by Bob Barr | Jan 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller On January 10th, Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, fresh from being sworn in to a second term, signed into law a sweeping gun control bill that bans so-called “assault-style weapons”(which he absurdly calls “weapons of war”), including numerous handguns, rifles, and shotguns, and, of course, the AR-15 platform rifle which is the most popular rifle in the country. Pritzker’s action has put him on a collision course with more than seven dozen of the state’s elected sheriffs who are refusing to enforce at least some of the new law’s provisions because they consider it, rightly, to conflict with the Second Amendment. Among many provisions onerous to otherwise law-abiding firearms owners, the new law requires that individuals fortunate enough to have owned any now-banned firearms prior to Pritzker’s action must register them with the state police in order to avoid becoming instant criminals. The broad reach of the governor’s mandate, including the draconian registration mandates, is the flashpoint between him and the sheriffs who have publicly stated their disagreement with the law. The new law became effective when Pritzker signed it, and the governor indicated he expects all law enforcement officials in the state, including sheriffs, to enforce its many mandates. In response to the sheriffs’ statements indicating they will not do his bidding, the governor issued a veiled threat that the offending sheriffs would not be in office long. Sheriffs in Illinois, as in the vast majority of the 50 states, are elected by voters, and thereby immune from Pritzker’s huffing and puffing. Still, the confrontation between these two elected public figures – a governor and local county sheriffs – illustrates one of the key dynamics of American...
by Bob Barr | Jan 12, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Every impeachment article filed in the U.S. House of Representatives recites, as it must, the language found in Art. II Sec. 4 of the Constitution, that the target has committed “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Increasingly, however, the constitutional vehicle by which to begin the process of removing from office not only a president but any “civil Officers of the United States,” has become a tool with which to express congressional displeasure with a president’s policies or now, those of a cabinet official. On Monday, just days after Speaker Kevin McCarthy assumed his post and swore in 434 Members of the 118th Congress (there being one vacancy), a resolution calling for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was introduced. The impeachment resolution, H.Res. 8, has not yet been officially printed, but according to its sponsor, Texas Republican Pat Fallon, it charges that Mayorkas “engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with his duties,” and undertook “willful actions [to] erode our immigration system, undermine border patrol morale, and imperil American national security.” On top of all that, Mayorkas lied to the Congress by claiming falsely that our border with Mexico is “secure.” Evidence that Mayorkas has been a disaster at Homeland Security is not hard to come by. Illegal border crossings are at historically high levels, illicit drugs, especially fentanyl, are flooding across our southern border, and morale among border patrol officers is extremely low. By any reasoned definition of the term, the border is not “secure.” Gross incompetence by a senior government official, including cabinet secretaries, could, in theory and practice, provide grounds for impeachment. However, the line between such...
by Bob Barr | Jan 10, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The dust has settled on the raucous start to the 118th Congress. Now, the slim Republican House majority under Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s leadership must step up and show the voters it is serious about governing. The newly adopted rules, under which both sides of the aisle must operate for the next two years, will aid the GOP in its drive to shrink the federal government and increase transparency — but only if it employs those rules to accomplish substantive goals and not simply to score political points against the Biden administration. That is a big “if.” The media has focused in the past week — during which McCarthy endured numerous attacks from his own colleagues — on the rule that allows a single member of the House to call for a vote to remove him (“vacate the Chair”). This “Sword of Damocles” will be a constant reminder to McCarthy of the fate that befell one of his predecessors – John Boehner – who suffered the wrath of the same GOP right wing that forced McCarthy to lose 14 votes for the speakership before prevailing late Friday night. Regardless of how many members are required to initiate a vote to remove the Speaker, it still will take a full majority of members – 218 – to accomplish the goal. Hopefully even the most rabid “Never Kevin” Republicans would recognize the chaos such a move would unleash, and hold their fire. More important procedurally than the vacate-the-chair issue, are those rules that will enable House GOP budget hawks, of which there are many, to force transparency into the often-Byzantine congressional appropriations...
by Bob Barr | Jan 5, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Aided by liberal Members of Congress and armed with a taxpayer-funded report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal Department of Education is set to embark on a crusade to establish a uniform, national school dress code in order to ensure “equity and safety.” Dress codes have long been targeted by the Left as violative of students’ civil rights. Recently, with the rise of “equity” as the shibboleth of the Left, groups such as Planned Parenthood consider dress codes as tools of “sexism, racism, and transphobia.” Teacher-based organizations, such as We Are Teachers, have hopped aboard the anti-dress code bandwagon, declaring, for example, that dress codes must be “gender neutral” and pass a “diversity test.” Who would have thought a generation or two ago that simply requiring students to dress appropriately was so sinister. To be fair, there are instances where teachers and school administrators misuse dress codes; abuses that should not be tolerated. However, concluding that dress codes constitute a civil rights violation and urging the Education Department to implement a national standard to ensure they do not “discriminate” in any way against anyone at any time, is a typical overreaction by the Nanny State. Yet this is precisely the direction in which the Department appears headed, as revealed in its response to the GAO study. Never shy about coming up with ways to spend taxpayer dollars, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights responded to GAO’s recommendation that it “design . . . equitable and safe dress codes” by committing to devote “resources” (i.e., taxpayer dollars) to develop such codes for K-12 public schools nationwide. In order to accomplish this goal, the...
by Bob Barr | Jan 3, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Regardless of where the vote for House Speaker winds up — with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) either winning his sought-after job as Speaker or returning to his seat as one of 435 sitting Members — the chaos a handful of conservative Republican Members have caused will do lasting damage to their party and accomplish little of long-term substance. McCarthy has already taken severe damage to his position. The “Never Kevin” members of the Republican caucus have so wounded him that he would be largely unable to control the mechanisms a speaker must wield to keep the body functioning. In his weakened state, just controlling his own side of the aisle for two years would be a Herculean task. McCarthy’s forced, eleventh-hour concessions after his months-long campaign for Speaker will simply reinforce allegations that he lacks principles on which to govern. More importantly, and beyond the wounds to McCarthy’s political persona, some of these concessions will make it harder for the slim GOP majority to achieve its priorities. For example, agreeing to establish one or more “select” committees to investigate the Biden administration’s abuses of power, will undercut the powers of standing committees and their chairmen to set and coordinate the majority party’s priorities. That agencies of the Executive Branch have been abusing their powers was not a concept undiscovered until the Freedom Caucus latched onto it. Executive Branch abuse of power has been building for decades. While it is fair to charge the current administration with forcing the pendulum further in that direction, the reality is that every recent administration has pushed the envelope – Republican and...
