by Bob Barr | Dec 19, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Verbally attack, or simply criticize in public transgenderism or the gay lifestyle, and you are roundly condemned as trans-phobic or homo-phobic. The term “pro-choice” is the favored moniker to describe those who favor legalized abortion rather than “pro-abortion.” Those who are opposed to abortion, whether on religious, moral, or political grounds, are demeaned as “anti-choice.” Thus is contemporary left-wing culture consumed with staking out their territory as guardians of lifestyles. Mass murders involving firearms become not examples of the need for culture control to identify and resolve cultural behaviors leading to the devaluation of life, but to the simplistic call for instrument control, that is, gun control. Virtually every incident involving gun violence, including most recently the December 16th shooting at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, is headlined by President Biden as illustrating the need for “gun control” not as a call to protect “life.” This month, in perhaps the clearest yet personification of the Left’s disregard for principles of life, the alleged murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson is hailed as a true man of the people, a heroic persona even, deified to a degree Bonnie and Clyde could only hope to have aspired during their brief crime spree across America’s heartland during the bleak days of the Great Depression. Luigi Mangione is seen through this lens of his expanding social media savvy fans as “radiant,” an “American hero,” and a modern-day “Robin Hood” – a video sensation even as he is led in shackles into a jail facility in Pennsylvania while he awaits extradition to New York where the cold-blooded murder took place with Mangione allegedly shooting his...
by Bob Barr | Dec 12, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller With President-elect Donald Trump’s recent nomination of Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general, and his naming of Gail Slater to head the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, the groundwork has been laid to begin unshackling America’s marketplace, which has for decades been hampered by unnecessary regulations and — during the Biden Administration — subjected to out-and-out lawfare by the very Department of Justice supposed to protect the marketplace from anti-competitive forces. The question now is, how quickly can these abusive, economic lawfare practices be struck from the Department’s agenda and an originalist interpretation of the nation’s antitrust laws restored? The mission of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to uphold federal law. The Department, however, cannot and has never carried out this mission in a vacuum. As a component of the executive branch of the federal government, it operates necessarily — and appropriately — according to the underlying policy preferences of the elected president. It bears reminding that Democrats lost the presidential election in November. Whether the losers like it or not, President-elect Trump has every right to choose individuals to occupy top positions at the Justice Department who will respect and implement the policies that clearly and openly were at the foundation of his Nov. 5 electoral victory. Moreover, Trump is fully empowered to populate the top echelons of the Department with men and women who – unlike his soon-to-be predecessor – actually respect the rule of law and who will not employ the powers of the Justice Department to undermine legal norms and the institutions our Founders so carefully crafted. For...
by Bob Barr | Nov 13, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller As with any national election, there are winners and losers. There are celebrations and there are postmortems. There is recrimination and there are congratulations. After their shellacking at the polls Nov. 5, Democrats unsurprisingly are pointing fingers, casting blame and channeling their anger; some already scheming for 2026 and 2028. Meanwhile, the one person most responsible for what still is unfolding as a historically significant election is doing exactly what he should be doing. Donald J. Trump is laying the groundwork to begin dismantling a federal government that has been allowed to grow into a morbidly obese and regulatory oppressive behemoth under successive Democrat and Republican administrations. Not since Ronald Reagan took on Uncle Sam in his first term has the left faced such a serious threat. What makes this go ‘round far different from Reagan’s 1980 drubbing of Jimmy Carter is the magnitude and multitude of attacks leveled at Trump before the election – a barrage no presidential candidate before him had endured. Sure, Reagan was attacked by the Democrat Party throughout the 1980 campaign, even as he had to fight off efforts by the GOP establishment that never really warmed to his anti-Washington rhetoric. But the campaign against Trump, which began even before Joe Biden was sworn into office Jan. 20, 2021, is something our country never previously had witnessed. To the horror and dismay of Democrats and many moderate Republicans, and against all odds, Trump still prevailed. Also unlike Reagan’s 1980 win (with his coattails ushering in a GOP majority in the Senate) — after which politics settled down into a “normal” transition — Trump’s opponents largely have...
by Bob Barr | Nov 7, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Hindsight may be 20-20, but it can be illustrative and reliable. Here are nine errors Kamala Harris should not have committed during the course of losing her admittedly truncated campaign. Above all, don’t define your campaign as one centered on “change” and then declare there was nothing at all you would change in your own record as vice president. I mean, who couldn’t see this one coming a mile away? Less than one month out from Election Day, Harris gleefully appeared on “The View” with its six uber-liberal glamour gals, and was thrown the softest of softball questions by co-hostess Sunny Hostin — “What, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?” The whiff of her milquetoast answer that she would not have changed a thing reverberated all the way to her drubbing at Trump’s hands on Tuesday. You’re a “change agent” who wouldn’t “change” a thing? Kiddo, you deserve to lose on that one alone. But there’s more lessons to be learned here. Use celebrities sparingly and certainly don’t rely on them. Sure, voters, especially young ones, love celebrities like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey, and the host of others the Harris campaign trotted out over the four months of her campaign. But any campaign manager worth their salt will tell you that celebrities are like snowflakes – beautiful to look at but quickly melt. This lesson un-learned by Harris was especially obvious when compared to Trump’s campaign which wisely avoided playing the “look-at-me” celebrity card. Trump, after all, doesn’t need celebrities to burnish his image. Trump is his own celebrity. ...
by Bob Barr | Oct 24, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall It is a time-honored tradition that high-ranking U.S. government officials are – a few easily surmountable legal limitations notwithstanding — permitted to cash in on their public service when they leave Uncle Sam and enter or reenter the private sector. Even modern-day presidents have done so; some more than others (can you say, the “Clinton Foundation?”), but all have gained significant wealth after leaving office. The circumstances involving Barack Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who apparently has signed on as a lawyer representing a Chinese drone-manufacturing corporation, however, raises concerns that go beyond post-public service profiteering and impact our national security. Not only is Lynch serving as an attorney for Shenzhen DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (“DJI”) – the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones – but she has sued the U.S. Department of Defense on behalf of her Chinese client. This is troubling in a number of ways, most importantly because the Chinese drone manufacturing company DJI has for the past few years been listed by the Pentagon as a company with which our government should not deal, because of problematic relationships with the communist Chinese military. Apparently this is of less concern to our former attorney general that what is certain to be a significant retainer her firm is receiving for representing the company. The close relationship between “private” Chinese companies and the communist-controlled government in Beijing and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army or “PLA,” is well-established and open to no real dispute. Despite superficial steps orchestrated by President Xi in recent years to appear more benign and market-oriented, according to experts these relationships in fact are more significant...
