Liberty Updates

Townhall

by Bob Barr

To some degree there has been a Cold War waged against conservatives since at least the Soviet infiltration of Hollywood in the 1940s. Under President Biden, however, this war has become red hot and very real. Leftists embedded across political, non-profit, academic, and government institutions are pulling out all the stops to destroy the conservative culture and political movement in America.

Never before in our history has such a concerted action been undertaken. It did not spring forth on January 20th when Biden was inaugurated. The left has been imbedding itself into institutions private and public for decades preparing for the right moment to openly launch its war. The January 6th protests on Capitol Hill provided that spark.

Earlier attempts by a political party in power to use government agencies to punish political opponents were limited in their impact, largely because they were not able to co-opt major elements of those agencies to join their unlawful plans. Thus, the Nixon Administration’s use of components of the IRS, the CIA, and the FBI to go after its critics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, failed to destroy its perceived enemy — the anti-war Left — because career elements within those agencies refused to join. In the end it was the perpetrators themselves who were destroyed, including the President.

Now, a half century later, the situation has changed dramatically, as demonstrated in the fact that Biden’s Department of Justice and the FBI, with their vast arsenal of tools with which to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate those deemed enemies, are leading the effort to destroy the conservative movement.

Moreover, the technological tools now available, undreamed of by Nixon’s Watergate co-conspirators, make it immensely easier to identify and take action against those labeled by the Administration according to whatever term best fits their destructive narrative — usually today, “domestic extremists,” or the even more vilifying “white extremists.”

As the first sentences for the hundreds of those the government has deemed “insurrectionists” are now being handed down, it is clear just how serious the Administration is to secure its pound of flesh from those citizens being prosecuted for, in some cases, simply having entered the Capitol on January 6th.

The first felony sentence for someone who participated on that day has now been meted out. Paul Hodgkins committed no acts of violence and did not damage any property or person while he was in the historic building on January 6th. Notwithstanding this, and even considering his lack of a criminal record, he will have to spend eight months in a federal prison facility.

Even though in our federal system of criminal justice individuals are to receive sentences based on the circumstances involving their actions and their background, the federal prosecutor in Hodgkins’ case demanded that the judge send him to prison as a lesson to others; a “loud and clear message” to conservatives that they will in fact be severely punished by this Department of Justice for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and especially for possessing the wrong political views.

Clearly, this was just the opening salvo from Biden’s Justice Department, whose lawyers are routinely demanding that others arrested for participating in events on that day, or for simply being there, be held without bail for as long as it takes to have their cases heard in the pandemic-delayed federal court system. Sadly, government lawyers are having no trouble finding federal judges willing to go along with this travesty.

Still to come are cases involving evidence that in more rational times would be laughed out of court if presented as evidence of nefarious criminal activity; evidence such as a box of plastic Lego bricks depicting a model of the U.S. Capitol building.

In this environment, populated by individuals possessed of such zealotry, where might one turn for even a small degree of compassion or objectivity.

Actually, if a person found himself arrested not on January 6th of 2021, but during one of the riots in the summer of 2020, in Portland, Oregon or even in Washington, DC — incidents in which federal buildings were torched and otherwise damaged, and during which federal law enforcement officials and other government employees  were intentionally harmed — compassion is overflowing. Dozens of such prosecutions brought by the Trump Department of Justice are being dismissed outright by this Department of Justice.

The sound of double-standard justice now ringing throughout our government truly is deafening. Sadly, however, for an Administration whose goal is not to see that justice is done, but to destroy an inconvenient political movement, who’s listening?

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

To assist in its drive to demean American culture and history, the Biden administration has turned to the United Nations. Last week Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony “Tony” Blinken, actually invited the U. N. to come to America to study how racist and violative of human rights the United States is.

This study will be conducted under the leadership of former socialist Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who now serves as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She will be aided in this effort by the U. N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), a 117-member subsidiary of the United Nations with a history of anti-U.S. bias such that former President Trump in 2018 rescinded our country’s membership in the organization. Biden reversed that decision on Feb. 8, shortly after deciding to rejoin both the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization.

