Liberty Updates

Daily Caller

by Bob Barr

It is a metal that floats in water. It sparkles a beautiful red color when ignited. It is found in abundance in sea water and brine, as well as on lands in every continent other than Antarctica. It is lithium, and it is fast outpacing oil as the prime target of New Left environmentalists, even as it pits environmentalists against manufacturers of batteries used to power “environmentally friendly” electric vehicles so loved by the Biden administration.

Major industrial countries across the globe are fighting for ever more access to quantities of this metal, known as “white gold,” but none so seriously or successfully as China.

The battle being waged over lithium production is a serious one, with not only environmental issues at stake, but military and geopolitical ones as well. Despite this, it is not at all certain that the Biden administration will recognize its value and push back against those trying to limit or even halt domestic lithium production.

If the administration treats lithium with the same degree of disdain with which it has targeted oil and natural gas production, however, it will have correspondingly grave consequences far beyond the problems created for the electric vehicle industry.

Discovered and isolated as a unique metal early in the 19th century, lithium until recently was considered a cheap commodity in world markets. Large lithium mines and brine extraction facilities operated largely free from protests in the United States, South America, Australia, China and elsewhere.

Due to its use as a component in the production of nuclear weapons, the U.S. became the world’s largest producer of the light metal in the second half of the 20th century. Following a drop in demand for lithium in the aftermath of the Cold War, worldwide demand has surged in recent years as the world’s major economic powers, especially the United States and China, have pushed for ever-greater production of electric-powered vehicles, almost all of which rely on lithium batteries for power.

This increased demand has raised the environmental and social profile of lithium, with environmental and indigenous groups attempting to halt mining in various states, but especially in Nevada, which has the largest known deposits in the United States. Lithium battles are being waged in other locales as well. As detailed in a recent article in Wired magazine, at an area known as Rhyolite Ridge in California, defenders of plant life are mounting a major offensive against lithium mining, hoping to save a plant that grows there and which they find attractive, but which possesses no economic value whatsoever – “Tiehm’s buckwheat.”

Lithium is one of the most versatile metals, and its value goes far beyond lithium-ion batteries for Elon Musk’s Tesla electric cars and other “smart” devices. Companies that produce some of our military’s key weaponry know its value, for example, as a rocket fuel. Lithium also is a key ingredient in the production of lubricants, including those used by virtually every automobile repair facility and backyard auto mechanic in America.

Despite the many and varied ways lithium benefits all of us, the nascent war against its production hardly registers with the average American voter, though it should.

China a major producer of lithium, and neither President Xi nor the communist country’s ruling oligarchs exhibit the slightest concern for the impact lithium production might have on the environment or on any indigenous peoples’ rights in China or anywhere else. China is pressing ahead unabated with domestic production of lithium not only to meet the needs of its own industries, but as an export commodity as well.

China has been busy buying major interests in lithium producing facilities in other countries, including Australia and South America’s “Lithium Triangle” of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia (where fully one-half of the world’s known lithium supplies are found).

If eco-radicals and indigenous peoples advocates succeed in pressuring the Biden administration to curtail domestic production of lithium, as they have done with oil and natural gas, the United States will become increasingly – but not surprisingly – dependent on foreign sources of the metal. This avoidable predicament plays directly into the hands of our major adversary on the world stage – China.

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

“The whole aim of practical politics,” H.L. Mencken famously quipped in the 1920’s, “is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” How very true.

Although written a century ago, Mencken’s metaphor of an endless series of imaginary hobgoblins easily describes the string of new “variants” of the COVID virus, all which send petty tyrants from New York’s Bill de Blasio to Australia’s Scott Morrison, clamoring for new lockdowns and restrictions – for our safety, of course.

As I wrote last week, news about the “omicron” variant had global leaders racing to be the first to reimplement “safety” measures designed to keep the variant out of their country, even though there was no evidence omicron was any worse than previous strains, or that similar efforts made any difference in the past.

