Liberty Updates

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

It takes a lot to make China’s Communist Party sweat, but Beijing is seriously concerned with the Trump administration’s aggressive stance against its long-standing spying operations and theft of intellectual property and consumer data. In a clear indication of just how worried the Chinese government is, just last week it outlined what it dubbed a “Global Initiative on Data Security” in hopes of gaining allies to alleviate some of the pressure from Washington.  

Foreign Minister Wang Yi publicly stated that the purpose of the initiative is to debunk the “groundless accusations” of a “certain country.” This is typical Chinese legerdemain — issue a document full of flowery rhetoric but devoid of substance, as a smokescreen to camouflage what it is doing in fact.  

China’s theft of U.S. data was first elevated to the national spotlight in the late 1990s while I was serving in the U.S. House. In response to eyebrow-raising reports and testimony, we voted in 1998 to create a special task force investigating whether China was illicitly obtaining data on U.S. missile and weapons technology. The resulting “Cox Report” confirmed our worst fears; through decades of calculated intelligence operations, China had stolen design information on some of our most sensitive weapons systems.  

Sadly, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations did little to address the problems described in the Cox Report. China continued to spy and steal, while occasionally putting up a fig leaf or two to convince Washington and the world it was reforming past practices.  

Today, while the regime’s data collection methods may have shifted somewhat, the national security threat they pose are in fact even more serious than two decades ago. By forging close commercial relationships with social media and internet platform companies — including apps that the American people and our own government use every day — the Chinese government has been able to use 21^st century technology to digitally vacuum up a trove of sensitive commercial and government information.  

Thankfully, for the first time in years the federal government now is fighting back and also engaging a global movement to check China’s data collection practices.  

First, the Trump administration sounded alarm bells on Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone company, which it correctly noted was owned or controlled by the Chinese military. Experts found that backdoors built into its technology could easily facilitate espionage for the communist regime.  

Then came TikTok and WeChat — ostensibly harmless apps used hundreds of millions of time daily by individuals, but whose parent companies, ByteDance and Tencent, maintain direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party.  

Unlike its predecessors, the Trump administration understands clearly that China is working diligently to siphon off far more than the American people’s social media data. This is why the administration announced recently it is investigating the pharmaceutical company Ritedose after our military began working with it to create a coronavirus vaccine. The company was sold in 2017 to AGIC Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity fund that, according  to the Wall Street Journal, “looks for smaller or midsize companies with technology that could be helpful for Chinese industry.”  

As troubling as are China’s inroads into America’s health data and records, as a former member of the House Financial Services Committee I am deeply concerned also with the seemingly easy access the Chinese regime has to America’s sensitive financial information.  

The U.S. remains the financial engine for the world, a position that China for decades has been attempting by any means necessary to assume for itself. This is precisely why it is so troubling that TikTok’s ByteDance is making strides to set up an online stock brokerage. So too is Xiaomi, one of China’s largest cellphone companies and a serial data aggregator whose founder has for years held high political office in the Chinese government. The company even provided seed money that helped create WeBull, a financial services company used digitally by U.S. investors.  

Even worse from a national security perspective is MooMoo, another Chinese financial services firm used by U.S. investors. It is tied not only to Xiaomi, but also to Tencent, the brains behind WeChat, which identifies MooMoo’s parent company as a “strategic investor.”  

Despite its public façade of concern, Beijing is anything but an ally in efforts by the U.S. and Great Britain to protect sensitive government data from illicit access. China ranks as the world’s most dangerous tech pirate, and the Trump Administration has every reason to continue pressing China in this regard, despite efforts by the media and by political and commercial interests in our own country to soften its aggressive approach.  

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall.com

by Bob Barr

Serving as the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 was in many respects the most rewarding and enjoyable job of my life. Enforcing federal laws under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush according to the solemn oath I took to protect lives, property and businesses in the Northern District of Georgia, allowed me to work with many fine local prosecutors and then-state Attorney General Mike Bowers, who all shared my commitment to the rule of law.