Among the nations that will now sit in judgment on our country’s human rights record are such human rights luminaries as China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela.

Biden always has held the U. N. in high esteem, with its massive bureaucracy headquartered on the banks of the East River in Manhattan that sits on real estate donated by the Rockefeller family seven decades ago. Despite many of the United Nations’ previous so-called “peace keeping” missions having themselves been plagued by serious human rights violations, Biden and Blinken obviously consider the international body an appropriate judge of U.S. culture and history.

Now, five months after we formally rejoined the UNHRC, one of its top officials, known as “rapporteurs,” will be among those studying and passing judgment on the systemic racism and human rights abuses this administration sees  as a driving force behind virtually every aspect of our nation’s culture and public policy history.

Specifically, Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume, a left-wing law professor at UCLA in Los Angeles, will be one of those leading the effort to uncover “contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” in the United States. Ms. Achiume has written and spoken widely on the prevalence of racism and racial injustice around the world and within the United States.

In an interview last September, for example, Prof. Achiume opined that “Black and brown communities” in the United States “are still [being] terrorized” by the police. She is among the most extreme of open border advocates, writing in 2019 that “First World” nations such as the United States, “have no right to exclude Third World migrants.” Given her background and that of the UNHRC generally, it is a foregone conclusion that the study Blinken has authorized will “discover” exactly what they are looking for – “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

All this will support the multi-faceted effort already well-underway by the FBI, the NSA, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and other components of the federal government to hunt down and destroy “white extremism,” considered by this administration to infect virtually everything with which it disagrees. Adding the State Department and the United Nations to this conglomerate of domestic government agencies rounds out the administration’s team which it hopes will ensure that the Democrats retain their grip on power not only through next year’s midterm election, but far beyond.

Inviting the United Nations into our country so it can tell us how to “confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia,” and in addition to propose “a wide range of reparations measures,” is demeaning and an affront to our sovereignty and national dignity.

Biden and Blinken may actually believe that their decision inviting the UNHRC to study and judge America’s record of “racism” and “human rights violations” will encourage other nations, including those like China that systemically and regularly do violate human rights, to follow Washington’s lead and admit of their own shortcomings. If they do actually believe this will happen,  both Biden and Blinken are possessed of a naivete that is not only laughable, but dangerous.

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 a 1983 speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire;” perfectly capturing the moral and political danger presented by that communist regime. Reagan properly cautioned Americans not to “ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses” of an enemy that was “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

Unfortunately, what was clear to Reagan about the Soviet Union in 1983 appears only as a blur to Joe Biden about China today.

If the Soviet Union were the evil empire, then China is surely the evilest empire. The Soviet Union’s global ambitions for its evil empire were hampered by its own incompetence. China, however, actively spreads its insidious tentacles across the world with a shocking mastery, facilitated by the apparent unwillingness of global leaders, including Biden, to take the threat seriously.

Today’s China presents for the United States and other western powers a far more complex and multi-faceted danger than that posed by the Soviet Union in the second half of the last century. While China’s military build-up, and its well-documented willingness to use that power (especially as it relates to Taiwan) is a real concern, it is but one dimension of the broader threat, and in some ways not the most serious.

Take, for instance, China’s push for greater influence in American academic institutions by way of funding educational programs and centers, under the guise of benignly teaching Chinese language and culture. As a white paper published at the Heritage Institute earlier this year suggests, this funding is a Trojan horse for Beijing to expand its influence in American culture more broadly. Strings attached to such financial largesse ensure that recipient universities carefully avoid saying or doing anything that Beijing considers insulting or critical of its policies. This is, of course, when Chinese students themselves are not agents for their government, as the FBI itself had warned.

In the global economy, state-based hacking of U.S. companies operating in China to steal trade secrets and reverse engineer products for theft is common knowledge. However, consumer goods produced from Chinese companies are also routinely – and often literally – weaponized for the communist government and its military.

China made headlines a few years ago when it was discovered it used compromised microchips to infiltrate several major U.S. companies.

