by Bob Barr | Dec 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerThe Trump administration has performed admirably in reducing the regulatory red tape that has strangled American businesses and limited our country’s competitiveness. But for reasons not entirely clear, the Department of Labor has lagged behind other agencies in this regard.One clear example is the way the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has continued unnecessary and counterproductive Obama-era litigation against tech companies for alleged discriminatory wage and hiring practices.To some extent, the Labor Department’s hesitancy to retreat from a series of lawsuits against Google, Oracle, and other tech giants initiated by the prior administration can be explained by President Trump’s first Labor Secretary Alex Acosta’s cozy relationship with the Washington establishment. Thankfully, Acosta’s replacement, Eugene Scalia, son of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who took over the reins at the sprawling bureaucracy at the end of September, is no friend of the nanny state.OFCCP is the Great Society-era agency established to ensure private companies that contract with Uncle Sam do so without discriminatory hiring, employment or wage practices. Over the decades, this agency has taken steps to reform federal contracting policies in this regard. But its overall record has been mixed, especially in recent years.In a 2017 study, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agreed that the OFCCP’s mission to ensure discriminatory-free practices by corporate partners was “worthy.” At the same time, however, the report set forth in extensive detail that the OFCCP in recent years had become enamored of faulty, statistics-based challenges to companies engaged in federal contracts and had repeatedly abused its powerful remedy of threatening to debar companies alleged to engage in...
by Bob Barr | Dec 4, 2019 | Townhall Article |
Townhall.comFor the first time in nearly a decade, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a case directly involving the Second Amendment. Not since McDonald v. Chicago in 2010 has the High Court taken up a gun rights case, despite several opportunities to further clarify its landmark decisions in that case and the Heller opinion two years earlier. Conservatives, however, would be well advised to hold off uncorking the champagne bottles. While the case at hand, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, New York, appears ripe for a favorable ruling especially as the Court has shifted to the right since 2010, such an outcome must first overcome several hurdles. Most important is the question of whether the Court will even issue a ruling now that New York has struck the offending law from the books, arguably making the case moot, and thereby sidestepping any strengthening of the McDonald and Heller rulings. Before the City’s clever move repealing the law, it prohibited licensed gun owners from transporting an unloaded and stowed firearm from the home to ranges or dwellings outside the city limits. Conservatives, however, point to troublesome remnants of the revamped ordinance as reasons for a definitive ruling from the Supreme Court. Also problematic is the fact that the City could reinstate the statute as quickly as it earlier repealed it.The nuanced and highly specific nature of the case also makes it less likely that the Court, even if it were to issue a ruling, would hand down the broad support for gun rights that Heller and McDonald failed to deliver. Instead, like those two cases, it is just as likely that this most recent...
by Bob Barr | Dec 2, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerThe impeachment proceedings against President Trump have moved on from the House Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee (which happens to be the only House committee with formal jurisdiction over impeachment). It is chaired by New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who has served on the committee for 27 years. Notwithstanding the change in venue, the proceedings are still a farce. They bear only surface resemblance to those in which I (and Nadler) participated 21 years ago.The latest move in this game of impeachment took place on Sunday, when White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent Nadler a letter telling him that his client — the president of the United States — would not be participating in the committee’s inaugural impeachment hearing later this week. The lawyer’s letter was blunt; but if anything, it was too polite.Nadler had declared Sunday the date by which Trump must let him know if he accepted the invitation to “participate” in the committee’s activities. The deadline was conveyed to the president in a Nov. 26 letter. For its authority, the letter drew on House Resolution 660, which formally launched the impeachment inquiry when passed by the full House on Oct. 31. It also referenced the procedures subsequently adopted by the Judiciary Committee for its hearings.Taken together, these three documents establish clearly that whether and however the president might wish to participate in the Judiciary proceedings, it would be within the absolute control of Nadler; just as last month’s impeachment hearings in the Intelligence Committee were controlled completely by Chairman Adam Schiff.For example, while the rules seem to afford the president authority to call...