That experience is why it deeply disturbs me now to see a number of current district attorneys and even some state attorneys general who have twisted their oaths of office in ways that actually pit them against law enforcement, and in support of criminals rather than victims of crime. The longer such officials remain in office and are allowed to abuse their power, the more deeply will the essential and fundamental underpinnings of our justice system be damaged.

For several election cycles, this design has been the center of billionaire leftist George Soros’ evil plan to remake America’s justice system in his warped image of a socialist-based system pitting rich against poor and condoning mob rule. In this worldview, prosecutors simply refuse to prosecute laws on the books if doing so offends their personal philosophy of “social justice.” Accordingly, people who steal and loot are immune from prosecution if they engaged in such criminal acts in order to get things they need or want but were not able (or willing) to obtain them lawfully.

Examples can be seen in so-called “Blue State” cities everywhere, including of course, in California.

In the Golden State, Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton issued official “guidelines” to prosecutors in her jurisdiction to the effect that the “personal need” of a person arrested for a criminal offense must be considered before charging that person with looting or other theft charges. While Becton claims (presumably with a straight face) that this directive is designed to help prosecutors by providing a standard for more consistent charging decisions, the obvious intent is to make it easy for prosecutors under her command to avoid charging looters and rioters with the severe penalties their violent actions truly merit.

This perversion of justice has become all too familiar as Antifa-sympathizing district attorneys, many shoe-horned into office by Soros’ money, are implementing similar agendas. One has only to consider how rarely anyone in recent months actually has been charged with tearing down public monuments, defacing and burning public and commercial businesses, and looting stores, to understand how pervasive and destructive this prosecutorial philosophy truly is.

Even when rioters are actually arrested by the police, the failure to formally charge them, or to require bail as a condition for their release, means they are back on the street the next night to continue their mayhem.

This is nothing but an orchestrated coup against the very foundations of our system of justice; and if we are to survive it, steps must be taken now to confront and remove these radical prosecutors. There are lawful tools with which to accomplish this. The real question, however, is whether enough citizens who believe in the rule of law have the will to use those tools.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 30 states, including California, have a mechanism for recalling local officials, including elected prosecutors. Typically, this means collecting sufficient valid signatures to prompt the recall process and force a new election for the targeted official.

The process is risky, and the goal not guaranteed; even if the petition is successful the end result may not be the removal of the anti-law enforcement prosecutor. But at least citizens will have stood up, spoken loudly, and done something to let America and their community know that there are in fact patriots who stand for the rule of law, who support both law and order, and are willing to fight to ensure these values remain alive in our system of justice.

Failure to act against these faux prosecutors will only encourage further lawlessness and accelerate the downward path to socialism favored by George Soros and his ilk; a society in which mob justice and kangaroo courts become the order of the day.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 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 now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Most Americans – probably the vast majority – have very little idea what the United States Supreme Court really does. Sure, whenever the High Court issues a ruling on an abortion case or decides a matter involving the Second Amendment, the media is all over it and the public becomes aware that the Court is there. Abortion and guns aside, however, rulings by our nation’s highest court often impact our daily lives in far more ways than do those high-profile decisions everyone hears about.

In just a few weeks, the Court will hear arguments in a truly landmark case that will significantly impact Google, the world’s most heavily used search engine, controlling over 92% of that market worldwide.

Google actually is owned by Alphabet, but everyone outside the tech industry itself knows the search engine as “Google” not “Alphabet” or anything else. The search engine enjoys such a ubiquitous presence that its name has been recognized officially in dictionaries as a transitive verb.

The specific case on which the nine Justices will hear arguments has little to do with the average person who “Googles,” but a great deal to do with copyright law. Although hardly a matter for dinner table chatter in suburbia, copyright law indirectly affects much of what every person reads, listens to or views on their computer; but perhaps most importantly, how they conduct research on a computer or smartphone.

The specifics of the case to be heard by the Court – Google v. Oracle – relate to something called “application programming interfaces” or “API” for short. API play a major role in software development, which in a sense is the fuel that powers computer search engines such as Google. Oracle Corp. is the largest software company in the database business, which runs on most major platforms like Windows and Mac OS. The legal battle between these two tech giants, which has been ongoing for over a decade, is being fought over Oracle’s claim that Google copied its popular “JAVA” software when Google developed its Android mobile phone.

