by Bob Barr | Oct 19, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Drivers here in the United States had better get ready for federal mandates that will enable government to prevent cars from exceeding the speed limit in real time. This move has been a long time coming, and it is very real. The federal government first became rally serious about regulating the cars we drive in the late 1960s with the passage of legislation containing the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), and the creation of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Uncle Sam’s obsession with motor vehicle “safety” shifted into high gear in 1970 with the establishment of one of the Nanny State’s favorite offspring, the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA). Now, a half century later, with a toolbox that includes GPS and communications technology light-years ahead of that which first powered the Apollo astronauts to the moon in 1969, Washington is gearing up to mandate both drunk-driving and speeding “kill switches” in passenger vehicles. For this “life-saving” mission, the NHTSA and the NTSB, with a combined budget of more than $1.0 billion and a cadre of many hundreds of true believers, are upping pressure on car makers to install what it euphemistically calls “Intelligent Speed Adaptation” (ISA) systems. While mandates such as those that prevent a vehicle from being driven if the driver is intoxicated are not quite ready for prime time, as I wrote back in November 2021, requirements for such devices already are locked into federal law. Right now, apparently responding to pressure from Washington, New York is implementing a program to test “speed limiter technology” on its fleet of city-owned vehicles. Outfitting vehicles with what Gotham’s...
by Bob Barr | Oct 12, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Since America’s founding, an “enlightened” and “educated” citizenry has been considered essential for our representative democracy to function as intended. Our 35th President, John Kennedy, put it correctly in 1963, when he stated that, “[n]o country can possibly move ahead, no free society can possibly be sustained, unless it has an educated citizenry.” Sadly today, education in the United States is in a truly dismal condition. The government-mandated move to remote learning in response to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic is a significant factor underlying what are by any objective measure, rotten academic results for our nation’s children in public schools. This trend, however, predates the pandemic and persists today despite nearly $190 billion in federal money having been directed at overcoming the disastrous effects of that remote learning debacle. A study released last month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed clearly that remote learning was a disaster for students attending America’s public schools. According to the findings of this non-partisan organization, student achievement in the key group surveyed – 9 year-olds – fell significantly in both math and reading; in reading by the largest margin in more than three decades. The NAEP study noted that there had been a gradual but important increase in math and reading skills since the 1970s. However, those gains were shown to have levelled off over the past decade, and then dropped precipitously in the wake of the “unmitigated disaster” of COVID-mandated remote learning, especially for minority students. The sorry state of education achievement in our country cannot be blamed entirely on the COVID lockdowns. In Illinois, for example, in 2019, the year...
by Bob Barr | Oct 5, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Imagine this. An automobile manufacturer adds a turbocharger to the engine of a passenger car as a way to increase the vehicle’s acceleration. Nanny State bureaucrats at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration decide that the turbocharger makes a vehicle to which it is attached go too fast, which renders it “unsafe.” The agency decides that the simplest way to address its concern is to include within the definition of an “automobile” a “turbocharger,” which the agency then can outlaw as an “unsafe motor vehicle.” “Nonsense,” you say – a car “part” is not a “car,” right? Correct, yet that is precisely what the United States Department of Justice did in 2018 when it deemed by regulatory re-write, that an accessory that could be attached to a rifle to make it fire faster – a “bump stock” – was in fact and by law, a “machine gun” and therefore unlawful to be owned or possessed by individuals. Thus, by regulatory fiat a piece of plastic, which is all a bump stock is, becomes a “machine gun” for purposes of federal law. Despite the absurdity of this regulatory maneuver, the Supreme Court on Monday once again declined to hear arguments in cases challenging the constitutionality of the government’s bump stock redefinition. The Court should have heard arguments in the case, to enable a majority of justices a way to declare such regulatory legerdemain is a constitutionally impermissible exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch (aside from it being an example of absurd legal reasoning that no president should get away with). While gun control advocates, including the Biden administration which...
by Bob Barr | Oct 3, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Not too many years before the declining quality of its cars forced the Oldsmobile division of General Motors to disband, the company launched a catchy but ultimately unsuccessful ad campaign – “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Today’s FBI is not your father’s FBI. The FBI with which I worked during my tenure as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990, was a law enforcement agency widely recognized as the country’s best. The Bureau’s investigative jurisdiction extended to hundreds of federal crimes — from the well-known bank robberies and counterespionage cases to highly technical and complex computer crimes. Rarely in those days was there evidence that the Bureau’s investigations were politically motivated. In fact, at times, the Bureau was hesitant to launch or continue investigations precisely because it feared appearing partisan. FBI special agents were well-trained in the use of firearms and in the most appropriate tactics for effecting arrests and serving subpoenas or search warrants. Its special agents and leadership had learned the hard way over the decades to be prepared for any eventuality when undertaking such actions. Excessive shows of firepower, however (firepower exhibited for its own sake or to “make a point”), was neither the norm nor the acceptable exception. How times have changed. As the American public has repeatedly witnessed in recent years, and not just since President Biden’s swearing-in nearly two years ago, dramatic and over-the-top exhibition of firepower in arrests of high-profile or controversial individuals, has become an accepted if not normal Bureau practice. Just ask Roger Stone, whose pre-dawn arrest at his home in early 2019, was carried out by...
by Bob Barr | Sep 28, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall There is a noticeable trend among young adults to postpone having children, not just for years but, in many cases, permanently. The long-term repercussions of such a movement for our country, will be significant and in many ways negative. Among the factors accounting for this trend are “green” extremism and the toxicity which has so deeply affected the current political environment. Does the visceral dislike Republicans hold for Democrats, and vice versa, extend to marriage; to bearing children? Do other political factors, chief among them extreme fear of climate change, impact such vital personal relationships? The answer to both queries appears to be “yes.” At the extreme, beginning in 2006, there has developed a movement to deliberately de-populate the planet by refusing to have children – “anti-natalism.” There even have sprung up umbrella organizations such as “Antinatalism International” and the “Voluntary Human Extinction Movement” to provide structure and publicity. To be honest, I had not come across the term “anti-natalism” until noting mention of it recently in an article about the degree to which fear of climate change was causing individuals to alter their lifestyles, including deciding not to have children. On further investigation, I discovered it appears already to have enticed several celebrities to advocate on its behalf, even if only indirectly. Perhaps foremost among those with celebrity status who have come to question the morality of having children, is New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, as far back as 2019, posed the question to whoever might have been listening, “ Is it okay to still have children?” because of what she viewed as the accelerating ravages of climate change. That same year,...
