by Bob Barr | Sep 12, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerStudents of theoretical physics are familiar with the principle that if matter and antimatter come into contact, both are instantly annihilated.Political discourse in 21st Century America has become so toxic and polarized that it has come to resemble the realm of quantum physics, with little — if any — room for agreement or even civil discourse. Both sides — the Republican and the Democrat — cannot coexist without destroying each other or reducing each other’s ideas and policies to shambles.As we enter the final stretch of the 2022 midterm elections and the starting gate for the 2024 presidential campaigns, it has become clear to everyone except the most diehard Pollyanna that every major public policy issue — including guns, abortion, immigration, energy, and others — is being played out on a “zero sum” game-board. Any oxygen that might otherwise sustain civil debate or compromise has been sucked out.Consider abortion. Since the Supreme Court declared this past summer that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was constitutionally defective, and that henceforth abortion access would be considered an issue for citizens of individual states to decide, the debate has become so white-hot, that for abortion advocates no tactic is off limits — even violence against individual Supreme Court justices. Such actions, while not explicitly endorsed by Democrat Party leaders, enjoy implicit support from many of them.The issue of Second Amendment rights, always a hotly debated issue in the political arena and the media, remains similarly devoid of compromise. Virtually every incident involving a murder, such the killing of two sheriff’s deputies attempting to serve a warrant in suburban Atlanta last week,...
by Bob Barr | Sep 7, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallDespite complaining about being the victim of inappropriate, if not unconstitutional abuse by the courts and the Biden Administration, former President Donald Trump on Monday was gifted a highly unusual, if not unprecedented favor by a federal judge that, at least temporarily halts the investigation into possible criminal mishandling of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.As is by now well-known, FBI agents on August 8th conducted a search of the sprawling Florida resort, which includes living quarters used at times by Trump and his family. The agents removed some 22 boxes containing nearly 13,000 documents and other items of evidence from the resort, pursuant to a lawful search warrant signed by a federal magistrate. Ever since then, Trump and his supporters have engaged in a full-court press to convince the country that the FBI search was nothing more than an abusive and partisan action to weaken him as a possible 2024 presidential candidate.Two weeks after the search, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion with the U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, demanding that the court appoint a “special master” to examine all the seized evidence and determine if any falls within categories otherwise protected against seizure, such as attorney-client communications. On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon (who Trump nominated for the post shortly before he left office) did just that.Mr. Trump is being afforded extraordinarily preferential treatment, not only by way of the judge directing that an outside party be empowered to review each and every item seized by the FBI, but by the even more unusual step of explicitly suspending the government’s current criminal investigation. Based on already publicly released...
by Bob Barr | Aug 31, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn the latest “Right Track/Wrong Direction” national poll and the global “Happiness” rating, there is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the United States is not the unhappiest country on earth (we currently rank #19). The bad news is a significant majority of our citizens (88% according to some estimates) believe we are headed in the wrong direction and pessimistic about turning that trajectory around.A cursory analysis of politics, education, business, law, and pretty much any other sector of contemporary American society reveals why we are such an unhappy place – we are a citizenry afraid.The United States has in recent years morphed from a bold, forward-looking, optimistic, and freedom-based society into one that is driven by fear. Not so much physical fear — although fear of crime is a very real and mounting concern — but rather the sense that people are afraid to openly and honestly communicate or interact with others, insofar as doing so may get them in trouble; in trouble with government regulators and snitches (usually referred to as “whistleblowers”), in trouble with social media, in trouble with co-workers, in other words, everyone out there.Chicken Little would feel right at home in today’s America, because wherever she might turn the proverbial sky is primed and ready to fall.The causes of this pervasive sense of fear and foreboding infecting our society are many, but topping the list would be the rise of social media and the expansion of government regulations (backed up with threats of fines and jail).Query: is there any aspect of a citizen’s daily existence that does not include within it...
by Bob Barr | Aug 29, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerThe name-calling, mistrust, and downright hatred with which the former president and his supporters are dealing with the execution of the warrant execution at his Mar-a-Lago home/resort three weeks ago – and the the current administration‘s less-than-productive responses – exemplify the toxic and dysfunctional state of American political discourse. The former president of the United States of America calls FBI “hacks and thugs” in the wake of the Aug. 8 search of his living quarters at the Mar-a-Lago resort pursuant to a lawfully executed warrant. The sitting president of the United States returns the insult by referring to support for his predecessor as “semi-fascism.”It is difficult to see things getting better any time soon.I am among the many Americans who find fault with the FBI and other federal agencies’ abuse of power in recent years. In fact our country has been dealing (or not dealing) with this problem for three decades, at least since the Justice Department-initiated tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 1990s. As a sitting Member of Congress, I was a harsh critic of the FBI and the ATF during the 1995 oversight hearings into the Branch Davidian debacle. Today, nearly two decades after those hearings revealed serious abuses of power by the Attorney General, the FBI, the ATF, and our military, the leadership of the FBI exhibits greater evidence of being deeply infected with partisan politics and institutional hubris.Contrary to popular belief, however, and contrary to the views of many friends and colleagues of mine, there are ways to address these problems, even with a House of Representatives and a Senate unable to break partisan deadlock to...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallDuring the Cold War, which lasted for nearly half a century following the end of World War II, the small number of prisoner exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union were deadly serious affairs. Not so much now.Today, 31 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is a potential prisoner swap much in the news that bears no resemblance to the serious manner by which such exchanges took place in the past.In Russia’s corner, you have professional American female basketball player Brittney Griner, who recently pled guilty to the charge of bringing hashish oil into Russia. As a result of her plea, the six-foot, nine-inch player is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony. In our corner is Russian citizen Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who, in 2011, was convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill Americans, and is mid-way through his 25-year sentence.In a bizarre twist to the widely publicized potential swap, former NBA star Dennis Rodman this week interjected himself into the thick of it.During the Cold War, such exchanges were taken most seriously at the highest levels in both Washington and Moscow, involving as they almost always did, clandestine espionage activities between the two superpowers. This was the case in the first and most famous of all spy-for-spy swaps — the 1962 deal that returned CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers to America from a Soviet prison and sent convicted Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel from a federal penitentiary to retirement in his native Russia.Negotiations for the Powers-Abel exchange, and the several other swaps that followed over the next several decades,...
