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,...
by Bob Barr | Sep 26, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Last Thursday’s unveiling of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy‘s long-promised “Commitment to America” is a step in the right direction, in that it offers voters a sense that the GOP at least has an agenda. But it is hardly a giant leap and lacks the excitement, specificity, and strength that made 1994’s “Contract With America” such a game-changer. Unlike its predecessor, this latest attempt to provide a scoresheet for evaluating House candidates reads as if it was drafted by a committee or committees, which in fact it apparently was. Not that such preparation is a fatal defect, but if the resulting document is wordy, lacking in clarity and precision, and comes across as an effort to please everyone who had a hand in its drafting, it loses the very attributes that made the 1994 Contract so appealing. Perhaps the 2022 Commitment is so different from its predecessor because the political environment in which this year’s mid-term voters will cast their votes is so dissimilar. In 1994 Democrats entered the final weeks before the November elections blissfully confident that their four-decade long House majority would hold once again. This year, virtually every poll indicates the Democrats will lose their majority in the House. In such environment, perhaps it makes sense to present a national Republican agenda that is strong on generalities and short on specifics; a game plan that provides just enough substance to qualify as an actual agenda without alienating voters already inclined to vote Republican. If so, it is precisely the type of timidity that many Republican voters have come to identify with the GOP in recent years. The 1994 Contract...
