climate change.” This particular executive order, the eighth in Biden’s opening salvo, criticizes by name a series of actions undertaken by Trump that tried in some manner to lessen the regulatory burdens on American businesses and the corresponding cost to taxpayers. Trump’s Jan. 30, 2017 order, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” for example, was rendered dead and buried by the stroke of Biden’s pen.

Another of Biden’s Inauguration Day presidential missives, E.O. 13990, has been widely cited for elevating to existential status the “Climate Crisis.” Its nine pages of climate change hyperbole, however, also contain statements reflecting and reinforcing the new president’s disdain for anything that might hint at regulatory “reform.” Every regulatory action that was taken by Trump from his first day in office (January 20, 2017) to his last (Noon on January 20, 2021) is deemed of questionable validity and declared subject to review by Biden administration agency heads for likely revocation.

According to E.O. 13990, one of the named “stakeholders” that will have seats at the Biden Climate Crisis Table are undefined “environmental justice organizations.” These groups will be joined in the Biden administration’s work to hold back the existential climate crisis, by a new “Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases;” another example of Biden’s well-known predisposition to embrace federal bureaucracies to solve society’s problems.

E.O. 13990 is the document that drove a stake through the heart of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was an important component of the Trump administration’s drive for U.S. energy independence – a goal now cavalierly discarded by the incoming administration. This particularly harmful executive order is buttressed by another of Biden’s sweeping executive actions – his Jan. 26 “Memorandum for the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development” (designated to be Democrat Rep. Marcia Fudge from Ohio).

This presidential memo declares that the enduring American “legacy” of “residential segregation and discrimination,” along with something Biden refers to as the “racial wealth gap,” must be addressed by HUD as a top priority. Interestingly, while Biden declares that the federal government “systemically supported” racially discriminatory housing and mortgage lending practices “throughout much of the 20^th century,” he pointedly fails to mention it was primarily administrations of his own Democrat Party that instituted those housing policies.

In addition to our country’s public housing programs and federally regulated mortgage system being declared by Biden as deeply and systemically racist, he similarly condemns “land-use patterns” and “housing markets” in cities across the country, and even the 47,000-mile-long system of Interstate Highways crisscrossing America. Presumably, Biden’s Transportation Secretary-designate, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, will be receiving a similar memo directing him to take action to address systemic racism undergirding the highway system soon to be under his direction.

These presidential action documents are but the first steps in what surely will be a four-year strategy to reinvigorate the Regulatory State that Trump had started to dismantle. The process will move into high gear as soon as the legislative and appropriations phases of Biden’s plan begin in earnest in the coming weeks, with his first budget proposal and as soon as his full team of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet picks assume their official duties as Nanny State conductors.

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

Second Amendment supporters should take no comfort in the fact that President Biden issued no executive orders restricting firearms or ammunition during his first week in the Oval Office. The new Commander in Chief remains a clear and present danger to our Second Amendment rights, and with Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, it is only a question of when and how boldly he will move his gun control agenda forward, not if he will do so. Even by most Democrat Party standards, many of the Biden campaign’s gun control proposals were extreme. The former vice president is too sly and too experienced from his long tenure in the Senate to believe he will succeed in quickly accomplishing every item on that wish list. But, by having set the bar so high with his campaign’s radical gun control agenda, now as President he can make his Administration appear magnanimous and willing to “compromise” with the GOP by adopting the agenda bit by bit (a façade that always appeals to “moderate” Republicans).

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “there may be method to his madness.”