Initially, Google intended to pay for a license for the JAVA APIs. Later, however, when negotiations failed to produce the result Google sought, the tech giant decided instead to copy the software without Oracle’s permission. Since then, the case has been bouncing between different levels of our federal courts like a high-tech ping pong ball. But what is at stake is no game.

A federal court found that 11,500 lines of creative declaring code in Android’s software replicated the structure, sequence and organizing of the  Java API components. While most readers probably do not know exactly what “creative declaring code” means, they understand intuitively that 11,500 of something resembling another thing looks an awful lot like copying.

As argued by Google’s many lawyers, the search engine giant’s primary line of defense was what has become known as the doctrine of “fair use.” Fair use law allows for the copying of products if intended for a “transformative” purpose, as for a news report or legitimate scholarship. The point of such permissible copying, however, is not to make a profit off of someone else’s work, which is what Google was doing with the Java technology. Fair use law specifically is not available as a defense for those who copy property for commercial purposes.

The courts also rejected Google’s arguments that it had no choice but to use Oracle’s Java coding because there was no other reasonable API code available or able to be developed. The fact that Apple’s iPhone has become the world’s most popular mobile phone without copying Java’s coding blew a major hole in Google’s argument to the lower court.

Eventually, after years of legal wrangling, the lower courts rejected Google’s arguments, and the battle is now joined before the Supreme Court.

How the Court decides this case will determine whether America’s copyright laws, which are as old as our Constitution (and are in fact enshrined in that venerable document), can be ignored by a company that is so big and influential that it should be allowed to set its own rules, including taking someone else’s hard work and appropriating it for its own commercial benefit without compensating the party that developed it in the first place.

Since 2015 Google’s motto has been “Do the right thing.” Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the opportunity to make sure the company does just that.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Monday, after months of self-quarantine in his basement, former Vice President Joe Biden emerged to deliver a speech in Pittsburgh. However, rather than present an image of a revitalized, coherent candidate, Biden confirmed what many in America have long-known about him – that he plays fast and loose with the facts and remains clueless about what is happening in the world outside his Washington-centric bubble.

Most telling in this regard were Biden’s repeated efforts to blame President Trump for the violence that for months has plagued cities from coast to coast and in the country’s heartland; communities that have been living for years if not decades under ineffectual Democrat Party control. Blaming Donald Trump, a Republican president, for violence in Democrat-run cities even after he has repeatedly denounced it and  offered assistance to help quell it, bordered on the ludicrous, but was not the only mendacious story offered up by the former vice president on Monday.

For example, the former vice president charged that Trump deployed “secret federal troops” to protect federal property. This claim would be startling if true, but it is utterly without foundation. The Trump Administration did order federal law enforcement officers to protect federal facilities, buildings, and personnel in Portland, Oregon, for example, when they were attacked repeatedly by violent mobs. There was, however, nothing “secret” about the deployment, and there were only civilian federal law enforcement officers involved, not “federal troops.”

Considering the many research staff and speech writers available to Biden as both a former vice president and a current presidential nominee, we are left to conclude either that he knew such a statement was false, but made it anyway simply as a way to stoke anger and fear against Trump, or that he truly remains clueless about what goes on in the real world. Either scenario presents voters with a sorry choice at the top of the Democrat Party ticket.

Later in his speech, Biden played the compassion card, telling us that he has “personally spoken” with the families of both George Floyd, who died while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day, and Jacob Blake, who was shot recently by Kenosha, Wisconsin police following a domestic relations disturbance. It is highly unlikely that Biden’s discussions with these families touched on the full circumstances surrounding either incident, such as the histories of drug abuse and violence. Such details would not conveniently fit the carefully crafted exposition of compassion and concern sought to be displayed in Pittsburgh, and the stark contrast with Trump’s mean-spiritedness Biden seeks to cultivate.