Evidence that the COVID-19 virus was the byproduct of Chinese military research persists, despite being routinely downplayed by the Biden Administration and other governments and international organizations. As I have written previously, even prior to the arrival last year of the COVID virus, it is insane that American companies and other institutions remain willing, and are permitted by our own government, to engage in highly sensitive research that can and will be used by China’s military.

Just this month it was revealed that a prenatal genetic screening test sold by a Chinese company was developed in tandem with the Chinese military and used to harvest genetic material for military and social research. If secretly stealing the genetic material of unsuspecting women is not the definition of evil, one might wonder what is.

China’s domestic agenda, with its brutal crackdowns on minority groups and on Hong Kong citizens, provides a horrifyingly clear picture for what this truly evil empire would have in store for the rest of the world.

Despite the naivety with which many commentators from both the left and right fawn over China’s booming “private” sector, this faux capitalism is simply another weapon for China to use against its global adversaries. The illusion of Chinese markets ready and waiting for foreign investors is merely the bait in the trap. After those investments are made, investors like Disney, Google, and the NBA discover that doing business in China comes with many “conditions.” It is no coincidence that the hyper-political NBA is deathly silent on China’s human rights abuses.

Unlike the Soviets, who were consumed with immediate expansion of their influence and power, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, China is committed to playing the long game. A crucial part of this plan is undermining America’s historic role as the world’s moral compass. China does this by compelling our silence through political intimidation or economic ransom, thus giving tacit consent to their evil deeds.

Not only are the Biden Administration and its cohorts in the Congress blissfully ignorant of Reagan’s prescient warnings about dealing with evil empires, but they appear to be willing facilitators of China’s strategic goals.

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

In a breathtaking assault on the Constitution of the United States, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed a new law and an executive order targeting his self-declared “Gun Violence Disaster Emergency.”

While the governor’s disdain for the Second Amendment is well-known, the degree to which his July 6 executive order targets the amendment is unprecedented. His actions undercut not only the right to keep and bear arms codified in the Second Amendment, but also broader rights guaranteed against government intrusion by the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the fundamental right to contract protected in the main body of the Constitution.

Even before Cuomo’s brazen executive action last week, New York maintained among the broadest and strictest gun control measures of any state, according to which, among other restrictions, it is almost impossible for a citizen to obtain a required permit to purchase a handgun or secure permission for a concealed carry permit.

Despite the existing array of gun control mandates, Cuomo decided the Empire State now suffers from a “gun violence” emergency necessitating even more extreme measures. The executive order issued last week based on this bogus conclusion, is modeled after COVID pandemic executive mandates Cuomo issued last year, which were used by officials to strip New Yorkers of the most basic of civil liberties.

The “gun violence” on which Cuomo premised his dictatorial actions has nothing to do with lawful ownership of firearms by citizens of the state.

The increased violent crime under which New Yorkers are now suffering is a product of disastrous measures undertaken by the governor, the state’s attorney general, and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio that stripped law enforcement of the tools needed to combat violent crime on the streets and in neighborhoods from Albany to the Bronx. These actions reflect the absurd notion that “reimagining” law enforcement by weakening law enforcement, will result in lowered crime rates. When, predictably, the opposite has happened, Cuomo’s response is to blame lawful gun owners and strip away their civil liberties.

Collaterally damaged by Cuomo’s most recent assault on the Second Amendment is another vital civil liberty — the sanctity of contracts expressly guaranteed by Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits a state from “impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” This provision reflects what our Framers understood to be one of the very pillars of a free people – the assurance that a legal contract between individuals would be protected against abusive government action.

Now, however, in New York contracts that in some vague manner might be considered inconsistent with what Cuomo considers his declared “gun violence disaster emergency,” are subject to being nullified. The extremely broad reach of these provisions in the executive order could be used, for example, to abrogate leases for properties relied on by lawful gun retailers, or to close out bank accounts or banking transactions that directly or indirectly involve the sale or purchase of lawful firearms.

As if these constitutionally troubling July 6 executive actions by Cuomo were not enough, on the same day he signed into law legislation permitting lawsuits against lawful firearms manufacturers and retailers for engaging in a “public nuisance.” This state law conflicts with a 2005 federal law that permits suits against gun retailers or manufacturers only in limited circumstances similar to the liability standard for other manufactured products that can be misused, such as automobiles.