The start of any real action on guns almost certainly will take place within the regulatory environment, which is where Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, found the most fertile soil for gun control. Here, the Biden Administration can work mostly in the shadows under the cloak of regulatory interpretation and rulemaking, largely hidden from the media and without attention-drawing hearings and floor votes. Rather than having to squabble with Republicans and moderate Democrats, like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Biden would be dealing with career bureaucrats who share his zest for regulatory control generally, and for gun control in particular. To them, sidestepping Congress and the Constitution is their natural way of doing business. The initial vehicle of choice for the Biden-Harris cabal likely will be the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), but they will not hesitate to use other bureaucracies as well, including Health and Human Services, IRS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Departments of State and Defense, and the host of other agencies that previous Democrat administrations brought to the gun control playing field. One proposal we may see sooner rather than later is a new ATF rule requiring owners of modern semi-automatic sporting rifles (as well as pistols like the AR-9, which the ATF is considering reclassifying as rifles) are registered with the ATF under the National Firearms Act. This is no small measure, as registering each such firearms would require a $200 tax stamp. The obvious financial burden this would create on citizens leaves some to speculate Biden may temporarily waive the tax, not because he is genuinely concerned about its impact on working class gun owners, but rather to show the public he remains the “nice guy” willing to meet Republicans part way. “But wait, there’s more,” as the late-night TV ads remind viewers. The Achilles heel of gun confiscation schemes has long been the lack of a national gun registry. This was the problem that manifested itself last year in New Zealand, where, as in the United States, the government had no clear idea how many guns, and what types of firearms it sought to confiscate, were actually owned by citizens. Their confiscation- masquerading-as-a-buy-back program depended largely on the willingness of citizens to voluntarily surrender their firearms. The proposal was pressed by a popular prime minister and was perfectly timed in the immediate and emotional aftermath of a horrific mass murder at a mosque. The media, to no one’s surprise, was openly supportive. Despite a history of hunting and firearms ownership by the civilian population, and even without any form of national gun registry to facilitate the confiscation program, the liberal government achieved a major victory.

The New Zealand experience has served as a reminder to gun control forces in our country that for gun confiscation to have any likelihood of success, there first needs to be some form of a gun registry. And while the chance for implementing a gun registry in the United States is not significant yet, the gun control “stars” are beginning to line up in a way as to make such a move once thought impossible, at least possible. Despite his advanced age, the new President’s four decades in the Senate in fact have made him a formidable adversary when it comes to government scheming. This ability will be especially problematic when it comes to gun control, an issue on which he will be able to count on innumerable allies embedded in bureaucracies from ATF to the CDC. These embedded allies include many who Trump simply failed to remove from positions of power during his four years at the federal helm. They have been chomping at the bit for four years waiting and hoping for a like-minded boss to give them the green light to use the full weight of the Regulatory State to begin to seriously limit Second Amendment rights.

There are GOP Senators and House Members ready, willing, and able to fight against this rising tide, and they will be able to count on a handful of Democrats, like Manchin, to stand with them. Their commitment and energies, however, will be put to the test by wily street fighters like Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois, and in the House by Reps. Jerry Nadler (also from New York) and South Carolina’s venerable James Clyburn, and other gun control advocates. These Democrats who now control the levers of power on Capitol Hill, never have concerned themselves with playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules preferred by so many of their GOP colleagues. This creates a scenario far more dangerous to our Second Amendment rights than at any time in decades.

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

Imagine how much more difficult it would have been for America’s Apollo moon landing program to have succeeded as it did so spectacularly in 1969 had NASA scientists been subject to being fired for failing to use the correct pronouns when referring to their colleagues. Worse, consider if in the early 1950s as the world faced the scourge of polio, how many children’s lives would have been lost, if funding for Jonas Salk’s miracle polio vaccine research had been cut because the board of directors for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis lacked sufficient “diversity.”

America and the world would look far different today if “woke” politics were then as they are now.

Whereas once America’s exceptionalism could literally take us to the moon and back, today, half a century later, government cannot make even the most basic of decisions without coursing through a long list of regulatory and policy self-checks to ensure its actions will not be perceived as racist, sexist, jingoist, or in any way “triggering” to an individual or collective “victim” somewhere.

The disease of 21^st century “wokeness” has become not only embarrassing, but crippling. Just ask our neighbor to the North, which has seen the Keystone XL Pipeline project stopped dead in its tracks, after millions already had been spent to construct it, solely because the new Biden Administration is beholden to the woke Green Crazies now in control of the Democrat Party.

If you are wondering how the country that once sent Hitler running to a Berlin bunker to die like a coward is now paralyzed to take decisive action against a worldwide pandemic because it does not want to step on the toes of international bureaucrats, self-serving liberal governors, or snowflake teachers, look no further than our new commander-in-chief, Joe Biden.

Despite the many serious problems our nation faced on January 20^th when Biden sat for the first time at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, our “woke” leader chose to highlight “gender identity” in one of his first Executive Orders. This action was deemed by him to be necessary in order that “children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom.”

