by Bob Barr | May 10, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerDespite being labeled a major health epidemic in 2013, the extremely powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl continues to flood into our country and ruin lives in communities from coast to coast. A nagging question is whether the United States Postal Service (USPS) is part of the solution or part of the problem.The lethargy exhibited by the USPS in complying with federal law mandating that it do a far better job of stopping fentanyl from entering the United States from abroad – especially from China — has been the subject of more than a single congressional hearing in recent years.Also problematic, however, is failure by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to uphold its part of the bargain, as also mandated by the Congress.Despite the “Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act” (STOP Act) becoming law in 2018, only now, two-and-one-half years later, is the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, getting around to issuing final regulations to implement the act.For its part, the USPS has been openly dismissive of the law’s requirement that it implement technology, known as “Advanced Electronic Data (AED),” by which to identify suspicious packages coming into one of several international mail facilities to be flagged for inspection by CBP. Such AED technology was supposed to have been in place by Jan. 1 this year but was not. Last September, the USPS Inspector General publicly blamed CBP for this shortcoming because it had failed to issue implementing regulations for the STOP Act.The CBP has taken an almost Alice-in-Wonderland view of the problem. For example, in testimony last Dec. 10 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security...
by Bob Barr | May 5, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe Central Intelligence Agency under President Joe Biden and his appointed director, Bill Burns, appears to have morphed into yet another tool of the “woke” Left; unrecognizable to many of the men and women who, like me, were proud to serve what was in years past the world’s preeminent intelligence agency. It has become an embarrassment.In a recent recruitment video published on social media, the point is made clear that the mission for employees of today’s CIA is not about serving as members of a team committed to providing the very best objective intelligence to policymakers in the administration. The mission now is more about using the CIA as a vehicle to boost one’s self-image.This ad, perhaps dreamed up by some overly woke ad agency, has the self-declared 36-year-old female CIA employee refusing “to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas about what a woman can or should be.” She then informs us that she is “tired of feeling like I have to apologize for the space I occupy rather than intoxicate people with my effort, my brilliance.”Labeling this gobbledygook idiotic is being overly kind. In fact, when I first saw this video, I thought it was a joke. Sadly, it is not. It is an official CIA recruitment video, obviously directed to self-centered individuals with pre-existing psychological issues (including something the star of the video calls “generalized anxiety disorder”).At National Review, Charles Cooke humorously pans the video as a “well-targeted” recruitment tool, given the sorts of people who respond positively to it are “already experts in manipulating, infiltrating, surveilling, and extracting dubious confessions from the rest of us.” However, the video represents more than just an...
by Bob Barr | May 3, 2021 | FullMAGnews |
FullMAGnewsAs police-involved shootings have come to dominate headlines, the question nobody wants to ask is perhaps the most obvious: Why are we seeing the need for police shootings in the first place? The answer to this question is neither easy nor comfortable, which is why most people, especially on the Left, do not ask it but consistently keep the focus on the police and not the broader and deeper issues. Every police-involved shooting represents a failure of some sort. Certainly, in some cases, they are the product of poor training or shoddy investigation, other times simply the result of circumstances beyond the officer’s control. Far more important than police shootings being considered as the result of specific circumstances at the time of the shooting, however, they are indicative of a community failure — a breakdown of the normal safety nets that keep people from hitting rock bottom where, in the midst of crisis, their irrational behavior spills into public view and becomes a threat to others.The teenage girl shot by a police officer just last month in Columbus, Ohio who was a split second away from stabbing another girl, or the 13-year-old gang member who had a handgun he was firing just prior to being chased and shot by a police officer, represent tragedies birthed not by the police, but by society. The breakdown of the nuclear family, the substitution of digital “friendships” in place of actual human contact, the waning role religion plays in people’s lives, and the failure by governments and taxpayers to fund programs needed to care for the mentally ill, constitute but a few of the factors accounting for the increased violence in today’s...
by Bob Barr | May 3, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerSince at least the early 1990s, Democrats and other gun control advocates have used the term “common sense” to characterize virtually every scheme they concoct to limit citizens’ ability to own, possess, use or carry firearms, gun parts or ammunition. The phrase has served as a clever way to camouflage the true nature of what such measures are designed to do, which is to undermine the rights protected by the Second Amendment to our Constitution. The linguistic ploy often has worked to Democrats’ advantage, which is one reason President Biden has proposed a new round of “common sense” gun control measures.There soon may be some good news on the “common sense” front, however, not for gun control advocates but for Second Amendment supporters.Late last month, and for the first time in more than a decade, the United States Supreme Court accepted a lower court case that directly confronts the fundamental scope of the Second Amendment. If the High Court actually decides this case — New York Rifle & Pistol Assn., et al. v. Corlett, et al. — by overturning the lower court’s decision, it will in fact be rendering one of the most common sense decisions in its 232-year history. Moreover, it will make all those liberals constantly clamoring for “common sense” gun control furious beyond anything we have seen in many years.Considering the blatant and heavy-handed attacks now being leveled against the Court by Biden and Senate Democrat leaders, and despite conservatives now enjoying what many observers consider a 6 to 3 “conservative” majority among the nine justices now serving, how the Court will rule in the case, and how...
by Bob Barr | Apr 28, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallPresident Biden is returning to the Barack Obama playbook of “reforming” municipal police departments by forcing multi-year federal court “consent decrees” down their throats — a strategy that makes it extremely difficult for those departments to hire and retain good officers, or to administer their agencies in accord with the needs of the communities they serve.Of course, as with everything being undertaken by this Administration, it is all about race and politics, not good policing. Police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville are but the latest recipients of this federal intervention. It is noteworthy, though not often noted, that both of these cities have been under Democrat Party control for more than three-quarters of a century. One reason why left-wing propagandists, such as Black Lives Matter and the mainstream media fail to note this anomaly, is that it invites the uncomfortable question of how, with Democrats at the helm of these cities for so long, police departments under their purview descended into the alleged hotbed of systemic racism that now warrants federal oversight by the notoriously heavy-handed Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice.A key question that should be asked, but of course is not, is what precisely is to be accomplished by Democrat bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. that has not been possible for Democrats locally across nearly eight decades of control. Investigating and prosecuting real cases of alleged civil rights violations by police officers is a legitimate focus for the Department of Justice, especially in cases for which there is no adequate prosecution by state authorities. Were this the sole focus by the Civil Rights Division, it might constitute an appropriate use...
