by Bob Barr | Apr 11, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerThe increased defense spending in the Biden administration’s recently released FY 2023 Budget may have upset the radical left wing of the Democrat Party, but U.S. military policy continues to flounder under the leadership of President Biden and his “woke” Defense Department team.The setting for what has become an embarrassing national defense posture was laid out at the very start of Biden’s tenure and has only worsened since then.But first, the numbers. In the budget sent to the Congress at the end of March, the president proposed to spend $831 billion for defense, a number that drew a harsh rebuke from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is all for show.While the administration’s proposed 4% increase in defense spending angered the likes of Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, the fact is that a 4% increase in spending for the next fiscal year does not come even close to accounting for loss of military buying power due to the record level of inflation we are experiencing; now close to 8%.The actual weaknesses in the proposed defense budget are now becoming clear. For example, immediately after the anemic 4% defense spending increase was announced, the Department of the Army stated that its active-duty troop strength would be reduced to what is reported to be the lowest number since just before WW II – 473,000.A top Pentagon official, Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo, declared that cutting the service’s active troop strength was not a “budget-driven decision.” If not in fact budget-related, such a statement raises major questions about precisely what factors are “driving” this administration’s national defense policies.At the very same time that the Army undersecretary was claiming (with...
by Bob Barr | Apr 6, 2022 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
TownhallWhy has the U.S. Postal Service been permitted to develop a domestic spy arm? And will the Congress ever rein it in?Red flags were everywhere regarding the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program, or “iCOP” for short. But no one in Washington cared enough to heed themThe first clue was that an agency supposed to deliver mail – that is, a postal service — was engaged in online surveillance. The next red flag was that in conducting surveillance, the postal service was employing controversial technology, including facial recognition, fake profiles, and social media scrapes of terms involving constitutionally protected activities (like “protest”). Finally, there was the fact that a recent audit by the USPS Inspector General concluded that none of this was legal to begin with. It gets worse.The most frightening aspect of the Post Office’s latest snooping program was not so much the tools the agency was using, but that their tactic, in the words of a Vice.com report, was “casting the widest net possible then working their way backwards” to determine who and what was a relevant catch in their high-tech fishing expeditions. This happens to be the polar opposite of what is constitutionally required of law enforcement agencies; namely, reasonable suspicion must at a minimum exist and precede an evidentiary search. Here, the postal inspectors would search for a potential target, and if one was found, work back from that to gather evidence justifying the search.Have we learned nothing about the nature of federal of law enforcement since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency? Apparently not, as in the subsequent nine years, the same “investigate...
by Bob Barr | Apr 4, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerRecent headlines cause me to wonder seriously, where is the FBI?In the late 1980s, during my service as the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia, I worked closely with the FBI, which had a large regional office in the city manned by top-tier special agents. Led often by the local FBI office, and in conjunction with investigators from other federal agencies, including IRS, DEA, Immigration, HUD, HHS and Labor, our office successfully prosecuted numerous corrupt public officials, drug kingpins, money launderers and all manner of white-collar criminals.In those days, the FBI was viewed widely as the country’s premier law enforcement agency. Despite the Bureau’s penchant for self-publicizing its operations, I recall no instance in which the fundamental ethical or nonpartisan nature of the Bureau’s work was called into question.I have no doubt today that the overwhelming majority of career FBI Special Agents today continue that long and honored tradition. However, a review of recent policy decisions by top-level bureaucrats and political appointees within the Bureau and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, calls into serious question whether the FBI has veered wildly off track.A major turning point certainly would be the shenanigans by top-level FBI officials to use the Bureau’s powers to thwart the 2016 election and subsequent administration of Donald Trump. This effort went from senior special agents like Peter Strzok all the way to the former Acting Director of the Bureau, Andrew McCabe. While these two collaborators eventually were fired during the Trump administration, under Trump’s successor McCabe’s full pension has been restored and his firing cleared from his record.As for Strzok, his pending...
by Bob Barr | Mar 30, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a website known as “TheFacebook” based on the value of enhanced human connectivity. Two decades later, however, Zuckerberg has a new project based on the complete opposite idea, something he calls “metaverse.” More than just “a place,” Zuckerberg intends for metaverse to be the centerpiece of “immersive digital worlds [that] become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time.” In other words, Zuckerberg’s vision for the future is one in which humans are permanently tethered to digital technology, while the physical world becomes a secondary distraction around them.It would be easy to dismiss his vision as the moonshot project of a Big Tech CEO long detached from reality, but Zuckerberg’s comments should instead be viewed as a red flag that his nihilistic perspective of “living” is now entering the mainstream, especially and most concerning, among young people. The evidence of this is undeniable. Online dating, sex robots, remote work and schooling, and “streaming” church services have become popular alternatives to in-person experiences. While some do have benefits, for instance remote work helping save the economy from the worst ravages of Democrats’ COVID “lockdowns,” their cumulative cultural impact undermines the very essence of human-to-human connectivity.The use of technology as a surrogate for actual experience is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies,” movie-like events in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are exposed to manufactured, full-sensory environments wherein they become conditioned against the ability to experience truly genuine emotion. When highly customized, on-demand experiences can be delivered instantly in a digital world, it dulls the imperfect yet...
by Bob Barr | Mar 28, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerMuch ado last week was made of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s leniency as a federal trial court judge in sentencing defendants convicted of certain crimes, especially those facing prison for child sex offenses. It was, however, the nominee’s staunch unwillingness to answer questions about her knowledge of basic facts that unmasked Judge Jackson as a truly woke individual; a student of the law unwilling to state the obvious for fear of divulging details that might cause the left to doubt her bona fides as one of them.In reviewing the manner by which the nominee steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there were in fact “differences between men and women that are enduring” — as premised in a series of questions posed by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn – I was reminded of an article describing what might be considered a “New Legal Order,” published even as the confirmation hearings were being televised.“The Takeover of America’s Legal System,” authored by Aaron Sibarium in Common Sense, describes the manner by which Millennial (and younger) lawyers are being taught; namely, that objectivity as a foundational underpinning of our legal system, no longer is to be considered a constant. Woke lawyers, law professors and even judges now are openly declaring that certain individuals harboring disfavored social views (e.g., those considered “racist” or misogynistic) no longer are entitled to competent legal counsel because of those views or acts. In this environment, law professors holding traditional, contrary views must “self-censor” their lectures so as not to incur the wrath of “woke” students and law school administrators.As Sibarium further describes this deeply disturbing trend (especially evident at top-tier law...