Despite generations of American children having survived 12 years of schooling without such rhetorical assistance, they now are armed with this explicit assurance from no less a savior than the president of the United States.

Virtue signaling to please progressive culture-scolds has become a substitute for substantive policy, to the degree that when the time arrives to solve real problems, officials are crippled by having to do what “looks” best, not what actually is best. Broadly considered, the extent to which policy decision-making now is at least to some degree dependent on Nanny State mandates, there is little opportunity for citizens to escape the leviathan of incompetent wokeness; even if it is a matter of life or death, such as with COVID-19.

Take, for instance, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was awarded an Emmy last year for his stellar COVID “performance.” Now, however, the Empire State’s CEO has the less glorious distinction of overseeing a state vaccine distribution program that threw away countless doses of this life-saving drug. This was not the fault of Republicans, Donald Trump, or pharmaceutical companies – the Left’s favored scapegoats. Rather, it was because the Brainiacs in Cuomo’s administration were obsessed with making sure vaccine distribution was perceived as impeccably “fair,” which meant putting into place vaccine distribution protocols so stringent that too few people qualified, and precious supplies were washed down the drain.

What should have been of America’s biggest health and technological triumph in modern history — developing a miracle vaccine faster than ever before — is being overshadowed by politically correct politicians, whiny teachers refusing to work, and a new president who would rather lecture citizens about perceived “transphobia” than use the power of his office to speed America’s recovery.

“Woke” Nanny Statism is the polar opposite of the quintessential American grit that saw a neophyte nation defeat the greatest military power on earth, and that later won the West, overcame polio, defeated the Axis powers, and set a standard for freedom for the entire world. Sadly, it now is American anti-Exceptionalism that focuses our national attention and efforts on the trivial use of made-up pronouns, instead of all the wonders our nation and our culture can accomplish for mankind.

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

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

If there was perhaps one mistake our Founders made in drafting the Constitution, it was presuming that future members of the Legislative Branch would be sufficiently competent to actually read the document to which they all had sworn an oath. It is, however, increasingly clear that many – perhaps most — sitting United States senators cannot read the plain text of the Constitution.

The relevant wording in the Constitution is at the very end of Article II, establishing that a constitutionally errant “President,  .  .  .  shall be removed from Office” if he first has been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Unlike other sections of the Constitution where clarity may be obscured by arcane wording, this particular provision is clear and concise, and it applies to “the President.” The language pointedly does not provide in any way, shape, or form that a “Former President” or an “Ex-President” may be similarly punished, only the President.

The 100-member Senate at this moment is split right down the middle between those who identify as Republicans and those who identify as Democrats.  Democrat leader Chuck Schumer has declared openly and without hesitancy that as the self-styled “Majority Leader,” he will move forward within days to try Donald Trump. The goal of such a trial would be to find Mr. Trump guilty of the single Article of Impeachment passed on Jan. 13 by a majority of representatives on the other side of the Capitol Dome.

While many GOP senators remain openly opposed to Schumer’s plan, it appears that a number of Republican senators, notably including the most recent “Majority Leader” – Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell – have signed on to the notion that there will be a trial as demanded by Schumer.

The basis on which Schumer and his Democrat colleagues are proceeding against Trump can best be understood by their all-consuming hatred for the former president, a sentiment they share with their House colleagues. Their zeal to punish Mr. Trump appears to have blinded them even to common sense and to the plain meaning of words – factors that otherwise and in less toxic times would lead them to realize that no matter how powerful and exalted they might view themselves as “senators,” a person cannot be “removed” by them from an office that he or she does not in fact occupy.

It is black-letter law that a court cannot punish someone for a crime if it does not have jurisdiction over that person. Just as courts of law have no power over individuals outside their defined jurisdiction, the United States Senate has no power over a former President of the United States.

No matter the degree to which Sen. Schumer despises Mr. Trump and hopes to prevent him from being able to run again for office at some future date (as unlikely as that may be), the body of which Schumer is a long-serving member does not have power under the Constitution to thus punish the ex-president.

It is less clear what accounts for Sen. McConnell’s decision to buy into the legally baseless presumption that the Senate magically has acquired jurisdiction to conduct a trial of and to then punish a former president. Perhaps it is the fact that Trump’s behavior leading to the twin loss of Georgia’s Senate seats in the Jan. 5 runoff cost McConnell his job as Majority Leader. Maybe it is four years of pent-up dislike for Trump’s personal behavior contrary to establishment norms. Regardless of why McConnell is behaving so foolishly as to read into the Constitution’s impeachment trial power of the Senate something that clearly and legally is not there, it is making the Senate appear unmoored from history, the law, and common sense.