Biden made a point Monday to play the Russia card against Trump, calling the president the most “subservient” ever to a Russian leader. Not surprisingly, this charge ignored the way Barack Obama in 2012 pleaded with Russia’s then-President Medvedev to afford the American leader just a little more time until after his reelection, when he could make softer deals with Russia.

Biden was at his conniving best when playing the fear card to scare seniors and Social Security recipients. He exclaimed that Trump always has planned to do away with preexisting medical condition coverage in Obamacare; when in fact Trump always has said he would protect such coverage (this fact actually was highlighted in one of the speeches delivered last week at the Republican National Convention). Biden made a similarly bogus claim when he blasted the President for planning “to defund social security.” The fact is that, even to the chagrin of many conservative Republican members of Congress, as both a candidate in 2016 and consistently since becoming president, Trump has vowed to protect the Social Security system.

Fear mongering was the constant theme throughout Biden’s presentation in Pittsburgh two days ago, and he left no fact ignored or record mischaracterized in his attempt to scare voters who might be considering voting to reelect Donald Trump.

Democrats are betting the house on Biden’s “cool guy” persona, hoping it provides a smoke screen for his compulsive mendacity, gross hypocrisy, and chronic cluelessness. If Americans take this bet, they will pay a heavy price as cities burn and citizens are murdered in cold blood just for voicing political opinions. Protecting the life and property of citizens caught up in Leftist violence is going to take far more than whatever Biden offers, politically or physically.

The only thing Biden proved Monday is that we are all better off if he returns to his basement.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 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 now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Americans justifiably are concerned about foreign entities working to influence the outcome of our 2020 elections. There is, however, one party with just such a plan already well underway and well-funded that is far closer to Main Street, USA than any foreign entity — George Soros.

Soros and a handful of fellow far-left true believers are well on their way to investing billions of dollars to ensure that tens of millions of mailed-in ballots decide who will be our next president.

On the surface, their plan appears benign and wholly in the public interest, with nary a hint of the leftist agenda for which Soros is well known. For example, a recent story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described an effort by a pair of nonprofit organizations to mail more than two million applications for absentee ballots to voters across Georgia. The article noted that the organizations – the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center – plan to follow this initial tranche of absentee voter applications with additional mail drops in the coming weeks.

These mass mailings are designed to ensure that as many voters as possible receive absentee ballots, ostensibly to protect them from the “dangers” posed by the coronavirus were they forced to vote in person. It is revealing, however, that the applications are not being sent to voters generally, but only to those described as “irregular voters,” who traditionally or historically do not vote.

Americans justifiably are concerned about foreign entities working to influence the outcome of our 2020 elections. There is, however, one party with just such a plan already well underway and well-funded that is far closer to Main Street, USA than any foreign entity — George Soros.

Soros and a handful of fellow far-left true believers are well on their way to investing billions of dollars to ensure that tens of millions of mailed-in ballots decide who will be our next president.

On the surface, their plan appears benign and wholly in the public interest, with nary a hint of the leftist agenda for which Soros is well known. For example, a recent story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described an effort by a pair of nonprofit organizations to mail more than two million applications for absentee ballots to voters across Georgia. The article noted that the organizations – the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center – plan to follow this initial tranche of absentee voter applications with additional mail drops in the coming weeks.

These mass mailings are designed to ensure that as many voters as possible receive absentee ballots, ostensibly to protect them from the “dangers” posed by the coronavirus were they forced to vote in person. It is revealing, however, that the applications are not being sent to voters generally, but only to those described as “irregular voters,” who traditionally or historically do not vote.

Soros is of course not the only left-wing advocate funding mail-in vote campaigns; he is simply one of the wealthiest and most notorious. Other benefactors for this leftist goal include the Ford Foundation, Susan Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels fame, the Grove Foundation and many more. They have been actively pursuing their goal of universal mail-in voting for years, but especially since being shocked by Trump’s win four years ago.

Mail-in voting maximizes the chance for fraud at every step of the way, from who requests and then fills out the forms received by mail, to the same or different individuals depositing the actual votes into drop boxes with no security whatsoever. What such a plan will do, thanks to billions in funding by Soros and his leftist cohorts, is to accelerate the “reimagining” of America into a society devoid of meaningful values.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

Parents across America being forced to deal with the technological and administrative burdens of “distance learning” face severe consequences, even potential criminal charges, if they fail to meet these challenges.

