by Bob Barr | Apr 26, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerLast week it was revealed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) is an active participant in the government-wide effort by the Biden administration to surreptitiously surveil social media postings by American citizens, with the apparent goal of identifying individuals inclined to protest government policies and activities; in other words, people who plan to exercise their First Amendment rights.The response on Capitol Hill to this news of a special USPS intelligence unit called “iCOP” (Internet Covert Operations Program) secretly surveilling social media usage by citizens, was predictable – Democrats yawned, and House Republicans expressed shock and amazement.The sad reality is that anyone who has followed government operations ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, knows that every federal, state and local government agency with even the slightest degree of law enforcement power is always looking for ways to gather more information on citizens. This has only become far worse since the Jan. 6 trouble on Capitol Hill.A brief review of the legal authorities according to which the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) operates reveals that the Service in fact can be employed to investigate far more than mail theft or damage to postal facilities, which had been its long-standing and primary responsibility. For example, the Attorney General of the United States can direct Postal Inspectors to aid in enforcing any “laws of the United States.” All that is needed to send Postal Inspectors off on such missions is a decision by the Attorney General “that violations of such laws have a detrimental effect upon the operations of the Postal Service.”In other words, according to authority already on the books,...
by Bob Barr | Apr 21, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallFor the eight years I represented Georgia’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House, I was a member of the Financial Services Committee; a committee on which California Rep. Maxine Waters also served. It did not take long for me to learn that she is as mean-spirited as they come, a characteristic she wears proudly to this day. Over the course of the past year, however, as violence, looting, and attacks on law enforcement officers spread across our country, Waters’ mean streak has become far more than a reason to avoid crossing her path in person. Her calls for demonstrators in Minneapolis and elsewhere to become ever “more confrontational” reveal Maxine Waters to be more than a deeply unpleasant individual, but rather a public menace, inciting mobs to violence as a new mini warlord for the Left. While Waters might prefer for people to think that her bluster is the result of heat-of-the-moment passion, the reality is that it is all carefully planned political grandstanding, something she has perfected over decades of haranguing. Three decades ago, for example, as a freshman member of the House, Waters cheered on as mobs rampaged through south Los Angeles in the wake of the 1992 Rodney King verdict. More than five dozen people died in those riots.True to form, in 2020 as mobs ransacked businesses, police headquarters, and other government buildings in cities from Portland, Oregon to New York and Washington, DC, Waters has been in the forefront of urging continued confrontation against law enforcement and all manner of other targets of demonstrators’ ire. Last year’s rioting added up to $2 billion in damage to...
by Bob Barr | Apr 19, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerEver since the Supreme Court of the United States was instituted by Article III of our Constitution as ratified by the states in 1788, many of Western civilization’s greatest legal minds have served as justices on that august bench. One of these exceptional jurists was America’s very first Chief Justice, John Marshall, who served from 1801 to 1835.It was Marshall who, in 1805, authored an opinion that to this day remains a bedrock principle according to which our government, and indeed our very culture, has rested. In that seminal case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court declared that the final authority by which the constitutionality of any law passed by Congress and signed by the president is to be measured, is the federal judiciary, with the Supreme Court of the United States at its apex.Over the ensuing 216 years, presidents, members of Congress, lower courts and citizens of all political stripes have complained – sometimes bitterly – when application of this principle of judicial review results in a decision with which they disagree. However, Marshall’s assertion that such process is essential for “the government of the United States” to remain “a government of laws, and not of men,” is at least as important today as it was in 1805.Our 32nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was so angered by the Supreme Court’s decisions during his first four years in office declaring provisions of his “New Deal” to be unconstitutional, that in 1937 he launched a frontal attack on the independence of the court; a proposal that quickly became known as Roosevelt’s “court-packing plan.” FDR’s plan would have amended...
by Bob Barr | Apr 19, 2021 | FullMAGnews |
FullMAGnewsAs the expression goes, “talk is cheap.” When it comes to gun control, however, talk about taking away or diminishing a right expressly guaranteed in our Constitution is most definitely not “cheap.” Quite the opposite. Perhaps most important in this context is the often un-asked, but disconcerting question for gun control advocates – precisely how would you take away all those now-legal firearms currently in the hands of law-abiding citizens? What might in the past have been sloughed off as a mere hypothetical question, is becoming increasingly relevant as the Biden Administration and its cohorts in the Congress move their gun-control agenda into high gear, legislatively and by executive action in the aftermath of several highly publicized mass murders.True to form, such criminal acts already are fueling efforts by Democrats not to address the root causes underlying such evil acts, but rather to push for greater and greater controls on the instrumentality by which many such murders are committed – firearms. President Joe Biden self-proclaims as America’s most anti-gun president, exceeding in both rhetoric and drive of his former boss, Barack Obama. A recent spate of mass murders by deranged young men already is being used as an impetus for sweeping gun control – by Congress and myriad Executive Branch agencies including but certainly not limited to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and its parent agency, the U. S. Department of Justice It is no longer a matter of if, but when, substantive restrictions and outright bans on firearms, gun parts, and ammunition make their way onto the books.Democrats are not just looking for campaign soundbites this time around, and...
by Bob Barr | Apr 14, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallWhen I use a word, ‘Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.As villains in 20th Century literature go, Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist in Ayn Rand’s 1943 The Fountainhead, would hardly seem frightful. He was not a serial killer, terrorist, or supernatural stalker, but rather a diminutive newspaper critic who brought society to the brink of ruin through nothing more than corrupting the meaning of words. It seems clear that Democrats have a similar plan in mind.It is for this reason that conservatives should not dismiss out of hand Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s inane tweet last week that paid leave, childcare, and caregiving constituted “infrastructure” projects. In Gillibrand’s and President Biden’s world, as they collect votes for their $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending package, anything can become “infrastructure,” making it easier to sell to their colleagues and to voters. Similar linguistic chicanery is displayed whenever the Administration sidesteps responsibility for the current chaos at our southern border. Rather than a quickly spiraling health and national security crisis, the border situation is simply a “challenge” — a nuisance if you will, to be noted for the record. By the same legerdemain, and at times even in the same news cycle, “climate change” becomes “climate emergency,” “silence is violence,” and “education” devolves into plopping kids in front of a laptop for six hours a day. When words no longer have definite, objective meaning, they no longer anchor policies or actions to objective, universal principles. The result is public policies that are infinitely malleable, where nothing is certain, and where rebutting such arguments is like trying to nail Jell-O to...