These tyrants, petty as they may appear to be, are a very real danger to freedom, though in a way much different from their predecessors in Soviet-era KGB or East Germany’s Stasi. These are not innately malicious government actors in the vein of 1984. They are just…stupid. COVIDiots, if you will.

In America, we have the Constitution that thankfully limits (eventually, at least) the damage COVIDiots may cause at the local, state, and federal levels; other countries are not so lucky. Rather than learning to live with COVID by taking reasonable and measured steps to limit its impact, countries like Australia persist in pursuing scorched earth policies in which economic and social freedom are viewed as impediments to be surmounted so the government can fulfill its responsibility to “keep people safe.”

The fusion of government overreach with rank stupidity has produced truly frightening examples of government abuse. Recently, for example, police in Australia launched a manhunt to find “escapees” from one of the country’s “Centres for National Resilience” (a euphemism for internment camps to detain people the government considers to be COVID public health threats). The detained citizens actually had tested negative for the virus, but since they failed to obtain the government’s permission to leave the compound, they became fugitives.

Neither science nor common sense factor into Australia’s policies or in those implemented by New York City Mayor de Blasio. The mayor decreed last week that every employee of every business in the Big Apple must be vaccinated and that every patron of every business must show identification and proof of vaccination before being allowed to enter any business establishment in the City.

This is the very definition of stupidity, made worse by the hypocrisy of the incessant browbeating by these same authorities that their critics need to “follow the science.” Yet, who are those not following the science?

In what world of “science” does natural immunity not factor into mandatory vaccination plans? How is it “science” to lock people in internment camps for weeks to stop the spread of a virus that has, so far, not ever been stopped from spreading across borders? And, what is the “scientific” rationale for using potentially deadly force to re-detain people who are free from the virus?

The answer to these and other inquiries of course, is that there is no medical or scientific basis whatsoever; leaving the only explanation for their continuance in the face of resulting economic and social harm, to be stupidly and lust for power – a truly toxic mixture.

In another famous quip, Mencken remarked that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” To some degree, he is right again with what we are seeing from elected officials during COVID. For some time now, we have elected Democrats and Republicans who have no true regard for the limits of government power. It should come as no surprise then, that government officials empowered by ambiguous and overly broad “emergency powers,” overstep their bounds. It is their nature.

This is an important lesson to keep in mind when Americans head to the polls next year and in 2024. It is our opportunity to remove the COVIDiots from office, and replace them with freedom-minded individuals who will work not to conjure the next “emergency” by which to extend their power, but to return our Republic to at least a semblance of what our Founders constructed it to be.

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

Daily Caller 

by Bob Barr

Most Americans believe that if they have been seriously harmed by actions of the federal government, they are at least entitled to bring their claim before a court of law and have it fairly and transparently decided. They would be wrong.

Thanks to a seven decades-old doctrine, called the “state secrets privilege,” all that government lawyers need to do to prevent a case against the government from proceeding is to claim that national security information would be revealed, and the case is stopped dead in its tracks regardless of the merits.

As outrageous as this doctrine is, federal courts for decades have permitted Uncle Sam to escape being held accountable for misdeeds, such as unlawfully surveilling individuals, by claiming “state secrets.” There is a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, however, that might at long last and to some degree limit the government’s power to assert this blanket defense.

Holding the federal government accountable in a court of law never has been easy. An aggrieved person has to overcome numerous legal hurdles, not the least of which is sovereign immunity, a principle we inherited from our former English masters, which shields government officials from many, if not most, civil legal actions. Beyond piercing the sovereign immunity shield, a person asserting a claim against a government agent or agency for violation of his constitutional rights must surmount other difficult hurdles, including standing and timeliness, among others.

Notwithstanding these legal roadblocks, however, there is opportunity for an individual asserting that his constitutional rights have been injured by actions of the federal government to bring legal action and to at least make the government respond meaningfully. If, however, the government claims that “state secrets” are involved, and that forcing it to answer the individual’s complaint or to provide evidentiary materials would reveal information harmful to the national security, then neither the parties nor the judges can inquire further. The private parties are flat out of luck.

