by Bob Barr | Apr 24, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comThe Cold War years of the 1960s gave rise to two very different cinematic characterizations of spies – the debonair but ruthless James Bond (aka “Agent 007”), and the bumbling but likeable Maxwell Smart (aka “Agent 86”). Now, half a century later, the federal government has jailed 30-year old Maria Butina as a Russian spy and has asserted that her secretive actions posed a serious threat to our nation’s security. The reality, however, is that Butina’s activities fit far more easily into an episode of Get Smart than as a serious espionage case.During her time as both a visitor and a student in the U.S. from 2015 until her arrest and indictment last year, Butina attended numerous political events while maintaining contacts with officials in her home country. The Department of Justice appropriately has alleged that acting in this manner, Butina violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register thereunder. She ultimately was pressured into pleading guilty to conspiring to violate that statute. In spite of being arrested and held in solitary confinement for what essentially constitutes an administrative offense, Butina’s biggest mistake appears to be that her activities and her paperwork omission placed her squarely within the ongoing narrative of Russian collusion.The Sentencing Memorandum filed last week by the Justice Department, for example, concedes that Butina is neither “a spy in the traditional sense” nor a “trained intelligence officer.” The government instead asserts that Butina conspired to use “connections” developed during her sojourn in the United States to create “backchannel communications” to the Russian government. Characterizing all this as a serious espionage conspiracy, however, is somewhat of a...
by Bob Barr | Apr 22, 2019 | Townhall Article |
The Daily CallerThe expression “cut off your nose to spite your face” has been in use for centuries. I’m not sure it translates easily into Spanish, but it reflects accurately what the Trump administration did earlier this month in nixing a pending agreement between Major League Baseball (“MLB”) and its Cuban counterpart (the “FCB”).The MLB had spent years hashing out an agreement with the FCB that would establish a lawful and workable process by which Cuban ballplayers could be scouted in Cuba by U.S. major league teams, and then signed to gainful contracts.The proposed deal would have freed Cuban players from having to rely — as they now must — on dealing with smugglers and unscrupulous agents in order to secure passage out of their home country and into the United States in order to participate in “America’s pastime.” This is because under the existing embargo rules governing U.S.-Cuba relations, players in that country cannot negotiate as free agents while still in Cuba. Thus, these players, including many eagerly sought-after by MLB scouts, have to find surreptitious (and dangerous) ways to leave their island nation; evading the many obstacles placed in their way by the Cuban government.The Dec. 19 agreement would have solved those problems, and by every reasonable standard would have been a win for players, MLB teams, and baseball fans. Importantly, the MLB made sure the proposed agreement was vetted through the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). This is the agency charged with ensuring that no U.S. national security interests are compromised in arrangements between American and foreign entities.OFAC in fact had given...
by Bob Barr | Apr 17, 2019 | Townhall Article |
Townhall.comLast week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London by a phalanx of British police officers; abruptly ending his nearly seven years of self-imposed political asylum in those cramped quarters. Far from ending the saga that began almost a decade ago when WikiLeaks published the trove of classified materials pilfered from the U.S. government by convicted spy Chelsea (formerly, Bradley) Manning, last week’s drama raises a slew of new questions about Washington’s sudden, high-level interest in this 48-year old Australian entrepreneur, computer programmer, and publisher. Extradition proceedings in the U.K. will launch what is certain to be a lengthy and complex legal battle that ultimately will determine if Assange will be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice; or even if he can be prosecuted by our government. Where this will end up – and who will be the winners — is far from certain.The Justice Department last week unsealed a year-old indictment charging that Assange conspired with Manning in 2010 to break into Defense Department computers. According to this remarkably short (six-page) indictment, Manning then was able to download and copy hundreds of thousands of classified documents, mostly having to do with military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan; and many of which WikiLeaks published on its website over the course of the next year.Interestingly, Assange is not charged with any substantive offense; only with conspiring to help Manning in the acts that eventually saw her convicted of espionage by a court martial. Assange is sure to defend against federal prosecution based on the claim that — since he published the materials received from Manning in...
by Bob Barr | Apr 10, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comAs the saying goes, “it was great while it lasted.” On Friday, March 29th U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued an 86-page Order declaring unconstitutional California’s law criminalizing possession of firearm magazines with a capacity to hold more than 10 rounds. The senior jurist, who was confirmed to his post in 2004 following nomination by President George W. Bush, went further than do most judges when striking down a state law as contrary to the U.S. Constitution. He directed that his Order be effective immediately. In other words, Judge Benitez did not allow California to continue to enforce the unconstitutional law while the state appealed the decision (a process that can be expected to take months).Unfortunately, less than one week later – on Thursday, April 4th – Benitez relented, and stayed his Order so as to give California’s very liberal Attorney General, former Congressman Xavier Becerra, opportunity to appeal the decision to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Notwithstanding the judge’s about-face, his lengthy opinion declaring the magazine ban incompatible with the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right to keep and bear arms,” deserves continued scrutiny and praise. The opinion is strikingly lucid in explaining both the history and the practical necessity of allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, if they so choose, with a firearm capable of firing more than 10 rounds without reloading.At the outset, Benitez properly underpins his analysis of the magazine ban by asserting that at its core, the Second Amendment is about self-defense; not hunting, not gun collecting, but defense of one’s person, family and home. Moreover, as he explains further, this foundational principle extends...
by Bob Barr | Apr 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerIf you were to guess the most critical problem faced by President Trump in dealing with the flood of illegal immigration at our southern border, what would it be? Foreign government-sponsored migration caravans? Funding for the border wall? A shortage of border patrol agents? Indeed, these all are aspects of the serious problems Trump is encountering in addressing the ongoing crisis at out southern border; but they fail to get to the heart of the problem the president faces in taking steps to solve the crisis.In a word, judges are the main obstacle standing between the president and his ability to seriously address the border crisis. Federal judges.Interestingly, our founding fathers warned of this very problem more than two centuries ago. “At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1823. “Experience however soon shewed in what way they were to become the most dangerous.”Jefferson’s comments reflect what many of our founders feared; that while the the powers of the republic were vested in three co-ordinate (not “co-equal”) branches, each acting as a check on the others, the furtive creep of judicial power over the years would lead to an imbalance in power, inviting a tyranny of the judiciary. This is exactly where we find ourselves today, 230 years after the Constitution was ratified.Article III of the Constitution outlines specific and limited responsibilities for the federal judiciary; but it was not until the 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, that the concept of judicial review of the nation’s laws took hold. Judicial review...