Mitch McConnell is a lawyer. He seems, however, to have forgotten that a prosecutor who oversteps his authority and tries to convict someone over whom the court has no jurisdiction, will be hit with a swift – and ultimately successful – motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. This is precisely what Trump’s lawyers need to file, and by so doing let the American people know that at least they can read the Constitution.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th 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

It is perhaps fitting that President Donald Trump would wait until his final days in office to deliver what was perhaps the finest speech of his presidency. In his January 13th remarks delivered from the White House, Trump calmly and directly denounced the January 6th Capitol Hill violence still raw on the minds of most Americans. He stated clearly that such violence was an insult to both the “MAGA” movement he launched five years before, and to America itself.

The speech was the perfect speech; or, at least, would have been the perfect speech had it been delivered when it was needed most, instead of being lost among the ensuing fallout from that day of shame one week prior.

Sadly, this speech serves only as a tragic reminder that if Trump somehow could have adopted this stately – one might say, “presidential” – tone years before, it very well could be his Inauguration being celebrated today, not Joe Biden’s. Instead, it will be his remarks on January 6th to his supporters massed on the Washington Mall that will at least for the foreseeable future define his presidency.

There is, however, an important lesson for the GOP in this episode; one that could help it out of its present morass. It is a lesson so basic and obvious it is often overlooked in today’s social media driven political environment. The lesson? Substance and principles remain always the most valued currency of political leadership.

Rather than the poise demonstrated in last week’s speech, Trump’s leadership throughout the past year was clumsy and unclear, as Democrats and media gadflies baited him into distracting squabbles.

Missing were moments like George W. Bush’s iconic “bullhorn speech” in the rubble of a still-smoldering World Trade Center after 9/11. Unlike many presidents before him, Trump never appeared able or willing to stop his emotions from getting the best of him, and in so doing allowed pivotal moments to be defined not with rising rhetoric and strong resolve, but with tweets and theatrical but ultimately unhelpful symbolic stands.

Such antics may be excellent for whipping up a political base but not for achieving long-term victory.

If the GOP now seriously wants to position itself to retake the House in 2022 and the Senate and White House in 2024, it must do as then-Governor Ronald Reagan called for in his legendary 1967 speech to the California Republican Assembly, and “grow the tent” (actually, re-grow the tent).

In 1967, Reagan was rising as a national leader of a Republican Party that at the time was busy tearing itself at the seams with litmus tests, in-fighting, and organizational discord. In order that the GOP not disappear in a “blaze of glorious defeat,” Reagan took the reins and called on it to unite around the central tenet of limited government; from which principled point the Party could build a broad tent capable of reclaiming control from Democrats.

Today’s GOP is much like the one faced by Reagan more than half a century ago, with the “Big Tent” of which he spoke appearing now more like a shabby lean-to, set to collapse should one mild storm sweep through. We must not let that happen.

The message of individual freedom is as powerful as it is universal and timeless. From this central pivot, the GOP must demonstrate clearly and consistently its value to voters by showing true leadership that eschews emotional reactivity and childish theatrics in favor of calm, deliberate, and uncompromising focus on the values that made America great — not the slogan, but the substance.

Juxtaposing these principles opposite the soon-to-be official blueprint for forced identity politics and faux leadership by the Biden Administration, should be a no-brainer for the GOP. Whether it has the moxie and the strong leaders to do so, as Reagan did so long ago, is an unfortunately very real question.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He served as an official with the CIA during the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

In a subtle redirection of Shakespeare’s oft-quoted assertion in Henry VI, to “first .  .  .  kill all the lawyers,” Democrats inside government and their cohorts in the private sector are moving to censure not necessarily all lawyers — just those who fail to kowtow to their liberal orthodoxy.

This purge is but the latest chapter in the radical rulebook long focused on “reimagining” our society into one premised not on individual liberty protected by the rule of law, but rather one built on group identity and forced allegiance thereto. It has been a long time coming, but the Democrat Party’s capture of the Senate majority allows them to dramatically accelerate their villainy.