There are internal government policies supposed to limit the use of the state secrets doctrine in litigation. A memo issued in 2009 by then-Attorney General Eric Holder to Justice Department lawyers, federal departments and agency heads directed them to be judicious and careful in asserting state secrets claims so as to “provide greater accountability” and “strengthen public confidence.”

Unfortunately, the known history of the state secrets doctrine gives little comfort that it has been asserted in accord with good faith.

The first time in the modern era that the government decided to try this method of fighting a lawsuit filed against it was early in the Cold War. Widows of three civilian contract personnel sued the Air Force over the deaths of their husbands, who were killed in the crash of a military plane testing electronic equipment. When the case reached the Supreme Court in 1953, the justices upheld the government’s state secrets assertion, thereby denying the widows the ability to pursue their claims.

Years later, when materials in the 1953 case were declassified, it became clear that the case involved no national secrets whatsoever — only evidence that would have been embarrassing to the government.

Still, the privilege continues to provide broad cover for government actions. It has been employed in recent years to limit public access to information concerning the extent of the government’s foreign intelligence surveillance programs, its use of torture, the size of terrorist watchlists and other information the government does not want to be made public.

The government’s ability to hide behind the completely opaque state secrets cloak, however, will be tested next year, when the High Court decides whether a federal judge who is presiding over a case involving alleged unconstitutional surveillance, can review disputed materials in chambers (that is, in private ) simply to determine if the government’s claim of national security harm is legitimate.

The fact that the government is so vigorously opposing even this extremely limited chink in its state secrets shield, tells us much about what it does not want people to see.

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

A bureaucrat with an ego and an authoritarian streak is bad. A bureaucrat with these traits and a Chicken Little complex is downright dangerous, as we have seen most clearly since early last year when COVID-19 first reared its ugly head.

Now, nearly two years in, these Chicken Littles are at it again, thanks to the emergence of a slightly new “strain” of the virus; the so-called “Omicron” variety. Leading the charge is the Chicken-Little-in-Chief, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In recent interviews, Fauci’s irrepressible ego and lust for control proves yet again why the man has no business being allowed anywhere near any levers of power.

In an interview last weekend with CBS’ “Face the Nation,” for example, Fauci bragged about “representing science” and his job of “saving lives”; all the while denouncing individuals who, unlike himself, have actually been elected to represent and speak for American citizens.

Fauci — whose career as science’s one true “expert” on COVID was unfortunately launched by former President Trump but elevated to sainthood by Trump’s successor — accused his critics, most pointedly Sen. Rand Paul, of intentionally “lying” to the American people because they have had the audacity to question the good doctor’s pronouncements (which have often turned out to be wrong).

Always eager to grab the spotlight for himself, Fauci has lost no time in declaring what must be done for Planet Earth to survive the Omicron strain of the COVID virus.

In the real world, however, what he and his COVID comrades across the globe are doing can barely be described as “science” – with a straight face, that is.

Following preliminary reports of the new strain of COVID in South Africa, world leaders, egged on by their “science” and “health” advisors, nearly jumped out of their skin to shut down borders, implement new lockdowns, and beat the drum of “Pandemic 2.0.” Just a few days later, a doctor treating patients in South Africa doused their alarmist cries with cold water, when she reported that symptoms of this new strain were odd, but actually quite “mild.” Mild.

In other words, the entire global panic over Omicron is based not on any solid research or confirmed threat, but the paranoia of the spread of a new COVID variant that appears to be demonstrably less severe than what we have endured already. Nobody – not Joe Biden, Dr. Fauci, the WHO, or anyone else – has any idea just how significant the Omicron variant is now or will be later, though early analysis indicates it is less so. The dearth of information, however, has not stopped these officials from charging ahead with plans to implement a new round of economic and security mandates, based on nothing more than fear of “what could happen” if they do not act immediately.

