by Bob Barr | Apr 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerIf you were to guess the most critical problem faced by President Trump in dealing with the flood of illegal immigration at our southern border, what would it be? Foreign government-sponsored migration caravans? Funding for the border wall? A shortage of border patrol agents? Indeed, these all are aspects of the serious problems Trump is encountering in addressing the ongoing crisis at out southern border; but they fail to get to the heart of the problem the president faces in taking steps to solve the crisis.In a word, judges are the main obstacle standing between the president and his ability to seriously address the border crisis. Federal judges.Interestingly, our founding fathers warned of this very problem more than two centuries ago. “At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1823. “Experience however soon shewed in what way they were to become the most dangerous.”Jefferson’s comments reflect what many of our founders feared; that while the the powers of the republic were vested in three co-ordinate (not “co-equal”) branches, each acting as a check on the others, the furtive creep of judicial power over the years would lead to an imbalance in power, inviting a tyranny of the judiciary. This is exactly where we find ourselves today, 230 years after the Constitution was ratified.Article III of the Constitution outlines specific and limited responsibilities for the federal judiciary; but it was not until the 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, that the concept of judicial review of the nation’s laws took hold. Judicial review...
by Bob Barr | Apr 3, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comIn the aftermath of the February 2018 mass murder at a Parkland, Florida high school, it became readily apparent that danger signs and evidence abounded that a disturbed former student at the school was likely going to commit such a heinous crime. Despite local, state and federal law enforcement officials having possession of such knowledge, they failed to act on that information even though they had lawful and ready means to do so. Now, rather than hold responsible those who failed in their responsibilities in that tragedy, and to address specifically the reasons why our law enforcement and judicial systems failed in that instance, state governments and the Congress of the United States are moving to dramatically reduce due process protections for everyone, or at least for everyone who owns a firearm. The vehicle being used to thus undermine citizens’ rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, are so-called “red flag” laws (also known as “Emergency Risk Protections Orders”). The problems evident in the Parkland mass murder and others – Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017, Charleston, SC in 2015, and Sandy Hook in 2012 — are very real and very serious; and need to be addressed. However, doing so in ways that expand the government’s power to confiscate law-abiding citizens’ firearms without affording them long-standing and constitutionally-based due process, is neither necessary nor appropriate. Yet this is precisely what is happening.To gun-control advocates like 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Cory Booker, every mass shooting is the result of insufficient gun-control laws – “loopholes” in Liberal Speak. To them, the failure on the part of law enforcement and other government agencies to have used the...
by Bob Barr | Mar 27, 2019 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
Townhall.comEvery day, I thank America’s Founding Fathers for their prescience in providing a Bill of Rights to protect against the government arbitrarily undermining fundamental civil liberties. The actions undertaken by the government in New Zealand in response to the mass murder by a lone gunman earlier this month, provides but the most recent illustration of why our Bill of Rights is so vital to the preservation of freedom. The First, Second, and Fifth Amendments to our Constitution guarantee — among other fundamental liberties — the rights to free expression, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to own property free from arbitrary confiscation. These civil liberties, which we enjoy here in America (and often take for granted), are being decimated by the New Zealand government in the name of “public safety.” Predictably, of course, has been the effusive praise with which many public officials and media outlets here in the United States have lauded New Zealand’s government for “moving swiftly” in the wake of the March 15th murder spree in Christchurch; actions making it even more difficult than previously for that country’s citizens to purchase or possess most handguns and many rifles. It would be surprising indeed, if the American Left had not quickly rallied in praise of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pressing for a sweeping ban on various firearms, including “military-style assault rifles” following the mosque murders. What is less understandable is the silence with which those same liberals who laud New Zealand and bemoan our own government for its gun-control lethargy, have reacted to the other edict issued by that government – criminalizing the...
