by Bob Barr | Nov 15, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerLast week was especially bad for President Joe Biden’s plan to force all Americans to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. How the administration responds to the setbacks will reveal whether we have a president who actually believes in and will abide by the rule of law, or one who considers himself above such a bothersome technicality.On September 9, Biden angrily lectured the American people about the COVID-19 pandemic, laying out plans for vaccination mandates to include all civilian and military federal employees and contractors, and for anyone working for a private company with 100 or more employees.Biden’s plan was indeed bold. As it turns out, it was too bold. On Friday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans, answering one of some two dozen pending federal court challenges to Biden’s COVID mandates, told him to go back to the drawing board.Biden’s plan hit another snag last week. The Army general in charge of Oklahoma’s National Guard issued an order declaring that no troops under his command will be required to be COVID vaccinated; this in direct defiance of a mandate issued in August by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.The November 12 opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt with the November 5 “Emergency Temporary Standard” issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) purporting to implement the 100 employee mandate portion of Biden’s September edict. (The court had issued a preliminary stay of the mandate on November 6.)Despite Biden’s declaring that this mandate was among those he deemed essential to save the country from the continued ravages of COVID-19, the appeals court...
by Bob Barr | Nov 10, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe COVID pandemic is over. Thanks to the work of President Donald Trump, a vaccine is widely available to anyone who wants it. And, coming from that research, a new pill from Pfizer that cuts the risk of death and hospitalization by 90 percent in individuals who contract COVID, is in front of the Food and Drug Administration for approval. Those who want to protect themselves from COVID can do so easily, and those who chose not to take advantage of the vaccine or the pill (when it is approved) are in any event are unlikely to die from the sickness. By all goals and measures set at the beginning of the pandemic, this is moment for which we have waited. The return to “normalcy” can begin right now; except, that is, for Dr. Anthony Fauci and his band of merry Biden Administration fearmongers standing in our way. Democrats know that as soon as the pandemic is over, the COVID power party will end, and all those “emergency” powers they have enjoyed for two years will run dry. For a political party that invested so much of its identity into using COVID to moralize, mandate, and manipulate, the end of the pandemic is a worst-case scenario. It is not that they do not believe the pandemic is over. They just cannot afford to let it end.The powers enjoyed for nearly two years wielded by numerous mayors, city councils, governors, and a bevy of unelected health department bureaucrats have produced a rush of political adrenaline, the likes of which have not been seen since the post-9/11 rush of anti-terrorism measures. As anyone who has worked...
by Bob Barr | Nov 9, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerZurich, Switzerland is a major international financial center sitting at the northern tip of its namesake lake. Beginning in 1987 and continuing until 1992, however, this beautiful Swiss city was home to “Needle Park,” an experiment in illicit drug usage that went horribly wrong, and with consequences that plagued the city for years thereafter.Three decades after Switzerland’s heroin debacle, a new generation of “woke” mayors, prosecutors and governors in the United States is hoping to create Americanized versions of Needle Park.Advocates of “Safe Injection Facilities,” or “SIFs,” apparently believe that drug addicts are actually being helped if they are provided with needles and other necessary drug paraphernalia and offered a safe place to “shoot up.” In this Bizarro World, facilitating drug use will lessen drug use.History is less kind and has shown us that encouraging public use of illicit and highly addictive controlled substances such as heroin and methamphetamine is not such a good idea, especially when, as now in many major American cities, violent crime rates are on the upswing, law enforcement presence is declining and the homeless population is increasing.Undaunted by such reality, the soon-to-be-ex-Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, is proposing to carve out at least two areas in the Big Apple, including one in Harlem on Manhattan’s upper west side, where drug users would be permitted to openly inject drugs of their choosing without fear of arrest or harassment by public officials. This move comes on the heels of legislation signed last month by Gov. Kathy Hochul decriminalizing possession or sale of disposable hypodermic needles used by drug dealers and users.Those who...
by Bob Barr | Nov 3, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn recent years, the Left has let no incident, no matter how trivial, pass without turning it into a vehicle with which to virtue signal their outrage. Six years ago, it was horror over the shooting of a lion in Zimbabwe. Two years later, it was President Trump’s statement about a demonstration in Charlottesville. Today, it is a Southwest Airlines pilot’s use of an anti-Joe Biden slogan. Brandon Brown seems to be everywhere these days, a previously unknown NASCAR driver who has become the poster boy for progressive outrage. Last month, when NBC reporter Kelli Stavast interviewed Brown immediately after his first victory at Talladega, she exclaimed that the background crowd was chanting “Let’s go Brandon!” instead of the clearly discernible “[Expletive] Joe Biden.” Thus, a star was born.Stavast’s transparent switcheroo quickly made the phrase a commentary on the Mainstream Media’s habit of intentionally distorting objective reality to favor Democrats. Then, as it quickly spread in conservative circles, “Let’s go Brandon” became harmless, if slightly immature internet gag with which to mock Biden. Never content to let a jab at Biden remain just that, the Left has imbued this cheeky expression with all manner of sinister mysticism, just as they did for “learn to code” and the “OK” hand gesture before that. The perception by the Left that there is an Alt-Right boogeyman behind every meme, and a KKK sympathizer hiding under every red “MAGA” hat, is approaching a clinical psychosis that induces bizarre behavior from the Left. What, then, is to be done to the Southwest Airlines pilot, whose un-apropos attempt at humor while preparing to land a commercial airliner has caused such an internet...
by Bob Barr | Nov 1, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerSupreme Court decisions upholding the right to abortion or defending press freedom draw kudos and huzzahs from the mainstream media. The mere possibility that the High Court might issue an opinion supporting the Second Amendment, however, throws that same media into conniption.So it is with oral arguments scheduled before the Supreme Court this week regarding a closely watched firearms case — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Considering the fervor with which the mainstream media is wringing its collective hands over this case, one would think the justices were preparing to place a rocket launcher into the hands of every man, woman and child in America.One writer, Ian Millhisen, authored an opinion piece last week that described the pending case as one that “could gut America’s gun laws,” and mused that if a majority of the nine Supreme Court justices were to side with the citizen-plaintiffs in the case, it would usher in an era of “unlimited” gun rights.Such hyperbole is typical of the manner by which the mainstream media and most Democrat policy makers have characterized the gun control debate ever since the High Court rendered a pair of decisions in 2008 and 2010 declaring the obvious – that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm, not some amorphous right enjoyed only by the citizenry in general.Neither of those two decisions opened the floodgates to unfettered concealed-carry gun possession in cities and towns across America. In fact, neither decision even dealt with the right to possess a firearm outside the home, and the numerous restrictions on possession of a gun outside...