This is not science. It is, at best, informed speculation – and that is being generous. In any event, such knee-jerk policies certainly provide no true justification for more restrictions and mandates than we have been forced to endure for nearly two years.

Unfortunately, in an age when virtually every problem – real or imagined – serves to justify government action (always at the expense of individual liberty), few of those government officials who have served as overseers of the COVID response have been willing or able to relinquish the powers that fell into their laps early in 2020. Clearly, neither Biden nor Fauci have evidenced any inclination to do so, and no one considering the situation with any degree of objectivity expects them to change their predisposition to sow fear and reap control.

As I have written, the dramatic shift in agency mission from research to policy-making at Fauci’s bureaucratic home, the Centers for Disease Control, is deeply dangerous, if not ruinous for the health of our democracy and of our citizenry. If elected officials, tasked by the U.S. Constitution (not some made up “emergency” powers) to make public policy decisions for our country, cannot reasonably trust the information provided to them is objective and free from agenda-driven spin, the decisions they make are flawed from the get-go.

In this Chicken Little world in which we unfortunately live, however, flawed public policies are all we realistically can expect.

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

Buried deep within the massive infrastructure legislation recently signed by President Joe Biden is a little-noticed “safety” measure that will take effect in five years. Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, the measure will mandate that automobile manufacturers build into every car what amounts to a “vehicle kill switch.”

As has become standard for legislative mandates passed by Congress, this measure is disturbingly short on details. What we do know is that the “safety” device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

Everything about this mandatory measure should set off red flares.

First, use of the word “passively” suggests the system will always be on and constantly monitoring the vehicle. Secondly, the system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected. Thirdly, it will be an “open” system, or at least one with a backdoor, meaning authorized (or unauthorized) third-parties can remotely access the system’s data at any time.

This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents.

The lack of ultimate control over one’s vehicle presents numerous and extremely serious safety issues; issues that should have been obvious to Members of Congress before they voted on the measure.

For example, what if a driver is not drunk, but sleepy, and the car forces itself to the side of the road before the driver can find a safe place to pull over and rest? Considering that there are no realistic mechanisms to immediately challenge or stop the car from being disabled, drivers will be forced into dangerous situations without their consent or control.

The choice as to whether a vehicle can or cannot be driven — for vehicles built after 2026 — will rest in the hands of an algorithm over which the car’s owner or driver have neither knowledge nor control.

If that is not reason enough for concern, there are serious legal issues with this mandate. Other vehicle-related enforcement methods used by the Nanny State, such as traffic cameras and license plate readers, have long presented constitutional problems; notably with the 5th Amendment’s right to not self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment’s right to face one’s accuser.

The same constitutional issues abound with this new technology, but with the added confusion surrounding what Congress even means by “impaired driving.” Does it mean legally drunk, or perhaps under the limit but still “impaired” to a degree? Would police be summoned automatically by the system in order to make that determination? These are questions that should have been addressed openly and thoroughly during the legislative process, not left to later, back-room negotiations between interested parties other than individual car buyers – manufacturers, regulators, insurance companies and law enforcement.

Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, there also is no detail in the legislation about who would have access to the data collected and stored by the system. Could it be used by police, and could they access this information without a warrant? What about insurance companies, eager to know with what frequency their customers drove after drinking alcohol, even if it was below the legal limit? Such a trove of data presents a lucrative prize to all manner of public and private entities (including hackers), none of which have our best interests at heart.

Adding what amounts to a mandatory, backdoor government “kill switch” to cars is not only a violation of our constitutional rights, but an affront to what is — or used to be — an essential element of our national character. Unless this regulatory mandate is not quickly removed or defanged by way of an appropriations rider preventing its implementation, the freedom of the open road that individual car ownership brought to the American Dream, will be but another vague memory of an era no longer to be enjoyed by future generations.

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

For all the Left’s ongoing hoopla about the dire necessity for “common sense gun control,” nothing currently being proposed makes any more sense than measures already tried and failed. The American public has seen and heard it all before, and is even less interested in buying into it today than in years past.