One might think that actually getting a student to sit in front of a laptop for hours on end would be a victory in and of itself. Now, however, parents have the added stress of making sure nothing that might be seen on camera behind and around the child shows anything that could be considered politically incorrect, or that might trigger a report to the “authorities.” Failure to do so could result in a visit from the police. This is exactly what happened to the mother of a fifth-grade boy in Baltimore.

The student was a Boy Scout and his mother a Navy veteran. They made what turned out to be a serious mistake during a distance learning session, when they failed to realize that hanging on a wall behind where the boy sat for his video learning session were two BB guns, including a fabled “Red Ryder” model. This oversight was sufficient to trigger fear in the fifth-grade teacher on the other end of the video session, who quickly reported the “disturbing” images to her school principal. Up the chain of command the report went, from the teacher, to the principal, and to the police who were summoned to search the house for “weapons.”

Even more disturbing than the fact that a teacher apparently became traumatized at the sight of a BB gun on a bedroom wall, was the fact that, according to media accounts, the initial call came from “a concerned parent.”

The Baltimore incident typifies the “zero tolerance” policies that schools across the country have for years followed. These policies allow no room for reason or common sense, and which in this era of “distance learning” are being abused in deeply disturbing ways.

According to news reports of the Baltimore incident, the mother of the fifth grader herself posed a number of important questions to the school and to the police, none of which were answered as they should have been were we living in a society protective of individual privacy, rather than one that most highly values the power of government entities (in this case, public schools).

The boy’s mother asked the right questions — who exactly is able to access the videos of her child as he complies with mandates that he sit in front of a computer video camera to “distance learn?” What happens to the video images and screen shots of the children? Why did the school officials call the police rather than simply phone the parent to obtain the facts and voice their concern?

The only reply from the school officials was that they followed their precious “policies,” including their view that the rule prohibiting students from bringing weapons to school applies equally to “distance learning.” In other words, if a rule prohibits bringing a gun to school, it also prohibits “bringing” it to a “virtual classroom” (also known as a “bedroom” if that is where the student’s laptop is set up). Despite the profoundly idiotic nature of such a policy interpretation, the teacher and principal at this Baltimore public school apparently believe the nonsense they were uttering.

As disturbing as is the privacy-invasive nature of this incident, and the implications for students and families wherever “distance learning” mandates are in place, it gets worse.

In Boston, for example (and almost certainly other cities), parents are being reported to the Department of Children and Families for alleged “child neglect” if students are not logging in to their “virtual” lessons for the requisite time. Despite there being any number of legitimate reasons why a student might not be properly logged in — such as the parents not being fully cognizant of online learning protocols, or their having to rely on an older sibling to ensure the youngster remains on-line — failure can result in visits from the authorities, and even criminal charges.

As with the Baltimore mother, parents in cities like Boston face the worsening nightmare of navigating the techno world of “distance learning” being administered by callous and unthinking bureaucrats with the power to have you thrown in jail at their whim.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 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 now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

In politics, if you say something loud enough and often enough, people will believe it. The Democrats have employed this strategy in the current controversy about mail-in voting, bellowing repeatedly that President Trump is trying to sabotage the November election by tampering with the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to handle mail-in ballots, which the Democrats see as the future for their party’s electoral victories. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s orchestration of last Saturday’s 257-150 House vote gifting $25 billion to the USPS was their latest gambit.

The reality, of course, is far different from the Democrat narrative, as Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson established at a Senate hearing he chaired the day before the House vote, labelling the Democrat charges nothing but a conspiratorial “false political narrative.”

The difficulties facing the USPS in the Internet Age has been one of the worst kept secrets in Washington. Study after study has documented how internet communications, especially e-mails, have taken a huge bite out of letter mail. A report by the Treasury Department in December 2018 accurately identified this culprit, noting that “the shift toward digital correspondence and the corresponding decline in USPS mail volume” has resulted in the Service “losing money for more than a decade and is on an unsustainable financial path.” This study was not the first to sound the alarm about the financial difficulties facing the USPS, nor has it been the last.

