by Bob Barr | Jun 13, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller When he is not wandering aimlessly across a stage, President Biden is leveling the most vile of curses in his vocabulary at news stories with which he disagrees – “Malarkey!” This was his retort last week to a reporter’s query about allegations that he corruptly profited to the tune of $5 million while serving as Barack Obama’s Vice President. Meanwhile, former President Trump has been relentlessly and, as always, loudly, insulting Special Counsel Jack Smith for bringing an indictment against him for unlawfully possessing and disclosing highly classified documents after his tenure as Commander in Chief expired. For good measure, the former president also has been insulting anyone, including the man he appointed as his last Attorney General, who fails to similarly discount the 37-count indictment filed against him last week in the U.S. District Court in Miami. Actually, both cases have merit, both raise extremely serious questions about the competency of each man to serve in such high office, and both matters should be pursued seriously. The case against Trump was laid bare in the 44-page indictment returned against him last Thursday. The document is resplendent with details, including photographs, demonstrating the cavalier, and certainly un-presidential manner with which the former president considered classified national security information. Trump’s supporters argue, with perhaps a degree of validity, that charging a former president with nothing more than mis-handling classified papers is, in the broad scheme of things, not among the more serious issues facing America at home and abroad right now. Trump defenders declare also — and with a degree of cogency — that charging him but not...
by Bob Barr | Jun 1, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall A surprisingly unanimous Supreme Court decision last week finally clipped the ever-expanding wings of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). For more than half a century, imperious regulators at the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, with which it shares regulatory jurisdiction over “wetlands” and “navigable waters of the United States,” have worked to prevent citizens and businesses from taking common sense steps to develop privately owned property in ways that benefit them and which have no significant negative impact on the environment. One ploy the EPA and the Army Corps often have used in their war on private property owners, is to assert expansive jurisdiction over small or occasional bodies of water and “wetlands” — claiming these constitute “navigable waters of the United States,” and are therefore subject to regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA). This was the predicament in which Michael and Chantell Sackett found themselves in 2007, when the EPA moved to stop them from improving their small parcel of property near Priest Lake, Idaho. The Sacketts had, in the eyes of Uncle Sam’s regulators, committed an egregious offense by failing to first obtain a Corps of Engineers permit before taking preliminary steps to improve their property. The government claimed the property contained “wetlands” that in some way and at some point in time had a “nexus” to a navigable waterway of the United States. The Sacketts’ position was simple — property with no waterway at all, much less one that is “navigable,” does not transmogrify into “navigable water” simply because it is near such a waterway and might contain some occasional “wetlands.”...
by Bob Barr | May 30, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Students are learning less and fighting more. The Biden Administration, which seems to view virtually every policy matter through a racial lens, however, is making it more difficult for schools to actually protect teachers and students. The dispute over how to discipline disruptive students is nothing new. Unfortunately, this Administration, like its predecessor under President Obama, has made it a cultural and legal flashpoint, with little regard for the actual safety of those involved, including teachers. The current and ongoing debate about school discipline was teed up in January 2014 when President Obama’s Education and Justice departments issued a “Dear Colleague” letter outlining how Uncle Sam wanted schools to administer “discipline” without racially discriminatory effect. Four years later, the Trump Administration rescinded the Obama “guidance” on school discipline and issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter on December 21, 2018, returning primary responsibility for disciplining students back to local schools and school boards. For the past two years, the Biden Administration’s departments of Education and Justice have been “reviewing” Trump’s 2018 guidance letter, and on May 26th, issued its own “Dear Colleague” letter, re-focusing on federally determined “racial disparities” in school discipline. Each of these “Dear Colleague” letters, although not possessed of direct legal power, carries significant weight in alerting state and local schools how the federal government will come down on them if they fail to follow the “guidance” contained therein. The Obama-Biden approach to school discipline was and now remains, one that presumes racial discrimination in any discipline policy where minority students are disciplined at a higher rate, or more harshly, than their non-minority counterparts. Thus, starting in January 2014 the Department of Justice was...