As a result, any firearm manufacturer whose product is sold in New York, or any retailer within the state who sells such a product, now could be subject to being sued based on such action alone. This predicament reflects the extremely broad “public nuisance” laws in the state, coupled with the declaration of a gun-violence emergency under which any firearm can be considered as contributing to that “emergency.”

If all this sounds absurd, it is. However, until these laws and executive actions are challenged successfully (which they ultimately almost certainly will be), Cuomo’s destructive “reimagining” of individual rights has cast New York citizens into an even deeper and darker constitutional hole.

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

California’s slide into a socialist wasteland is hardly news. What is somewhat surprising, or at least intriguing, are the depths of stupidity to which local and state officials in the “Golden State” will go to fulfilling their destiny. Take, for instance, San Jose’s latest anti-gun gambit – a compulsory tax to pay for the “costs” of criminal gun violence, coupled with a tax directly on lawful gun owners by forcing them to purchase liability insurance.

These ordinances most assuredly will be challenged in court, and all but certain to be eventually struck down, even if they survive appeal to the uber-liberal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This means significant public resources will be spent defending mandates not even considered by their proponents to be meaningful. City officials admit as much, saying the ordinances “won’t magically end gun violence,” but vowing to press forward regardless. This should remove any doubt that the city of San Jose considers law-abiding gun owners to be part of the problem and sees them as second-class citizens to be run out of town rather than respect their constitutionally protected rights as Americans.

In all their gushing over how smart and innovative they are with their latest anti-gun scheming, Mayor Sam Liccardo and his equally clueless cohorts on the city council fail to explain how punishing 99.9 percent of non-violent, law-abiding gun owners for the misdeeds of the other .1 percent will have any positive effect on crime in the city.

If California’s already highly restrictive gun laws could not prevent the horrific mass shooting at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in May, what do these dunderheads think a tax and insurance mandate will do?

The same question applies when considering instances of “gun violence” perpetrated by criminals wielding illegal firearms, such as gang members and career criminals. Does Liccardo think these individuals themselves are paying into the system? The answer obviously is “No,” a reality again reflected in the mayor’s own admission that, “criminals won’t obey these mandates.”

This head-scratching, self-contradicting logic would be absurd if stopping gun violence truly was the goal. It is in fact worse. These mandates are designed directly and perversely to chill lawful gun ownership. Even where San Jose could make actual strides in tackling criminal gun violence, such as aggressively pursuing straw sales (already illegal under federal firearms law), the city instead has decided to further harass gun owners by ordering audio and video recordings of all retail gun sales.

Under current law, there is nothing to prevent law enforcement from tracking the serial numbers of guns used in crimes back to the original straw purchaser without such privacy-invasive recordings, but the opportunity to use the threat of a back-door registry via government surveillance in order to chill lawful gun purchases appears to have been too enticing for Liccardo to pass up.

While Liccardo and the San Jose city council may fancy themselves brilliant pioneers of anti-gun proposals, their vacuous ideas simply demonstrate their fundamental incompetence and their unwillingness to enforce laws already on the books to target criminals. For these municipal officials, it obviously is easier to scapegoat law-abiding gun owners for the costs of run-away gun violence by gangs and other criminals within their jurisdiction.

Such strategy, if it even qualifies as one, may score political points with liberal voters and the mainstream media, but the backslapping and fist-bumping will not last long when violent crime does not subside – which it will not. In fact, by running law-abiding gun owners out of town, San Jose will become even more of a haven for criminals. And, for a city that bellyached over “illegal” fireworks stretching their emergency response capabilities too thin, such a future is all but certain.

Instead of targeting citizens who obey the law and just want to be free from government harassment, perhaps Liccardo should ask why it is that so many people are fleeing California cities like his for the prairie towns of Texas. Asking such a question, however, would take a degree of objectivity and common sense clearly not present in today’s San Jose.