A September 2019 report by the USPS Inspector General noted that the continuing challenges facing the Service were not being met, resulting in “processing mail with lower productivity for manual, flats, and letters.” In layman’s terms, this means that in the face of dramatically reduced first-class and “flat” letter mail, the USPS was failing to reduce processing costs adequately, thereby continuing deficit spending.

The USPS Inspector General study noted that despite limited implementation of cost-saving measures that had been recommended eight years previously (such as consolidating facilities, improving mail handling automation, and reducing equipment inventories), progress was slow and uneven.

Two major problems have hampered the Postal Service’s ability to significantly cut costs to meet the reality of internet communications. The first of these is Congress itself.

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 formally established the USPS as an organization with elements common to both government agencies and private businesses. This configuration reduced but did not stop congressional meddling in Postal Service operations, such as proposals to close unnecessary post offices or reduce the number of days it delivers mail each week. The real blow came in 2006 when the Congress (then with a GOP majority) passed legislation (signed by then-President George W. Bush) mandating that the Service must pay forward the massive retirement health benefits for its many thousands of employees. This alone has cost the USPS tens of billions of dollars and caused it to operate at a loss every year since 2006.

Other ongoing cost saving measures undertaken by the USPS during both Republican and Democrat administrations, such as removing lightly used mailboxes and discarding outdated sorting machines, while not nearly enough to cover the huge cost of pre-funding health retirement benefits, have helped stem the fiscal hemorrhaging. However, when recently appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took steps to simply continue such modest measures, he ran into a congressional buzz saw, even being accused of acting with criminal intent by a pair of Democrat House members.

This brings us to the real elephant in the room, and the other main reason behind the Postal Service’s financial insolvency — its heavily unionized workforce. Since being legitimized by the 1970 law that established the USPS, these unions “negotiate compensation, benefits, and working conditions,” including “no layoff” clauses; factors that have spawned a future the 2019 Treasury report calls “unsustainable.”

Following tradition, the postal unions already have endorsed Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden; they also have been pressing Pelosi to exercise her power as Speaker to stop DeJoy from implementing further cost-cutting measures, even including those carried over from the Obama Administration.

What we are witnessing is a proxy war being waged by Democrats in Congress on behalf of the postal union workers on whose votes Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and now presidential nominee Biden depend. It has nothing whatsoever to do with “voting rights.”

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall

by Bob Barr

To some extent, most crimes are relatively easy to explain. For example, greed leads to theft; anger often is a predicate to violence; a desire to “belong” pushes many teenagers to join gangs; and marital discord lies at the root of far too many murders. But the cold-blooded murder of a young child, like 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant, defies all rational understanding or explanation — a senseless act by an individual who has lost all touch with humanity. It is the very definition of inhuman.

It is difficult to recount the details of young Cannon’s murder without being moved to tears. Although the incident was largely ignored by the mainstream media, the pointlessness and savagery of the murder, apparently without any conceivable explanation or motive, is deeply unsettling.

Cannon Hinnant’s murder starkly illustrates the reality that America’s moral soul is dying.

America was founded as a sanctuary for religious refugees. At its core and since its creation, our country has been a society with a shared belief in God and on the moral virtues to which our Founders explicitly paid tribute. It was this spirit of moral integrity that helped turn America into the world’s guiding light for hope and freedom.

Today, that light is decidedly dimmed. Looking at the violence-torn streets of Portland, Chicago, New York, and so many other cities and communities, it has become virtually impossible to recognize the country “made only for a moral and religious People,” as John Adams once wrote.

On the surface the looting and violence may appear to some observers as political acts; but roving mobs beating people within an inch of their lives is much more than a social movement gone too far. What is taking place is clear evidence of a culture in decline — a nation untethered from its moral foundation and facing a future from which no new law or “critical race theory” seminar will protect us.

