by Bob Barr | Jan 19, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe Hippocratic Oath, for centuries a foundational recitation of the objective goal of physicians to preserve life, remain ethical, and above all to serve their patients wisely, has, like so much of contemporary civil society, been largely cast aside as outdated – in the words of a dean at the Yale School of Medicine, it had become “impersonal, cold, and too pat.” In many medical schools, the oath now taken by graduating medical students is personal and subjective rather than objective, thus allowing each newly minted physician to decide for themselves what code they will follow in their career. The dilution of a common, universal code for doctors is one of many reasons why the practice of medicine in the United States, and even more so in our neighbor to the north, has become unmoored from the formerly sacred doctor-patient relationship, and more closely tethered to “equity” and the whims of patients, including facilitating abortion and even euthanasia.As with many troubling trends in the country, the beat-down of scientific inquiry and reasoned debate within the practice of medicine is being led by California, where the primacy if not the infallibility of the federal CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is now the law.The COVID pandemic opened the door to perhaps the most unscientific approach ever to public healthcare policy, reaching its nadir with the new California law that prohibits physicians from communicating information critical of federal COVID guidelines. Failing to adhere to this prohibitory statute can result in doctors losing their licenses. Interestingly, one prominent medical organizations, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) blames the federal government for much of the “lack of trustworthiness” that...
by Bob Barr | Jan 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerOn 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 government: the absence of “one-size-fits-all” governance.We...
by Bob Barr | Jan 12, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallEvery 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 gross incompetence that violates federal...
by Bob Barr | Jan 10, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerThe 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 and budget processes – procedures...
by Bob Barr | Jan 5, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallAided 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 Department also (of course) would...