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 taxpayers would agree, even if at times grudgingly, that the top priority for expenditure of federal dollars is our national defense, including the technology and hardware with which to win wars, that is, weapon systems. These priorities are funded according to an acquisition system as complex as it is costly, perhaps best illustrated by the $1.7 trillion F-35 “Lightning” fighter jet program that has been plagued by numerous delays and cost increases over the course of its two decade long development history.

Broadly considered, the process by which weapons systems are funded – including everything from four-wheel drive vehicles to massive aircraft carries capable of launching dozens of long-range fighter jets — is known as “weapon system acquisition.” It is a labyrinthine process that has more in common with a Rube Goldberg cartoon contraption than a well-oiled machine. The process is fully understood only by a tightly knit fraternity of current and former top-level Department of Defense officials, key Members of Congress and their staff, and the handful of major corporate defense contractors, the largest by far of which is Lockheed Martin.

As stated by the U.S. Department of Defense in a recent “Program Acquisition Cost by Weapon System,” the goal of this crucial component of our national defense is simple: to ensure that the weapon systems available to and utilized by our men and women in uniform “are unmatched throughout the world, ensuring that U.S. military forces have the advantage over any adversary.”

Few objective observers would dispute the proposition that our fighting forces and global capabilities remain the best in the world. There is, however, considerable room to debate whether the actual weapons systems and related military technology in use currently and planned for the coming decades represents the most efficient and wisest use of taxpayer resources.

The F-35 was designed to meet the projected combat needs for all three branches of our military that deploy fighter aircraft – the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines. The plane has shown itself capable of meeting those needs … when it works. Unfortunately, the F-35 has exhibited a continuing and costly series of deficiencies, from software and cybersecurity failures to structural cracks. These problems have not only swollen its per-unit cost to $110 million (and a total “lifetime” cost of more than $1.7 trillion), but have put its actual deployment far behind schedule.

There are questions about the aircraft’s capabilities even beyond the problems manifested during its lengthy development and initial deployment. For example, its hourly flight operating cost of $44,000 is double that of other jets already in the military’s arsenal, including the F-15, the F-16, and the F/A-18. More troubling from a tactical operating perspective, however, is the fact that each of these other combat jets (along with the F-22) has a higher effective operating range than the F-35, a crucial factor when providing extended air coverage for ground forces.

Not only has the plane failed to meet cost and delivery requirements, but its primary contractor, Lockheed Martin, has been able to secure additional taxpayer-funded contracts to correct those very deficiencies; in other words, to be paid more money to fix problems in its initial manufacturing processes.

Despite these costly and continuing problems, neither recent Congresses nor three successive administrations have bitten the bullet and taken steps to stanch the massive outflow of taxpayer dollars for the F-35 project. Recent congressional hearings have brought renewed attention to the issues, but nothing beyond talk has resulted.

Even as the F-35 program continues to bleed money and deliver ever so slowly on its promises, the Defense Department is making plans for the “Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)” fighter. Whether plans for the “sixth generation” fighter (the F-35 being the “fifth”) will result finally in scaling back the problem-plagued F-35 program, or if new contracts will be awarded on a more traditional and market-driven basis, remains to be seen; but if not, American taxpayers will be in for another, possibly more costly fleecing.

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

It is not clear exactly when it became such an awful burden on citizens to vote on one particular day at a pre-assigned polling place, but somewhere along the line it became so difficult that pressures on state governments resulted in wholesale changes to how, when, and where people actually vote. The changes thus wrought has thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into what had been a well-established, universally understood, and simple system of voting.

Vast expansion of mail-in balloting, coupled with weeks-long “early voting,” has created a Rube Goldberg-like system that has severely undermined voters’ confidence in elections. It also has planted seeds for myriad legal challenges, such as the one filed last week by the Biden Department of Justice challenging Georgia’s recently enacted ballot reform measures.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who still harbors deep resentment of Republicans for refusing to confirm him as a Supreme Court associate justice in the waning weeks of the Obama Administration, was joined at the Justice Department podium last Friday by Kristen Clarke. Together they announced that Georgia was being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act.

Kristen Clarke heads the Department’s Civil Rights Division and has long advocated that America is a deeply racist country. Her current position provides the perfect vehicle with which to drive home her opinions, by alleging that laws designed to make it harder to cheat at the ballot box, are nothing more that disguised measures to perpetuate systemic disenfranchisement of Black voters.