But the Left keeps trying. Their latest gambit is to attack ammunition purchases.

Earlier this month, Democrats in the Florida legislature filed a bill they call “Jamie’s Law,” named after a victim in the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The legislation would subject all purchases of ammunition to background checks.

When making this same proposal nearly three years earlier in the U. S. Senate, leading gun-control advocate Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut called the lack of background checks on ammunition sales a “ludicrous loophole” that allows would-be killers to amass “arsenals of ammunition.”

Even for the typical anti-gun nonsense spouted by Democrats, Blumenthal’s hyperventilating is extreme; but then again, so is the proposal, whether as federal or state law.

The basic premise of the legislation is that it would prevent people who are already prohibited by law from purchasing or possessing firearms, from buying ammunition. Really.

The only situation in which Jaime’s Law might be considered even remotely applicable would be in stopping an individual from purchasing ammunition for a firearm they acquired illegally. It does not take a firearms expert or criminology PhD to know that finding ammunition is far easier even than for a criminal to get their hands on an illegal firearm

For the sake of argument, though, let us take Democrats at their word and assume there is an actual need for this proposed law. For instance, a “prohibited” person erroneously passes the first background check to purchase a firearm, and (for reasons that defy logic) later goes back to buy ammunition, subjecting himself to a second background check that hypothetically would prevent that purchase. What this scenario — which serves as the sole justification for Jamie’s Law — clearly suggests is that the background check system itself is the problem, not that more background checks are needed.

The suggestion is not entirely off-base (though the proposed solution is). Failures of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) allowed the killers in both the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, and the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shootings to obtain firearms they should have been prevented from purchasing.

The obvious – dare I say, “common sense” — solution to tragedies such as these, however, lies with better and more consistent enforcement of the existing background check system on firearms, notwithstanding that the system even as currently configured has worked remarkably, but not perfectly, well for over two decades.

Creating a whole new background check criteria and database for purchasing rounds of ammunition is wholly unnecessary and would be phenomenally costly and disruptive to the industry and to lawful firearms owners — which, of course, may be exactly what Blumenthal and his fellow gun-control advocates in the Florida legislature want.

Ironically, albeit predictably to anyone with even a passing familiarity with government data systems, proposals such as Jamie’s Law would wind up reducing the effectiveness of federal background checks, and placing citizens in greater danger, by overwhelming NICS with requests. Ammunition purchases by nature are exponentially more common than sales of firearms, and there simply is no way NICS could handle such volume, meaning more purchases would be approved by default (as required by law now).

In addition to making NICS less effective, an ammunition check procedure would come at a significant cost to law-abiding citizens who could no longer easily pick up ammunition for a trip to the range or before a hunt.

Jamie’s Law is a solution in search of a problem. Fortunately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis understands both the constitutional and practical consequences of such a proposal, and never would sign such legislation even if it were to somehow make it through the Florida legislature. Still, if history of the gun control movement is our guide, this and other counterproductive and unconstitutional measures will continue to have life breathed into them by gun control advocates in the Sunshine State and elsewhere.

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

The indictment charging former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with contempt of Congress has all the trappings of a legitimate government proceeding. All the linguistic fluff aside, however, it is nothing more than a partisan abuse of power hatched by congressional Democrats and abetted by President Joe Biden and his Justice Department.

The authority according to which the House of Representatives charged Mr. Bannon with contempt derives from H. Res. 503. This resolution passed the House on June 30 and established a 13-member “Select Committee” to inquire into the January 6, 2021 turmoil in and around the U. S. Capitol Building.

That Bannon was a prime target of the inquiry became clear shortly after the committee organized itself and got down to the business of trying to link Trump, Bannon and others close to him to the Jan. 6 events on Capitol Hill. In September, Bannon was subpoenaed to appear before the committee and to produce documents. Following his refusal, the committee voted to hold him in contempt, a step the full House quickly rubber-stamped. The contempt resolution then was transmitted to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

In earlier, more “normal” times, that would be where the matter would remain.