For decades, Leftists have pointed to the trend of mass shootings as a political phenomenon; the result of an overly robust interpretation of the Second Amendment that has allowed too many guns to “fall into the wrong hands.” Ignored in this scenario are far more crucial cultural and psychological factors that have spawned an environment in which individuals feel empowered to commit mass murder and remain numb to the resulting horror. The resulting decay of civil society is truly frightening.

Until recently, basic institutions such as family, church, social groups, and other person-to-person ties kept the vast majority of people in our society firmly grounded to generally accepted norms of civil behavior. With the waning importance and outright denigration of such personal relationships and institutions, it becomes hardly coincidental we now are witnessing a trend of increasing violence and emotional detachment from individual actions.

Today, religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is openly mocked and condemned. Children are increasingly born into broken or loveless families. In-person social groups are being replaced by impersonal and disconnected “digital” relationships, a trend made even worse during the ongoing COVID pandemic.

In such an increasingly disconnected environment, it should surprise no one that so many people, especially young adults, are growing numb to causing pain in others. This is especially the case when such violence is encouraged by fake friends on social media or explained away (and thereby impliedly approved) by political leaders. America’s value system is being turned on its head; love and reason are pushed aside while hate and violence are condoned if not celebrated. It is a recipe for disaster to which we have only begun to reap the consequences.

To preserve what remains of our nation’s soul and to begin repairing damage from years of attack, we must unabashedly reject the manipulative tactics of political leaders who justify violence as excusable or even necessary. We must push back against those who threaten to completely destroy the only institutions left that promote good moral character. The dark alternative that awaits us is a new “normal” in which nothing that debases life or moral values is beyond the pale; where senseless killings of little boys playing in their driveways is overlooked because drawing attention to it does not advance preferred political agendas.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 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 now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

by Bob Barr

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

Arguments will continue to rage over whether President Trump is constitutionally permitted on his own to spend money to build the wall on our southern border, to fund measures addressing the effects of COVID-19 or to manage federal immigration policies. However, there is one order the president could give that is clearly within his authority to manage the executive branch he heads, and which is entirely consistent with the no-nonsense management style that has characterized his time in office: direct all federal departments, offices, and agencies to immediately stop sending employees to “critical race theory” training, also known as “white privilege” reeducation programs.

While descriptions of critical race theory training have surfaced recently in the wake of racially motivated or racially excused rioting, training which teaches federal employees that “white privilege” and “racism” are systemic diseases that define American society, have been around for decades. It is long past time that such wasteful spending stop.

It is difficult to place an accurate figure on how much taxpayer money is spent each year on these programs by federal agencies and by non-governmental entities receiving federal dollars, such as the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, but it is in the millions of dollars. Numerous self-styled experts in “white privilege” have reaped lucrative incomes from such lecturing. Just one of these charlatans, Howard Ross, reportedly billed the federal government $3 million in just one year. Robin DiAngelo, the best-selling author of “White Fragility,” reportedly charges $40,000 to share her “expertise” for just half a day.

Just what taxpayers get in return, other than lectures on the evils of “hard work” and “rugged individualism,” is difficult to discern; but two threshold questions emerge as to why Uncle Sam should be lecturing public employees that the very qualities that have made America the sole superpower on the planet are now considered toxic.

First, why has the Trump administration not put a stop already to such expenditures? As the head of the Executive Branch, the president could certainly order that federal employees will no longer be sent to such reeducation programs, and that outside entities receiving federal dollars will no longer be permitted to use those monies for such nonsense. That Trump has not done so until now is strange, but it certainly is not too late to so order, and the timing appears perfect for such a move.

The second, and more troubling question is, why would grown men willingly participate in such demeaning programs that belittle them because of their race and their gender? For example, in a recently reported training program exclusively for senior-level white male employees at Sandia Laboratories, participants were made to attend sessions in which they were insulted for being white males and forced to write apologies to women and people of color for this sin. Similar programs have been documented as being conducted at other federal agencies, including the Treasury Department.

That grown men, especially those who enjoyed seniority in their jobs at a prestigious scientific laboratory (one that developed the atomic bomb that ended World War II), would submit to such ignominy reveals the extent to which the notion of “white guilt” has infected our culture. This destructive concept has embedded itself so deeply that it now is undermining the race-neutral principle of merit-based advancement that has for more than two centuries served as the fuel for American preeminence in fields including science, technology, transportation, and economics.

