by Bob Barr | Sep 26, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Last week, the House Judiciary Committee demonstrated once again that the GOP does not know how to conduct effective oversight of the Executive Branch. The occasion was the appearance of Attorney General Merrick Garland before the Committee for an entire day, at the end of which nothing of value was revealed. Oversight, along with the appropriations power and passing substantive legislation, is one of the three great responsibilities of the Legislative Branch. It has the power to employ congressional committees to question witnesses and gather evidence supposed to ensure that the president and all executive officers, departments and agencies, are operating within the law and consistent with the intent embodied in legislation passed by the Congress. It is, unfortunately, the one power possessed by the Congress that is the least understood and the most often squandered. The Judiciary Committee hearing on September 20th was billed expressly as “Oversight of the Department of Justice,” but the Republican members demonstrated little interest in actual oversight of the massive Department, which includes the FBI, ATF, every United States Attorney in the country and our government’s immigration and border control agencies. Instead, they took the opportunity to beat up on Garland over one matter — Hunter Biden. To be sure, the failure of the Justice Department to seriously investigate or prosecute the “First Son” for what appear to have been numerous, and serious violations of federal law, is a matter deserving of oversight. Additionally, the failure by this Administration to carry out the myriad powers of the Justice Department fairly and transparently, constitutes a political failure that is fair game for the...
by Bob Barr | Sep 21, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall “We have met the enemy and he is us” –Pogo (by Walt Kelly, 1970) The 2024 election is well underway already, with control of the House, the Senate, and the White House all hanging in the balance. Advertisement So, what is the Republican Party doing? Presenting a clear set of priorities to the American electorate? Discussing issues of importance to the average voter? Showcasing leaders with a firm grasp of the issues and ready to take on a vulnerable, aging, and unpopular incumbent president? Nope. Republicans are busy fighting among themselves and squandering a razor-thin House majority pursuing matters having little if anything to do with issues that are uppermost on the minds of voters. This is hardly a recipe for success either in government or at the ballot box, but nowhere to be seen is the adult leadership necessary to right the congressional ship, such as then-Speaker Newt Gingrich brought to the House with the Republican sweep of 1994. In a sense, at least part of the blame for this predicament can be traced to the basic nature of the Republican Party, in which independence and diversity of views is encouraged — the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the GOP. Unlike the Democrat Party, which as a general rule maintains a strict code in public of philosophical uniformity, Republicans to their credit welcome a wide variety of views on many key legislative issues, such as abortion, spending priorities, and even to a degree, immigration. Ideologic uniformity has never been a core GOP precept. However, to govern successfully in the Congress, a certain level of internal...
by Bob Barr | Sep 13, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller It appears the Left may no longer feel the need to cloak its gun control measures with even a pretense of legal imprimatur. In their zeal to restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm for personal protection, some top Democrat public officials now are mandating new gun control policies without even a fig leaf of constitutional legitimacy. Late last week, for example, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Administration declared that no person, other than police or licensed security officers, could lawfully possess a firearm anywhere in public within the state’s largest city – Albuquerque – or in the surrounding county – Bernalillo. This blanket restriction applied also to “state property” located anywhere within New Mexico’s 121,591 square mile jurisdiction. The precise extent of “state property,” other than schools and parks, is left undefined. Unlike recent gun control policies announced by governors of other Democrat-led states such as New York’s Kathy Hochul, which have been at least presented as responses to last year’s Second Amendment-affirming Bruen decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, and clothed with a façade of legal respectability, Lujan Grisham’s action offered no such pretense. Her Administration’s new draconian measures – already being challenged in federal court – have been presented as an “action plan” to “do more” to stop criminal gun violence and rampant illicit drug usage plaguing the state. To Lujan Grisham, blatantly imposing her anti-gun will on the citizens over whom she maintains colorable power, is an appropriate (if nonsensical) way to spur a “debate” about gun control. The announced premises on which these highly restrictive measures are based is a pair of executive orders...
by Bob Barr | Aug 29, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In the early years of the last century, as our country was flexing its new-found muscle as a major industrial power, Latin America and the Caribbean served as a primary arena where presidents including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson showcased our military might. Now, many 2024 GOP presidential wannabes appear eager to resurrect what would be a far more dangerous version of the early 20th Century’s “gunboat diplomacy” toward Mexico. This predisposition was displayed vividly during the first Republican primary debate on August 23rd, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared proudly that “on day one” he would send American troops into Mexico to strike suspected cartel-run fentanyl labs. While it was DeSantis’ debate rhetoric that forced the question of U.S. military action against drug labs inside Mexico to the fore, the notion has been percolating on the back burner for several years. During his presidency, Donald Trump apparently was so intrigued by the idea of striking facilities across our southern border, that in 2020 he reportedly requested that his then-Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, provide him a plan for launching “some Patriot missiles [to] take out the labs.” Thankfully, such plans were never consummated, but there remain many in the GOP who today openly support such moves, up to and including bills for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against targets inside Mexico. Not all of the GOP’s 2024 hopefuls are as hawkish as DeSantis, but most have placed themselves in the same proactive camp as the Floridian. Vivek Ramaswamy is on record declaring he would send in American troops not necessarily on day one, but certainly in his “first six months.” Former South...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Knee-jerk responses by government officials and legislators following incidents in which individuals have been killed by police can cause lasting harm to law-abiding citizens. One of these dangerous policies is something called the “Driving Equity Act,” which is now the law in Philadelphia. The Driving Equity Act, known also as the “Driving Equality Act,” is an overreaction to isolated incidents of alleged police misconduct, and reflects a troubling trend going back nearly a decade. For example, following the 2014 death of Michael Brown during a confrontation with police in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Justice Department launched a drive against a number of local police departments that resulted in “consent decrees” – mandatory edicts that made it demonstrably more difficult for those departments to carry out their mission of protecting the public. Several years later, the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparked a nationwide backlash against law enforcement generally which led to policies that reduced or defunded law enforcement agencies, causing problems that resonate still today. Early this year in Memphis, Tennessee, members of a “special” police unit beat Tyre Nichols to death, a tragedy that revived calls for state and local governments to defund and disband specialized anti-crime units. Often camouflaged as “restorative justice” or “reimagined policing,” legislative and executive actions to curtail police funding and powers usually are premised on the notion that traditional police powers, including traffic stops, are inherently racially biased and thus have been abused as tools to target members of racial minorities, especially Black men. It is not, however, as if there are not ways to deal...