For decades, liberals have worked tirelessly to deconstruct America’s system of education, one premised on classical pedagogy and local curriculum control – a structure that stressed objective standards of learning and which rewarded achievement. Our country’s public education now is a cartoonish, Rube Goldberg-esque system defined by federal bureaucrats and ruled over by teachers’ unions and tenured professors. In this morass, what is deemed correct and worthy of being learned is subjective, with no foundational values.

This toxic recipe has spawned a generation of government and corporate leaders steeped in the liberal notion that government is the default mechanism to address every real or perceived shortcoming in society. For today’ culture warriors, using the power of their positions in government and in the business arena is a moral imperative.

The so-called mainstream media has trended liberal since at least the 1960s. That this communications sector is wholly embedded with the Democrat Party is no surprise and is not going to change any time soon if at all. What is far more problematic is the explosive growth of communications technology now concentrated in the hands of so-called “progressives.” This, far more than any federal law or regulation ever could do, is empowering the Left to exert a degree of societal control not fairly dreamt of at the turn of this millennium.

Beyond being now on the precipice of gaining control of federal legislative, regulatory, and executive mechanisms, and already enjoying close friendships with the Lords of Social Media (including Facebook, Google, and Twitter), Democrats now are turning their sights on one of the last remaining redoubts of opposition – conservative lawyers.

Well-known conservative lawyers in Washington, D.C., such as Cleta Mitchell, are being forced to “disassociate” from their law firms for having leant their legal skills to the Trump administration’s challenges to evidence of alleged fraud in last November’s election.

An offending attorney’s role need not even have been as an active participant in conferences or conference calls disputing President-elect Biden’s electoral victory to earn the ire of Democrat scalp hunters. One Atlanta-based father and son pair of lawyers with a Philadelphia law firm were forced out after the son was “outed” as having listened in on the January 2^nd conference call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger.

The Left has turned especially against attorney Members of Congress who declared any degree of support for Trump’s electoral challenges. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and his Missouri colleague, Sen. Josh Hawley, committed what in the eyes of the Left are offenses warranting disbarment, if not criminal prosecution. One of their House colleagues, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, has been similarly assailed.

The attacks against attorney lawmakers and other members of the Bar who supported Trump have gone far beyond grievances by individuals who may not like the particular senators or congressmen. The attacks are being led by national lawyer organizations and, more ominously, by law school deans. Some of these lawyer critics imply that those who simply alleged that there were irregularities in the election are themselves guilty of “insurrection.”

There was a time when Democrats in particular would openly defend lawyers who were under attack for having represented an unpopular cause or client (it happened to me when I first ran for Congress in 1994). This reflected the principle that standing firm in defense of the unpopular was the essence of good lawyering. For the Left now, that quaint notion obviously no longer prevails. What prevails instead is a toxic political partisanship reminiscent of despotic regimes of the sort our Founders recognized and provided a Constitution and Bill of Rights to guard against.

Fifty years ago, in 1971, cartoon strip character “Pogo” declared, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It is no longer a cartoon.

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.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

In the 1980s, Wall Street hot shots who raked in millions playing fast and loose with questionable, if not illegal, stock trades were derisively labelled “Masters of the Universe.” Today’s Big Tech CEOs, who control social media platforms used daily by billions of people, have become far more powerful and wealthy than their 1980s predecessors, yet face little meaningful push back from Democrats preparing to take control of power in our nation’s Capital.

These Lords of Social Media now have become emboldened by last week’s deplorable violence inside the Capitol building, to openly do what they appear to have long desired – to deploy their vast financial, technological, and political power to silence those who dare communicate political ideas not adhering to their liberal orthodoxy.

These cohorts understand the First Amendment to our Constitution does not directly apply to them since they are not the government. Conveniently ignored by these social media powerhouses, of course, is the fact that their power and wealth benefits greatly from government programs and regulations, to say nothing of the massive benefits they derive thanks to federal, state, and even local tax benefits.

The notion that with great power comes responsibility – a principle these and other Liberals almost gleefully charge President Trump with violating – also does not, of course, apply to them. They claim that appearances and common sense to the contrary, their social media platforms are not subject to being held to the same standard as traditional publishers. It is the provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 on which they hang their hat, and which provides them free rein to censure communication they do not like without legal repercussions as would otherwise apply.

