by Bob Barr | Apr 25, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The battle over whether, how, and when to raise the national debt ceiling rages on Capitol Hill and at the White House. While political leaders tussle over the “Big Picture” balance between debt and spending, we must ensure that none of the key elements of our defense budget suffer collateral damage in the confusion. Considering today’s threatening global environment in which we are sending billions of dollars in military munitions to Ukraine in a proxy war with Russia, and as we face an increasing bellicose China in regions from the Taiwan Strait to west Africa, it is more important than ever that no key components of our defense strategy be overlooked or short-changed. The ongoing and complex budget/debt battle creates the “perfect storm” in which defense doves and special interest groups might be able to chip away at certain defense programs. They must not be allowed to succeed, especially when it comes to such often overlooked factors as military logistics and supply lines. While last week’s proposal by Speaker McCarthy to link debt ceiling relief to cuts in several of Biden’s favored spending programs will never be supported in toto by Democrats, budget cuts or caps for some programs may yet emerge as a price those on the other side of the aisle may be willing to accept in return for the overarching goal of increasing the debt ceiling. This is where the details matter. Mid-air refueling capability for our fleet of aircraft rarely makes the evening news. Without it, however, combat readiness and effective warfighting capability come to a standstill, especially in the vast Pacific theater...
by Bob Barr | Apr 20, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall A report on criminal law published last month by the International Commission of Jurists in collaboration with the United Nations, could easily serve as a handbook for the looting, filth, and general lawlessness now infecting many U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Typical of virtually every report drafted by the United Nations and related international organizations, this one was long in the drafting, taking a full five years to compose. Also, like other U.N.-created reports, it has a ridiculously long and convoluted title: The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty. A shorter and more accurate title would be How To Destroy Civil Society By Abandoning the Rule of Law. Central to the Report’s thesis is the notion that a society’s criminal laws must in every instance yield to and be secondary to “human rights.” In this approach, no criminal law should be permitted to “restrict the exercise of any human right” unless such a law is itself “consistent with other rights recognized under international human rights law.” To cement this circular thesis, the Report declares that if there might ever arise any question about the reach of a country’s criminal law, it must never be construed “to an accused person’s disadvantage.” To further undercut any legal system that might still employ a criminal code, the Report asserts that “international law” trumps any system of “domestic law,” which would include, for example, our Constitution. And, borrowing a phrase employed often by liberals here in the United States to justify...
by Bob Barr | Apr 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Growing up in such far-flung locations as Baghdad, Iraq, Lima, Peru, and Tehran, Iran, did not present me and my five siblings with what might be considered a typical, traditional childhood. We overcame the challenges with which we had to cope in those varied environments by employing skills learned from our parents. Probably the most valuable tool in that oft-changing journey was the fact that we were permitted a great deal of freedom and flexibility within which to take risks, exercise judgment, experiment, make mistakes, and eventually, learn; all steps taken long before the advent of the internet and social media. The political environments in which I grew from a third-grader at the only American school in Baghdad in the late 1950s to a senior in an international school in Tehran a decade later, were such that neither Muslim extremism nor violent drug cartels were factors with which we had to deal. Since then, of course, such dangers present themselves in ways that cannot be ignored for Americans living or raising families in many of the countries in which I roamed as a teenager. However, the fundamental skills with which my parents armed me and which allowed me to not only survive but thrive in such diverse settings, are those that still today should be among the most basic that parents should be affording their children. Teaching children to gain, understand, and use knowledge equips them with the power to assess situations they face, assume and assess risks, make reasoned judgments, and undertake courses of conduct that will, more often than not, allow them to mature and...
by Bob Barr | Apr 13, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller It takes just two words to drive liberals to their corner and conservatives to theirs: “Second Amendment.” The mere mention will send liberals into conniptions and conservatives into code red defense mode. Lost in this repetitive exercise is any opportunity to solve a serious problem facing 21st Century America – young people so alienated and detached from any moral or ethical moorings that murdering young school children presents itself as appropriate behavior. The problem is not that we as a society are bereft of solutions. The problem is that a partisan political curtain descends whenever there is a mass shooting, effectively blocking us from taking meaningful steps to reduce the chance for a recurrence of such tragedy. A recent opinion piece by C. Joshua Villines, a certified threat manager and a board member of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals, addresses the problem and suggests realistic solutions, without ever using the words “gun control” or “Second Amendment.” His recent essay, “We know how to prevent school violence [by] Adopting research-based, established procedures [that] can mitigate risk,” focuses not on partisan or political policies, but instead on the existing body of research about the “risks for a person to commit an act of targeted violence” and the known “strategies that can mitigate that risk.” Villines correctly notes that those who commit acts of “targeted violence” do so in ways that by and large are predictable, and that we know “from decades of work” the risk factors that can help us identify potential shooters. If followed, this process can lessen the chances that those factors will play themselves out in tragedies such as that...
by Bob Barr | Apr 12, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall America clearly is in the throes of a cultural campaign for transgender rights, privileges, and immunities. It is a multi-faceted movement at once entertaining and dangerous. The handwriting was on the wall six years ago, when the August 2017 National Geographic cover depicted a transgendered child and devoted its contents to the “Gender Revolution.” Now, in early 2023, we have Dylan Mulvaney, a well-known transgender “influencer,” as the new face of corporate giants Nike and Anheuser Busch. Soon we may see Mulvaney grace the cover of Popular Mechanics. When that same biological male – Dylan Mulvaney – is hawking not only Bud Light and sports bras but Tampax tampons, the question legitimately needs to be asked, “just what is going on here?” It is not only major corporations, including Nike, Proctor & Gamble, and Anheuser Busch that have jumped aboard the transgender bandwagon. Universities and now, the federal government and the judiciary are all in. Just last week, President Biden decreed that any education institution receiving U.S. taxpayer dollars (which is most every school in the country) cannot stop biological males who “identify” as female from competing against biological females. Even the Supreme Court seems to be intimidated — refusing to consider putting the brake on the practice even after state legislation declares it unfair. While videos of Dylan Mulvaney prancing around in a Nike bra or guzzling Bud Light in a bathtub full of soapsuds may seem comical on its face, with the feds now waiting in the wings to sue schools that consider it unfair for biological men to compete against biological women, the transgender glorification movement truly...