The strings for this litigation will be pulled by Justice Department lawyers but the venue will be the federal District Court in Atlanta, which not coincidentally is the home of Stacey Abrams. Abrams, you may recall, ran for governor in 2018 but lost to Republican Brian Kemp. She has spent the last three years refusing to concede, choosing instead to challenge virtually every move Gov. Kemp makes, including his signing of the voting reform legislation last March.

The provisions of Georgia’s voting reform law actually expanded mail-in balloting beyond existing law (and beyond measures in many other states, including Biden’s home state of Delaware), but obviously not enough to satisfy those like Abrams, Garland, and Clarke who equate ballot integrity with racial disenfranchisement. To these critics, requiring that a voter present a valid identification card at the time they vote, is simply further evidence that Georgia remains, as it always has been in their eyes, a racist state.

The picture painted in the opening pages of the Department’s Complaint against Georgia is bleak, but hardly accurate. It is a picture painted on old parchment by dredging up time-worn allegations of racial gerrymandering lobbed against the state by other Attorneys General, and supplemented by statistics of Black voting strength that, at best, are irrelevant to any charge that racial animus guided the hands of Georgia legislators or the Governor.

In the apt words attributed to former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Garland and Clarke are guilty of “using statistics like drunks use lampposts, for support rather than illumination.”

Notwithstanding the vindictive and baseless claims against Georgia, fighting the lawsuit will be time-consuming and expensive. It necessarily will inject further confusion into an already chaotic 2022 election cycle at a time the country is still reeling from myriad allegations of fraud stemming from last year’s contests. This is, of course, precisely what the Biden Administration wants.

There is far more at stake here than the voting laws of one state.

If the Justice Department prevails in its challenge to Georgia’s law, the Biden Administration will have achieved a major victory in its drive to federalize elections, which is the primary goal of H.R. 1, despite the President not having the votes in the Senate to pass that truly terrible piece of legislation.

Another motive for this challenge to Georgia’s voting reforms is to intimidate any other “red” states that might have recently enacted voting reform measures, or which may be planning to do so.

For a President eager to do anything to keep the leftwing extremists in his own Party off his back, and perhaps to assuage his own sense of guilt for having in the recent past eulogized a former Ku Klux Klan leader, abusing the power of the Department of Justice in this way is an easy step to take.

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

Emperor Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned. President Joe Biden does not even offer the American people the benefit of music while cities across our country are aflame in murders.

Instead, the president has decided to target for punishment the one group of businesses in the front line of ensuring that firearms do not fall into the hands of criminals: Federal Firearms Licensees or “FFLs,” which includes businesses engaged in the retail sales of firearms and ammunition.

These businesses are heavily regulated by government at all levels, most especially the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The regulatory regimen each of these tens of thousands of businesses must follow in order not to lose their federally issued license to sell firearms includes maintaining detailed records for every firearm that comes into or leaves their possession. The businesses are subject to periodic, often unannounced visits by ATF personnel who can demand access to their records and inventory.

Every firearm sold by an FFL must be accompanied by a federal form meticulously filled out by the prospective purchaser, double-checked by the salesperson and then submitted electronically or by phone to the FBI for a background check before the purchaser may take possession of the gun. Additionally, it is a federal felony offense for an FFL to permit a so-called “straw purchase,” that is, allowing the purchaser of record to buy the gun for someone else not lawfully qualified to possess it.

These myriad requirements apply whether the firearm is a .22 caliber derringer, a 12-ga. pump shotgun or an AR-15 rifle, which is by far the most popular rifle owned by millions of law-abiding citizens.

Although the AR-15 is rarely used by criminals, this administration remains fixated on the AR-15, which it has labeled a “weapon of war,” notwithstanding the rifle is not standard issue for U.S. armed forces for the simple reason it is not capable of automatic fire (unless illegally modified).