For example, of the five criminal contempt citations referred by the House to the Department of Justice since 2008, none resulted in grand juries returning indictments. In fact, the most recent examples of criminal contempt of Congress cases actually being successfully prosecuted took place in the 1970s as part of the Watergate scandal.

One reason for the dearth of criminal prosecutions for contempt of Congress is the obvious: only rarely will an attorney general belonging to a political party different from the House majority voting for such prosecution actually present the matter to a grand jury.

Another reason is that in most such disputes cooler heads prevail, with the Congress relying on the far less-heavy handed civil contempt power at its disposal to obtain information it needs; that is, if actually obtaining information is its real goal, as opposed to punishing an individual not of the majority’s liking.

In this current episode, with the Executive Branch and the House majority in Democrat Party hands, history, comity and evidence count for little.

Legally, however, the questions surrounding and underpinning the propriety of the contempt action against Bannon are more problematic for the Democrats than they might at first blush appear.

Start with the language written into H. Res. 503.

The resolution repeatedly refers to the “domestic terrorist” attack perpetrated by “insurrectionists” on and leading up to Jan. 6. By framing the purposes and functions of the committee in this way, the Congress is proposing to investigate acts that are neither defined in nor made criminal under federal law; there simply is no such crime as “domestic terrorism.” Even if there were, trying to shoe-horn the vandalism that took place on Jan. 6 into the subject matter of legitimate congressional legislative power would be a stretch to say the least.

Importantly, federal caselaw, including opinions by the Supreme Court of the United States, requires that for a criminal contempt of Congress to withstand legal challenge, the subject matter underlying the contempt must fall within the legitimate legislative jurisdiction of the House (or, Senate, as the case may be). Use of a congressional subpoena to gather information that is not based on any existing federal crime or linked reasonably to any legislation, appears to fail this threshold test.

The Democrats who drafted H. Res. 503 appear to have made a half-hearted stab at linking the formation of the select committee (and giving it subpoena power) to some sort of legislative function. After seven pages of incendiary verbiage about “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism” (acts not charged against a single of the nearly 700 individuals arrested for activities relating to the Jan. 6 disturbances), the resolution declares three “corrective measures” that possibly could result from the committee’s work.

This rhetorical fig leaf, however, should never be permitted to serve as the basis for convicting an American citizen for simply refusing to aid the Democrat Party in a vendetta against a former president.

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

In one breath, liberals call local police “racists” and demand their departments be defunded, and in the very next they rush to federal law enforcement agencies for help at the slightest hint of trouble. This is the whipsaw effect of how the Left views law enforcement – local cops bad, federal cops good. It is a perspective totally at odds with the framework on which our federal Republic was constructed.

Consider our public schools.

Leftists for years have fought tooth and nail to remove resource officers from schools, claiming their presence is “detrimental to the welfare of our children, leading to the increased criminalization of youth for child-like behaviors” (ACLU of Washington). And yet, as The Intercept reports, last month school district officials in Maryland’s Prince George’s County reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for help with monitoring the social media accounts of students, in hopes of curbing an outbreak of violence in two area high schools.

The Deep State’s abuses of national security powers in our post-9/11 world are numerous and well-known, from the Bush Administration’s unconstitutional directive to cell phone carriers to conduct warrantless surveillance of customers’ phones, to the continued use of the USA PATRIOT Act for investigations having nothing to do with national security. This mindset now has filtered down to community school board meetings.

Even in the face of severe criticism, for the Biden administration, it’s “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Attorney General Merrick Garland refuses to rescind his recent directive that the FBI and United States Attorneys across the country develop plans to address disruptions at local school board meetings.

No serious debate today can be had that using federal law enforcement’s powers and resources to monitor local school board meetings or the social media activity of students fits within any reasonable or historically permissible definition of “federal jurisdiction.” It is a recipe for a terribly unappetizing constitutional banquet – federal law enforcement agencies with a history of abuse and a systemic lack of accountability, secretly surveilling the protected rights of students and parents, in defense of the “woke” agenda favored by many public-school administrators and teachers.