Even if Trump were to sign an executive order ending all federal expenditures for critical race theory training, legislation would be necessary to ensure its permanence. With the Democrat Party now led by a standard bearer who openly advocates that an individual’s race and gender counts for more than ability, and with the House of Representatives in the hands of that same Party (and likely to remain so at least through the next biennium), such nonsense as “white fragility” reeducation programs are not likely to disappear quickly; though by any rational measure they should.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7^th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 and served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990.  He now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Townhall

By Bob Barr

When it comes to undercover investigative journalists, there are few better than Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe. In the last decade, O’Keefe’s undercover exposés have revealed the corrupt underbelly of some of the Left’s most revered institutions (such as Planned Parenthood), as well as exposing the incompetence that infects many government agencies. O’Keefe’s advocacy has earned him many friends but also enemies, including some inside the government. A recent event suggests the FBI is among those not happy with O’Keefe.

The incident in question happened when O’Keefe, a resident of New York, tried to purchase a firearm from a retailer in that state. Although he has never been convicted of a felony and does not fall within any of the eight other reasons under federal law that would prohibit him from buying a gun, he was turned down.

The FBI figures in this equation because since 1998, it has been responsible for maintaining the database of information through which all retail firearm sales must be checked (the so-called “NICS” system). If there is no information in the database establishing that the purchaser falls into one of the classes of persons prohibited from possessing a gun, the sale may proceed. On the other hand, if the database reveals that a purchaser falls within one of the prohibitory categories, the retailer is notified and the sale cannot lawfully go forward.

Since O’Keefe demonstrably does not fall within one of the disabling categories, his purchase should have been promptly approved. That it was not, raises suspicions that the FBI has on its own decided it does not want him to have a firearm and therefore told the retailer, “No.” This is against federal law, and is the basis for a challenge to the Bureau’s action filed by O’Keefe last week in federal court.

It is in fact high time someone challenged the FBI for what appears to be a secret “watch list” of people it (or a sister agency such as ATF) simply does not want to have a firearm – a “We Don’t Like You” Watch List.

While the law establishing the NICS system is quite clear in defining who are individuals prohibited from possessing firearms, there is wiggle room for the FBI to delay a sale if there is a legitimate reason to suspect a person might fall into a prohibited category. In such case, the FBI notifies the retailer that the sale should be “delayed,” but if nothing further is found within three business days the retailer may proceed with the sale.

Thus, if the FBI has a legitimate reason to suspect a prospective purchaser may be a prohibited gun owner but needs extra time to confirm this, it has three days to do so. The “delay” power was never intended as a way for the government to play games and prevent a law-abiding citizen from purchasing a firearm.

Still, despite the clarity of the NICS law, and the clear intent of the Congress in passing it to ensure that the process not be used to deny a legitimate purchaser the ability to obtain a firearm in the normal course of business, the FBI continues to play games and misuse its regulatory power.

In recent years, for example, in states that lawfully allow marijuana for medical reasons, the federal government has decided that if a person possesses a medical marijuana card but does not in fact use marijuana, the individual still is considered to be a user of an “unlawful” substance, and denied the ability to exercise their Second Amendment right to purchase a firearm.

Also, the FBI for years has sought the power to consider someone whose name has been put on a secret “Terrorist Watch List,” to be prohibited from purchasing a firearm. While the Congress has properly refused to grant the government such arbitrary power, it is reason for legitimate concern given the lack of transparency with which the government compiles and maintains such “lists.”

Whatever the real reason for the FBI denying O’Keefe the ability to purchase a firearm, it is an abuse of power. Last week’s lawsuit hopefully will not only shed much needed light on the procedures by which the government decides who can exercise their right to keep and bear arms, but will ultimately hold accountable those officials who are abusing the law in such critical matters. Many Americans in addition to James O’Keefe have a stake in the outcome of this case.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s 7 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 now serves as President of the Law Enforcement Education Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia.