by Bob Barr | May 12, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily CallerIn Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty told Alice that whenever he used a word, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” In today’s political discourse, the problem is not so much that people attach their own subjective meaning to words; the problem is words and phrases no longer have any meaning attached to them. Words and phrases have become untethered from objective reality. One of the latest victims of this craziness is the “presumption of innocence.”Even though the term “presumption of innocence” does not appear in our Constitution, it is among the most significant legal principles undergirding our constitutional republic. It has been one of the pillars of western civilization going back to ancient Greek and Roman cultures, and is a key element of British common law we inherited from our prior colonial bosses.While the phrases “presumption of innocence” and “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” may flow easily from the lips of most citizens, increasingly there is little or no understanding behind the words; and no patience to engage in the process needed to ensure evidence of guilt overcomes the presumption of innocence. To a large degree, this troubling situation is born of the deeply polarized political environment that has swept over our society in recent years; threatening to unravel a legal system that has long served to protect individual liberty against abuse by both government and private actors.Herd mentality that presumes an opponent guilty without concern for the evidence, or that presumes a supporter innocent regardless of the evidence, has become a hallmark of contemporary public policy debate. It was not always so.Just two...
by Bob Barr | May 11, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily CallerOn Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham is holding a Judiciary Committee hearing to consider “Examining Liability During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The subject could not be more timely or important.When Sen. Graham and I served together on the House Judiciary Committee 18 years ago, we understood that in the aftermath of 9/11 the threat of lawsuits was an impediment to innovators developing the antiterrorism tools that America needed to remain safe and secure. That is why we came together with the rest of the Congress to pass the SAFETY Act of 2002, which granted liability protections to companies developing antiterrorism technologies.The SAFETY Act worked extremely well in the years following those attacks, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to approve over 1,000 critical technologies and services to fight terrorism. Now, Graham appears ready to lean on this precedent, to safeguard the innovators and public servants experiencing similar anxieties as they strive to meet the challenges presented by the Coronavirus pandemic.Graham has long recognized the need for lasting reform of our legal system. Just last year, he remarked that, “litigation abuse is real” and that “class action reform is something we probably should look at.” But while long term reorganization of the legal system is a matter necessitating long and careful study, the need for a COVID-19 liability shield is as urgent as any we ever have faced.The Washington Post even conceded in a recent column that, “Fear of covid-19 lawsuits is not mere Republican reflex,” suggesting that now is the time for bipartisan action.Just as counterterrorism specialists were most at risk of abusive litigation after 9/11, frontline health care workers are now...
by Bob Barr | May 6, 2020 | Townhall Article |
Townhall.com How much does silence cost? For China, it is at least $180 billion, which is how much the Chinese have spent in American investments over the last decade and a half, in sectors ranging from real estate to sports and entertainment. There is a financial incentive to such investments, of course, but the biggest and best return for the Chinese government may be the reluctance of American institutions to bite the hand that feeds them.It is an investment strategy that has paid off well for the Chinese Communist Party, particularly among leftist institutions in our country. Organizations that never seem to have issue finding fault with America are noticeably quiet when it comes to China. Take, for instance, last October when Daryl Morey, general manager for the NBA’s Houston Rockets, tweeted support for the Hong Kong protestors. If it were a tweet about social justice or paying NCAA athletes, it likely would have been little noticed. However, because the tweet was indirectly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, it created significant backlash for the NBA, ultimately costing them hundreds of millions of dollars as games were blacked out in China as punishment. Although the league did, at least, resist calls from China to fire Morey, the message from Beijing was clear – keep your mouth shut or risk losing a billion dollars in deals. Hollywood also remains firmly seated on the pro-China bandwagon. Movie actors and industry big wigs are notorious for their rants against America, routinely turning the Oscars into one long Democrat Party stump speech. No similar criticism is leveled at China, and the reason for this silence...
by Bob Barr | May 4, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily CallerMuch has been reported in recent days about the manner in which the FBI “trapped” President Trump’s former National Security Adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, into lying in an early 2017 interview. Under federal law, it is strikingly easy for unethical federal officials to successfully play a game of legal “gotcha” with individuals they decide to target. This is precisely why we must insist on maintaining the highest ethical standards for federal investigators and prosecutors, which tragically did not happen in Flynn’s case.What the FBI — then under the leadership of the since-discredited James Comey – did to Gen. Flynn constitutes a blatant violation of the most basic ethical principles which federal investigators and prosecutors are sworn to uphold. The fundamental ethical foundation according to which these men and women, including Comey and former Special Counsel Robert Mueller — whose office prosecuted Flynn — is best captured in a speech delivered by then-Attorney General Robert Jackson in early 1940.Jackson’s remarks, delivered at the Justice Department to the assembled United States Attorneys, concluded with this eloquent statement supposed to undergird the duties of these powerful officials:“The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with...
by Bob Barr | Apr 29, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Last December I suggested that conservatives hold off uncorking the champagne when the Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments on its first major gun rights case since it decided District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 and McDonald v. Chicago two years later. On Monday, my cautionary note proved prescient. The High Court once again sidestepped providing jurisprudential support for the fundamental right to possess a firearm. In what has become a recurring theme for conservatives looking to Chief Justice John Roberts for a degree of constitutional backbone in protecting individual liberty against government overreach, he sided with the more liberal members of the Court in not taking a position.The case before the Court (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York) involved a New York City ordinance that prohibited even the few New Yorkers permitted by the Big Apple’s police department to have a gun in their home, from transporting it to any location outside the city’s limits, even if necessary to practice at a lawful gun range.In taking this case for consideration, the Court appeared ready at long last to put some teeth into its 2008 and 2010 majority decisions (which included Chief Justice Roberts), that declared the right to possess a firearm as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, to be an individual right rather than a collective right as favored by the more liberal justices and by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. New York City officials were not asleep at the switch, however, and once the High Court agreed to take the case for decision, they cleverly rescinded the...