Being the target of a federal investigation is no casual matter. The mere possibility that your presence at a school board meeting may be monitored by police and the FBI has a decided chilling effect on such activities; as does the fact that social media posts are being monitored by the Department of Homeland Security. In addition to this chilling effect, the legal resources needed to defend oneself in any resulting federal investigations can easily drain the finances of all but the most well-off families.

Working-class families in Prince George’s County, who are most likely to be swept up in Homeland Security’s most recent dragnet, do not stand a chance. Nevertheless, the irony of using the full weight of the federal government to pursue targets least able to defend themselves, appears no longer relevant to the “woke” liberals behind this madness.

Making the situation even more irksome is that school officials are pursuing this sledgehammer-to-kill-a-mosquito plan because they find themselves in a situation of their own making, after years of removing resource officers from schools even as they turned a blind eye to troublemakers for fear of “labeling” the students as “troublemakers” or being branded “racist” themselves.

The trend of leaning on federal agencies for local issues did not start under Joe Biden, but his Administration, with the active support of Attorney General Garland, has taken it to a new and dangerous level.

This scenario playing out in public schools and school boards across the country is not occurring in a vacuum. Rather, it reflects a broad national phenomenon decades in the making, of a citizenry increasingly comfortable calling on the government to solve every problem and to meet every need. In this environment, where the “default” is to call on Uncle Sam, it is not only appropriate to bring in federal law enforcement to address problems within community school districts, it is the preferred solution.

When the Left sees everything from racism to bullying to global warming as a national emergency, there is no activity in which citizens engage that can be considered safe from the heavy hand of federal power.

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

Last week was especially bad for President Joe Biden’s plan to force all Americans to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. How the administration responds to the setbacks will reveal whether we have a president who actually believes in and will abide by the rule of law, or one who considers himself above such a bothersome technicality.

On September 9, Biden angrily lectured the American people about the COVID-19 pandemic, laying out plans for vaccination mandates to include all civilian and military federal employees and contractors, and for anyone working for a private company with 100 or more employees.

Biden’s plan was indeed bold. As it turns out, it was too bold. On Friday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans, answering one of some two dozen pending federal court challenges to Biden’s COVID mandates, told him to go back to the drawing board.

Biden’s plan hit another snag last week. The Army general in charge of Oklahoma’s National Guard issued an order declaring that no troops under his command will be required to be COVID vaccinated; this in direct defiance of a mandate issued in August by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The November 12 opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt with the November 5 “Emergency Temporary Standard” issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) purporting to implement the 100 employee mandate portion of Biden’s September edict. (The court had issued a preliminary stay of the mandate on November 6.)

Despite Biden’s declaring that this mandate was among those he deemed essential to save the country from the continued ravages of COVID-19, the appeals court disagreed with him in every respect. It determined that OSHA had failed to meet a single requirement needed to be able to enforce the regulatory mandate, even had the agency possessed the legal power to do so, which the court said it did not.

The appeals court could not have been more clear in dousing Biden’s far-reaching plan with cold water; at one point deriding the OSHA plan as an unlawful  “sledgehammer.”

When that court issued its November 6 temporary order staying the OSHA regulations, the administration puffed up its chest and publicly urged American citizens and businesses to ignore the court and carry out the administration’s wishes regardless. It remains to be seen whether the administration will be as brash in urging citizens and businesses to violate last Friday’s far more detailed, crystal-clear order.

While the Fifth Circuit’s November 12 opinion did contain a lifeline for the administration, in that its stay of the OSHA mandate holds only until the court considers the underlying relief for a permanent injunction sought against the government, it likely will be extremely difficult for the administration to find a way around this opinion.

Not only did the three-judge Fifth Circuit panel provide legal and factual grounds defeating every argument on which OSHA based its “emergency” regulations, the judges explicitly told the agency it was to “take no steps to implement or enforce the Mandate.” This directive appears to be a warning to the administration not to make further public statements urging that the court’s orders be ignored.

