by Bob Barr | Jul 14, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
TownhallIn a 1983 speech before the National Association of Evangelicals, President Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire;” perfectly capturing the moral and political danger presented by that communist regime. Reagan properly cautioned Americans not to “ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses” of an enemy that was “the focus of evil in the modern world.” Unfortunately, what was clear to Reagan about the Soviet Union in 1983 appears only as a blur to Joe Biden about China today. If the Soviet Union were the evil empire, then China is surely the evilest empire. The Soviet Union’s global ambitions for its evil empire were hampered by its own incompetence. China, however, actively spreads its insidious tentacles across the world with a shocking mastery, facilitated by the apparent unwillingness of global leaders, including Biden, to take the threat seriously.Today’s China presents for the United States and other western powers a far more complex and multi-faceted danger than that posed by the Soviet Union in the second half of the last century. While China’s military build-up, and its well-documented willingness to use that power (especially as it relates to Taiwan) is a real concern, it is but one dimension of the broader threat, and in some ways not the most serious.Take, for instance, China’s push for greater influence in American academic institutions by way of funding educational programs and centers, under the guise of benignly teaching Chinese language and culture. As a white paper published at the Heritage Institute earlier this year suggests, this funding is a Trojan horse for Beijing to expand its influence in American culture more broadly. Strings...
by Bob Barr | Jul 12, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn a breathtaking assault on the Constitution of the United States, Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed a new law and an executive order targeting his self-declared “Gun Violence Disaster Emergency.”While the governor’s disdain for the Second Amendment is well-known, the degree to which his July 6 executive order targets the amendment is unprecedented. His actions undercut not only the right to keep and bear arms codified in the Second Amendment, but also broader rights guaranteed against government intrusion by the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as the fundamental right to contract protected in the main body of the Constitution.Even before Cuomo’s brazen executive action last week, New York maintained among the broadest and strictest gun control measures of any state, according to which, among other restrictions, it is almost impossible for a citizen to obtain a required permit to purchase a handgun or secure permission for a concealed carry permit.Despite the existing array of gun control mandates, Cuomo decided the Empire State now suffers from a “gun violence” emergency necessitating even more extreme measures. The executive order issued last week based on this bogus conclusion, is modeled after COVID pandemic executive mandates Cuomo issued last year, which were used by officials to strip New Yorkers of the most basic of civil liberties.The “gun violence” on which Cuomo premised his dictatorial actions has nothing to do with lawful ownership of firearms by citizens of the state.The increased violent crime under which New Yorkers are now suffering is a product of disastrous measures undertaken by the governor, the state’s attorney general, and New York City Mayor Bill...
by Bob Barr | Jul 7, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhallby Bob BarrCalifornia’s slide into a socialist wasteland is hardly news. What is somewhat surprising, or at least intriguing, are the depths of stupidity to which local and state officials in the “Golden State” will go to fulfilling their destiny. Take, for instance, San Jose’s latest anti-gun gambit – a compulsory tax to pay for the “costs” of criminal gun violence, coupled with a tax directly on lawful gun owners by forcing them to purchase liability insurance.These ordinances most assuredly will be challenged in court, and all but certain to be eventually struck down, even if they survive appeal to the uber-liberal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This means significant public resources will be spent defending mandates not even considered by their proponents to be meaningful. City officials admit as much, saying the ordinances “won’t magically end gun violence,” but vowing to press forward regardless. This should remove any doubt that the city of San Jose considers law-abiding gun owners to be part of the problem and sees them as second-class citizens to be run out of town rather than respect their constitutionally protected rights as Americans.In all their gushing over how smart and innovative they are with their latest anti-gun scheming, Mayor Sam Liccardo and his equally clueless cohorts on the city council fail to explain how punishing 99.9 percent of non-violent, law-abiding gun owners for the misdeeds of the other .1 percent will have any positive effect on crime in the city. If California’s already highly restrictive gun laws could not prevent the horrific mass shooting at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in May, what do these dunderheads...
by Bob Barr | Jul 5, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerMost taxpayers would agree, even if at times grudgingly, that the top priority for expenditure of federal dollars is our national defense, including the technology and hardware with which to win wars, that is, weapon systems. These priorities are funded according to an acquisition system as complex as it is costly, perhaps best illustrated by the $1.7 trillion F-35 “Lightning” fighter jet program that has been plagued by numerous delays and cost increases over the course of its two decade long development history.Broadly considered, the process by which weapons systems are funded – including everything from four-wheel drive vehicles to massive aircraft carries capable of launching dozens of long-range fighter jets — is known as “weapon system acquisition.” It is a labyrinthine process that has more in common with a Rube Goldberg cartoon contraption than a well-oiled machine. The process is fully understood only by a tightly knit fraternity of current and former top-level Department of Defense officials, key Members of Congress and their staff, and the handful of major corporate defense contractors, the largest by far of which is Lockheed Martin.As stated by the U.S. Department of Defense in a recent “Program Acquisition Cost by Weapon System,” the goal of this crucial component of our national defense is simple: to ensure that the weapon systems available to and utilized by our men and women in uniform “are unmatched throughout the world, ensuring that U.S. military forces have the advantage over any adversary.”Few objective observers would dispute the proposition that our fighting forces and global capabilities remain the best in the world. There is, however, considerable room to...
by Bob Barr | Jun 30, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIt is not clear exactly when it became such an awful burden on citizens to vote on one particular day at a pre-assigned polling place, but somewhere along the line it became so difficult that pressures on state governments resulted in wholesale changes to how, when, and where people actually vote. The changes thus wrought has thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into what had been a well-established, universally understood, and simple system of voting. Vast expansion of mail-in balloting, coupled with weeks-long “early voting,” has created a Rube Goldberg-like system that has severely undermined voters’ confidence in elections. It also has planted seeds for myriad legal challenges, such as the one filed last week by the Biden Department of Justice challenging Georgia’s recently enacted ballot reform measures. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who still harbors deep resentment of Republicans for refusing to confirm him as a Supreme Court associate justice in the waning weeks of the Obama Administration, was joined at the Justice Department podium last Friday by Kristen Clarke. Together they announced that Georgia was being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act. Kristen Clarke heads the Department’s Civil Rights Division and has long advocated that America is a deeply racist country. Her current position provides the perfect vehicle with which to drive home her opinions, by alleging that laws designed to make it harder to cheat at the ballot box, are nothing more that disguised measures to perpetuate systemic disenfranchisement of Black voters. The strings for this litigation will be pulled by Justice Department lawyers but the venue will be the federal District Court in Atlanta, which not coincidentally is the home...