To state that the firearms retail business is a highly regulated practice would be a major understatement, and the vast majority of FFLs take their responsibility extremely seriously. Many require multiple checkpoints between a prospective purchaser completing the requisite federal form (known as a Form 4473) and leaving the store with their new firearm. As in any business, of course, mistakes occasionally do happen, but the last thing any FFL wants is to learn that a firearm sold by their business was used in a crime.

The thanks that firearms retailers now receive from the Biden administration for diligently policing gun sales, is to be demonized. Last week, Biden took a momentary break from repeating the canard that the AR-15 is the major culprit in gun crimes, to announce a “zero tolerance” program to put “rogue” FFLs out of business. There is no factual or reasoned connection between violent crime rates, especially murder, and federally licensed gun stores, but recognizing this fact would cloud Biden’s drive to be crowned the toughest anti-gun president in history.

The facts on murder rates as but one example of how violent crime has risen since the start of 2020, are sobering even if ignored by this administration.

Among major metropolitan areas, for example, murder rates last year increased 95% in Milwaukee, 73% in Minneapolis, 62% in New Orleans, 74% in Seattle, and 78% in Louisville. In my hometown of Atlanta, the increase was more modest at “only” 58%. The overwhelming majority (some 75%) of murders are committed by criminals using a firearm, and most of the guns so used were obtained unlawfully and not from FFLs.

Despite this reality, Biden, along with his pick to head ATF, the avowed gun control advocate David Chipman, invariably opt for the cheap, but inaccurate headline rather than addressing the difficult problems underlying increases in violent crime.

Were he truly interested in tackling violent crime, Biden would sit down with those on the front line dealing with these matters, including among others and most importantly, law enforcement leaders (and not only those who support him politically). The President would be well advised also to consult with and listen to firearms retailers, who are as concerned as anyone with stopping violent crime and who actually are in a position to help.

Unfortunately, Biden prefers to demonize these potential allies rather than seek their assistance.

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

Most Americans understand that in our system of justice, a person is “innocent until proven guilty” and that someone cannot be punished if they are not guilty. Bedrock due process, right? Not necessarily.

For years, many judges have punished individuals who appear before them even though they have been determined to be innocent. These judges, all of whom have taken an oath to uphold our Constitution, are basically thumbing their nose at jurors who had determined the government failed to meet its burden of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unfortunately, this practice has not been halted either by the U.S. Supreme Court or federal law.

Finally, however, a bipartisan group of United States senators are pushing legislation that would prohibit this shameful practice of punishing people for crimes for which they had not been convicted.

The bill is S.601, the “Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021.”

Observers might scratch their head and wonder why such a piece of legislation is even needed, considering the clarity with which our Bill of Rights guarantees such fundamental rights as due process, equal protection of the law, and freedom from excessive punishment, among others. But such a law is needed, and it is needed now.

The practice of punishing individuals for crimes not proven results from a decades-long trend of giving judges and prosecutors ever more power over defendants coming before them. Mandatory minimum sentences may be perhaps the most visible reflection of this trend but is certainly not the only one.

The problem had not escaped the attention of sitting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his two late colleagues, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In 2014, this trio nearly succeeded in securing the necessary votes to hear a case that could have put an end to the practice of punishment for crimes not committed. In his dissent of not granting cert — Jones v. United States – Scalia issued one of his trademark blistering opinions, bluntly castigating the majority for failing to “put an end to the unbroken string of cases disregarding” such rights as those guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which contains basic guarantees for fair criminal prosecutions.

Scalia found the case particularly offensive because it was not simply a matter of a judge sentencing defendants based on conduct the jury had not considered, but conduct as to which the jury had expressly already acquitted the defendants.

Now, seven years later judges still are not prohibited from doing precisely what those three highly respected Supreme Court justices found to be impermissible under our Constitution.

The so-called Capitol Hill “insurrection” last January 6th presents a perfect picture of how the unchecked power to punish individuals for crimes for which they were charged but not convicted, could be used to hammer them.

Many of those charged for actions on January 6th have been denied bail by federal judges, notwithstanding having no prior criminal record or not themselves charged with crimes of violence. Many face multiple charges, making it easy for government prosecutors to pressure them into pleading to some but not all the listed charges. Without the benefit of S.601 being passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Biden, many of these defendants face the unenviable prospect of having their punishment enhanced by a vindictive judge if they decide to plead to fewer or lesser charges, or if found by a jury to be not guilty of some but not all of the charged offenses.

