by Bob Barr | Jun 1, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall A surprisingly unanimous Supreme Court decision last week finally clipped the ever-expanding wings of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For more than half a century, imperious regulators at the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, with which it shares regulatory jurisdiction over “wetlands” and “navigable waters of the United States,” have worked to prevent citizens and businesses from taking common sense steps to develop privately owned property in ways that benefit them and which have no significant negative impact on the environment. One ploy the EPA and the Army Corps often have used in their war on private property owners, is to assert expansive jurisdiction over small or occasional bodies of water and “wetlands” — claiming these constitute “navigable waters of the United States,” and are therefore subject to regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA). This was the predicament in which Michael and Chantell Sackett found themselves in 2007, when the EPA moved to stop them from improving their small parcel of property near Priest Lake, Idaho. The Sacketts had, in the eyes of Uncle Sam’s regulators, committed an egregious offense by failing to first obtain a Corps of Engineers permit before taking preliminary steps to improve their property. The government claimed the property contained “wetlands” that in some way and at some point in time had a “nexus” to a navigable waterway of the United States. The Sacketts’ position was simple — property with no waterway at all, much less one that is “navigable,” does not transmogrify into “navigable water” simply because it is near such a waterway and might contain some occasional “wetlands.”...
by Bob Barr | May 30, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Students are learning less and fighting more. The Biden Administration, which seems to view virtually every policy matter through a racial lens, however, is making it more difficult for schools to actually protect teachers and students. The dispute over how to discipline disruptive students is nothing new. Unfortunately, this Administration, like its predecessor under President Obama, has made it a cultural and legal flashpoint, with little regard for the actual safety of those involved, including teachers. The current and ongoing debate about school discipline was teed up in January 2014 when President Obama’s Education and Justice departments issued a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining how Uncle Sam wanted schools to administer “discipline” without racially discriminatory effect. Four years later, the Trump Administration rescinded the Obama “guidance” on school discipline and issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter on December 21, 2018, returning primary responsibility for disciplining students back to local schools and school boards. For the past two years, the Biden Administration’s departments of Education and Justice have been “reviewing” Trump’s 2018 guidance letter, and on May 26th, issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter, re-focusing on federally determined “racial disparities” in school discipline. Each of these “Dear Colleague” letters, although not possessed of direct legal power, carries significant weight in alerting state and local schools how the federal government will come down on them if they fail to follow the “guidance” contained therein. The Obama-Biden approach to school discipline was and now remains, one that presumes racial discrimination in any discipline policy where minority students are disciplined at a higher rate, or more harshly, than their non-minority counterparts. Thus, starting in January 2014 the Department of Justice was...
by Bob Barr | May 25, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Since its founding in 1971 as an organization with the laudable mission of fighting the KKK and other white supremacy groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has raised hundreds of millions of dollars with which it has leveled countless legal and public relations attacks against various “hate groups.” Money aside, however, the SPLC is today a shell of its former self, beset with internal unrest and displaying a muddled focus. The Center no longer maintains the aura of invincibility that for decades made it essentially immune from serious legal challenges. Much of the Center’s current troubles can be traced to 2019, when a major scandal centered on sexual harassment allegations forced the ouster of its co-founder and long-time leader, Morris Dees. Perhaps as a result of that major setback, the SPLC appears to have lost its sharp edge, and now appears to be targeting “hate” groups for no clear reason other than because it can. The Dustin Inman Society, based in a northwest suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, has found itself in those SPLC crosshairs because it has, since its founding in 2005, vocally opposed illegal immigration. The SPLC on the other hand, has long defended immigration, so it is no surprise that for years, the Center expressed its dislike for the Dustin Inman Society and its founder, D.A. King. That changed, however, in 2018 when the SPLC decided to list the small Dustin Inman Society as a “hate group,” and noted it as such on the Center’s website. In response to being thus targeted by the SPLC, the Dustin Inman Society sued the Center for defamation. In a decision last month,...
by Bob Barr | May 23, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In 1962, the BBC launched a political comedy show called That Was The Week That Was (“TW3”). While the show ran for only two seasons (cancelled in 1964 for fear it would impact that year’s British elections), it spawned a similarly titled but also short-lived television show in the U.S. that focused on political satire. Over just the past several days, the Left has provided us with more than sufficient satire to fill an hour-long TW3 show, not even counting the ongoing physical and mental bloopers by President Biden. The New York City Council led the most recent comedic parade when it passed a measure adding “weight discrimination” to the city’s growing list of factors that employers and others may not consider in making business or other decisions. The legislation has been sent to Mayor Eric Adams, who himself had written a book in 2020 recounting his journey losing 35 pounds on a “plant-based diet.” While illegal immigration and subway crime continue to plague the Big Apple, the city’s elected leaders apparently have concluded that “fat shaming” is a more serious and immediate problem; a position echoed by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) – an actual nonprofit advocacy group, not an organization created for a satire program. It should be noted that New York is no Johnny-Come-Lately to such Nanny State-ism. In late 2015, for example, the city adopted “guidelines” banning the “misgendering” of individuals. Given its history of woke-ism, it is a virtual certainty that New York City will continue to provide material for many future editions of TW3. On the west coast, San Francisco’s always entertaining city council joined its east-coast counterpart when it announced...
by Bob Barr | May 18, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall When the Surgeon General of the United States this month issued an official “Advisory” on Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, I was inclined to dismiss the paper as just another example of the federal government spending taxpayer money on an issue over which it has no reasonable jurisdiction. While the Loneliness “alarm” published by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is in fact another taxpayer-funded project over which there is no reasonable basis in the Constitution giving Uncle Sam legitimate jurisdiction, the nation’s “Top Doc” is actually onto something here, even if he fails to consider one of its primary causes. Humans are fundamentally “social animals,” and for millennia social relationships have provided the context in which cultures develop and thrive (or not). Social discourse is the medium in which advances are made, in everything from the sciences to philosophy and from medicine to government structure. Failure to engage socially on both individual and collective levels can be, and demonstrably are, factors contributing to stagnation at the micro and macro level. The very form of government and social structure embodied in our Constitution is framed as a “social compact.” Without social interaction, interpersonal discourse, and mutual understanding, the relationships between the citizenry and government, and the checks and balances incorporated into our constitutional republic, will no longer provide the essential ingredients for us to remain free. There are, as Dr. Murthy describes in his Advisory, other very real benefits to social interactions. The Surgeon General notes that isolation from fellow humans has been shown to diminish an individual’s mental and physical health, even leading to increased risk of...