Instead of seeing themselves as stewards of the hallowed concept of fair, free, and responsible speech that over the decades has undergirded public discourse in our country, they consider themselves 21st Century Centurions standing at the gates of Rome and ready to do the bidding not of Caesar, but the Democratic Party.

This would explain why Big Tech’s mass bans and censorship impacts almost exclusively members of the Right. It is a dangerous abuse of power, even if there is no law to stop them.

In no “free” society can mass censorship, by government or the private sector, be considered a positive trait. History teaches us that when censorship occurs, authoritarianism is not far behind. It is the same story time and again, whether in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Turkey…  the list goes on. Always, as now in America, such actions are justified as necessary to secure “public safety.”

In fact, in these other countries, as in the United States today, it is not so much about controlling public spaces against violence, as it is in securing and maintaining control of information, and with it, control of political power.

The free exchange of ideas is vital to the health of any democracy, allowing good ideas to flourish, bad ideas to be debated, and truly reprehensible ideas identified and squashed. This system of discourse keeps citizens sharp, and politicians honest. To be sure, there is an inherent danger in allowing evil ideas to see the light, but the wisdom of our Founding Fathers was that it was far better to have such ideas sanitized by the light, rather than sending them into the shadows to fester and grow.

This is where Big Tech censorship fails most glaringly. For all the purported “public safety” censorship is claimed to offer, it is not as if bad ideas evaporate once removed from the social media platforms. Instead, they grow like weeds, with no balancing pushback by open, rational debate in public arenas.

If this balance of speech is to work, free from the agendas of power brokers both public and private, we must constantly challenge ourselves to push back against bad actors, even from within our own ranks, who use this freedom to peddle ideas and actions counter to America’s values. This is the price of keeping government at bay, and worse censorship to come.

Last week’s violence at the Capitol and the purge against Conservatives that has followed, together reflects a failure that sets America down a dark path from which many other once-free societies never recovered. Only principled, moral leadership will save us; a class of leaders in distressingly short supply these days.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He served as an official with the CIA during the 1970s.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

As tragic as the violence at the U.S. Capitol building last week was, the loss of the two Republican Senate seats in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoff election is by far the more politically consequential event. What makes this twin loss so gut-wrenching for the GOP is that it could have easily been avoided, if during the eight weeks between the Nov. 3 national election and the January runoff President Trump had focused on the upcoming runoff instead of trying to overturn the results of the presidential election.

The immediate consequence of the losses suffered by Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler is to hand New York Democrat Chuck Schumer the keys to the senatorial kingdom. With an evenly divided Senate, this situation makes Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the de facto 101st senator and, at least for the next two years, one of the most powerful individuals in the U.S. government.

Unlike vice presidents before her, whose job description once was derided by FDR’s two-term vice president, John Nance Garner, as “not worth a pail of warm spit,” Harris will hold very real, significant power whenever called on by Schumer to break a tie in Democrats’ favor. In fact, simply the threat of exercising such a vote constitutes real power that can be – and will be — employed by Schumer as well as by President Biden to implement their agenda.

It did not have to turn out this way, as both Georgia Senate seats were very winnable. In order to have won them, however, the GOP and particularly President Trump needed to do one thing — turn out Republican and independent voters. That is all it would have taken; to simply keep reminding Georgia Republican and independent voters how important it was to not lose these two seats in order to maintain a system of checks and balances against a Democrat House and White House.

In fact, one poll indicated that voters wanted this outcome. The November 2020 Verified Voter Omnibus Election survey, conducted by Echelon Insights two weeks after the Nov. 3 election, found that almost two-thirds of respondents identified one-party control of the House, Senate and White House as their most serious concern. Nearly two-thirds! American voters clearly recognized what Trump did not, or simply refused to act on. The entire country now will pay a very heavy price for that tragic lapse.

Any mature and reasonably seasoned political observer would have urged (as many tried to do) that the immediate and clearly overriding goal in the aftermath of the November vote was to win those two runoffs in order to stem the toxic tide of a Democrat trifecta — House, Senate and presidency.

Trump’s inability to set aside his hurt pride after losing the Nov. 3 election essentially gave a massive and undeserved victory to the Democrats. Instead of focusing on the runoff election, Trump and his team of lawyers did precisely what they should not have done – they kept the attention in Georgia focused on November and on Trump, instead of on Perdue, Loeffler and January.