While the unusual coalition of Scalia, Thomas, and Ginsburg raised a few eyebrows at the time, it drew much needed attention for the need to rein in the unchecked power of judges to unfairly punish individuals brought before them for sentencing.

Whether the key sponsors of S.601, particularly Sens. Durbin (D-IL) and Grassley (R-IA) as the chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, will be able to emulate that feat in the Legislative Branch, is far from certain considering the deep partisan divide currently infecting all of Washington, D.C. If they are able to pull it off, and if Biden then signs the bill into law, at least one important element of fairness and due process that used to undergird our Bill of Rights, will have been restored.

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, the Biden administration proudly released its promised “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” At the same time, the White House issued a four-page “FACT SHEET” summarizing the 30-page strategy report. Presenting a “Fact Sheet” in this context is ironic, considering there is not a single fact or piece of hard evidence within the report; it is all opinion, wishful thinking and annoyingly repetitive verbiage.

Still, a fair reading of the document reveals a host of legal and constitutional problems that its implementation would present, and it therefore must be considered seriously and not brushed aside as simply another exercise in federal government bloviation.

At the outset, it should surprise no one that the overarching threat necessitating this entire strategy is “white supremacy”  spawned by the “racism and bigotry” this administration clearly considers unshakably imbedded in our culture.

Whether it is expanded government watchlists, additional federal criminal laws (including that of “domestic terrorism”), more gun control, a cozier relationship between social media platforms and the federal government or simply delivering more “financial relief to millions of Americans” (yes, more deficit spending is a specified priority), this “National Strategy” plants the seeds for more to come over the course of the next three-and-one-half years.

Scooped up in its wide net as a threat to be addressed by the implementation of this program are pretty much any “ideologies” or grievances that might serve to motivate any person or group to violence. Indeed, at one point the report discards any notion that its broad sweep might be in some manner limited, by declaring that “domestic terrorists” could include “individuals [who] may develop their own idiosyncratic justification for violence that defy ready categorization.”

Therein lies perhaps the most serious defect in the extremely broad scope of what Biden appears planning to do, which is to make it a federal crime to express “extremist” views that are hateful against other individuals, groups or the government itself. As noted in an analysis by Patrick Eddington published the same day as Biden’s report (June 15) on the Cato at Liberty Blog, such a move would raise immediate and serious First Amendment issues. More specifically, in appearing to advocate for new laws and federal powers that could be deployed against “extremist views” without being linked directly to inciting violence and likely to result in violence or unlawful acts, the administration would be proposing something at odds with long-standing Supreme Court precedent.

Of significant concern also in this strategic offering are tricks to blur the bright line that since the late 1970s has served to prevent federal law enforcement from lumping together investigations of domestic criminal acts with international ones. This sleight-of-hand would make it much easier to gather evidence against domestic terrorism (meaning, for Biden, “extremist” views or actions), by claiming there are “international” or “foreign” connections. This concern is reinforced by the report’s noting that the U.S. Department of State would be an important player in implementing the administration’s domestic extremism strategy.

Buttressing the report’s emphasis on the State Department’s role in fighting domestic extremism, is the fact that Biden recently announced the United States was joining the “Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online.” In endorsing this approach, Biden has thrown in with a number of other countries, led by New Zealand and France following the 2019 attack on a mosque in Christchurch. The signatory governments commit to partnering with social media to restrict use of those platforms in furthering or broadcasting “violent extremist content.” The Trump administration wisely had declined to sign onto this plan because of its First Amendment defects; concerns Biden obviously does not share.

Biden’s plan descends to the absurd when it asserts that studying the “iconography, symbology, and phraseology” used by domestic terrorists is an essential component of a national strategy to counter domestic terrorism. Studying hieroglyphics supposedly used by 21st Century domestic extremists illustrates the shallowness of the administration’s approach, but the many legal and constitutional dangers lurking within it are deadly serious.

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.