The November 11 order by the commander of the Oklahoma National Guard rejecting the Defense Secretary’s COVID mandate for all troops presents the administration with a completely different predicament than that faced now by OSHA, and sets up what may prove to be a serious challenge to the power Uncle Sam legally can exercise over the National Guard units of an individual state. Regardless of how this particular problem is resolved, for now it further undercuts the mandate-heavy approach preferred by this president

As things stand now, the Biden administration lacks even a rubber mallet with which to enforce many of its beloved COVID-19 mandates. It will be interesting to see what legal rabbits it pulls out of its hat in the coming days.

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

The COVID pandemic is over.

Thanks to the work of President Donald Trump, a vaccine is widely available to anyone who wants it. And, coming from that research, a new pill from Pfizer that cuts the risk of death and hospitalization by 90 percent in individuals who contract COVID, is in front of the Food and Drug Administration for approval.

Those who want to protect themselves from COVID can do so easily, and those who chose not to take advantage of the vaccine or the pill (when it is approved) are in any event are unlikely to die from the sickness. By all goals and measures set at the beginning of the pandemic, this is moment for which we have waited.

The return to “normalcy” can begin right now; except, that is, for Dr. Anthony Fauci and his band of merry Biden Administration fearmongers standing in our way.

Democrats know that as soon as the pandemic is over, the COVID power party will end, and all those “emergency” powers they have enjoyed for two years will run dry. For a political party that invested so much of its identity into using COVID to moralize, mandate, and manipulate, the end of the pandemic is a worst-case scenario.

It is not that they do not believe the pandemic is over. They just cannot afford to let it end.

The powers enjoyed for nearly two years wielded by numerous mayors, city councils, governors, and a bevy of unelected health department bureaucrats have produced a rush of political adrenaline, the likes of which have not been seen since the post-9/11 rush of anti-terrorism measures.

As anyone who has worked even briefly in government knows all too well, once government achieves any degree of power, it becomes almost impossible to wrest it away from the hands of bureaucrats exercising it. Power truly is addictive, and the Democrats’ new blueprint already is being readied for the next engineered emergency.

The COVID pandemic provided an endless supply of excuses for Big Brothers of all stripes to concoct new ways to impose their idea of “order” on our lives. Now that they have had a taste of what is possible under “emergency” conditions, there is no way they will willingly go back to the old, and constitutional mode of governing the country.

Instead, “COVID” will morph into the next “public health crisis” – which, as I have written, can incorporate anything from racism to global warming to gun crime. Each such “emergency” will offer justification for Washington and for governors from Massachusetts to Oregon to continue exercising leverage powers authority that already has been abused far beyond any notion of the legitimate exercise of power under our Constitution; and, of course, spend ever greater amounts of deficit dollars.

There are but few ways to slow, much less stop this trend from becoming a permanent roadmap for how cities, states, and federal governments operate.

Most important, we need to start electing the right people. We need to find and elect true conservatives; not faux populists who only oppose broad emergency powers because it is not in furtherance of their emergency. Genuine, limited government conservatives recognize and understand the danger in capricious use of sweeping government edicts and mandates, particularly those that violate the separation of state and the private sector, as well as those violating fundamental principles of federalism.

We also must use the judicial system – federal and state courts – to bring sound and constitutionally based legal challenges to instances of government overreach. Importantly, this method of righting the ship of state should not be viewed as the first option, but rather a tool to be used in those instances where the polityical fails have failed to self-correct. Turning to the courts to solve every new or recurrent problem disrupts the carefully crafted tripartite system of governing, and eventually plays right into the hands of the Left.

Finally, we must demand that those individuals already in office, both elective and appointed, do their jobs and not let them off the hook when they fail to heed our demands.

None of this is new or rocket science. However, in today’s environment, where the government has tasted unlimited, “emergency” power and will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it, every means at our disposal must be turned to the goal of defeating such an occurrence. As they say, failure is not an option.

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.