This behavior seriously undermined the GOP’s efforts to present and maintain a positive message, which would thereby have given Republican voters a reason to vote in January. Trump’s petulance led to this major defeat and threatens to undercut virtually every legislative and regulatory gain made during his four years in office (with the exception, thank goodness, of his federal judicial nominations which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell masterfully shepherded through the Senate for him). It also imperils such vital rights as those guaranteed by the Second Amendment, which had been protected for four years by the Trump administration.

At the state level too, Trump’s constant harping on problems surrounding the Nov. 3 election in the lead-up to the Jan. 5 runoff, will haunt the GOP moving forward – particularly in 2022, when Georgia’s gubernatorial election takes place. The president’s repeated insults directed at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp these past two months will only strengthen the likely Democrat nominee, Stacey Abrams, who Kemp narrowly defeated two 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.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

For all the potential merit the Trump campaign’s post-November 3^rd campaign election lawsuit strategy might have possessed at the start — posing intriguing constitutional challenges and a platform for evidence of voter fraud — as a strategy to win two Georgia Senate runoff elections yesterday, it was, shall we say, problematic.

Runoffs, especially in Georgia, historically and almost always, turn on three things: voter turnout, voter turnout, and voter turnout. And at this moment, with both Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s projected defeats, Democrats appear to have done a better job. This is a reversal of the situation prevailing for three decades in the Peach State; years in which state and local GOP workers and organizations kept their messages focused and relevant to the campaigns and to the runoff candidates.

In years past, Republicans marshaled their voter databases down to the block level, and micro-organized their get-out-the-vote effort to reach voters most likely to vote in the runoff in numbers sufficient to overcome efforts of their Democrat rivals, who, until the last two cycles, were slow to adapt. That now has changed with a vengeance, presenting serious challenges for the Republican effort moving forward.

Evidence of shenanigans at vote counting rooms in Democrat-controlled counties are real, and this accounts for some of the Democrat margins. And yes, the mail-in ballot verification procedure pressed by failed 2018 Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which strangely was agreed to last Spring by Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (not the Governor, who President Trump continues to vilify) made it far easier for illicit votes to be counted. And yes, going forward, the GOP-controlled Georgia legislature which is scheduled to begin its 2021 session within days, must change those procedures in order to improve the chances that future elections will be, to at least some degree, less flawed.

But continuing to focus exclusively or even primarily on this aspect of the problem is not a winning strategy for the GOP.

What can be a winning strategy for Republicans is one that meaningfully improves its ground game and presents a message to voters that is substantive, positive, clear, consistent, and relevant.

One example makes the point regarding the ground game. Twenty years ago in the Atlanta metro area, suburban subdivisions constituted the topsoil from which voters could be harvested and encouraged to vote, especially in the short time limits in which runoffs are conducted. Today, that is a far less efficient way to reach voters and encourage them to vote. Democrats came to this conclusion in recent years, and began to deploy their people and put their money into identifying, visiting, and registering voters in other areas that in the past were largely ignored or overlooked.

Democrat fat cats apparently realize this also, and have been making funds available to state and local parties with which to buy and manipulate voter databases, and then visit these newer, often younger and first-time voters. Republican Party officials, who in the past have often looked down on paying canvassers in favor of volunteers, need to shift their thinking and resource allocation on this aspect. Finally, GOP donors need to be far more willing than they now are to open their wallets in support of these efforts.

Finally, however, in the short term and to regain the majority in the House in 2022 (which is a realistic goal), the Republican Party absolutely must move beyond the November 2020 election and develop a message that is clear, consistent, substantive, and relevant to real voters.

If the GOP presents itself as the victim, then it should come as no surprise that it will continue to be just that — a victim; and victims are not perceived to be winners. Winners are candidates and political parties that stand up and articulate a strong, consistent message composed of meaningful and relevant measures with which the “average” voter (especially small business owners and families) can identify.  If we do this we will be perceived and treated not as victims to be pitied, but rather as fighters with an agenda who are deserving of winning.

Republicans have done this before, and we can do it again; but, if we do not shift gears and start that reformation right now, time and Democrats will solidify their recent gains into a new and terrible socialist status quo.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He served as an official with the CIA during the 1970s.