by Bob Barr | Oct 10, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall First came the self-revelation that Vice President Kamala Harris “Owns a Handgun” as blared in a New York Times headline last month. Next, in no less a substantive forum than an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Harris startled the liberal media by declaring that she would shoot anyone daring to break into her house. Coyly claiming that she “probably should not have said” she would actually shoot an intruder, Harris then took advantage of the moment to assert that her gun ownership and her avowed willingness to use it in defense of home and family, was absolute proof that claims she is anti-firearms are nothing other than a vile, Trump-created canard. While Kamala’s “Dirty Harry” act may have pulled the wool over the liberal media’s eyes, the fact remains that both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim — “Tiananmen Square” — Walz, have a demonstrable history of favoring anti-Second Amendment policies that belie their professed, late-night conversion to gun advocacy. The New York Times may swoon over Harris’ new platform of “Freedom” as reflected in her tough rhetoric on gun ownership and protecting her home – already tightly guarded by numerous firearms-wielding Secret Service agents – with a Glock handgun, but “freedom” is not reflected in any of the following policies advocated by the Democrat Party’s current standard-bearers: As San Francisco District Attorney, Harris signed onto a legal brief asserting that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, but only a collective right. The U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2008 Heller decision, correctly found otherwise – that the Second Amendment does indeed guarantee an individual’s right...
by Bob Barr | Sep 30, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The year was 1917 — the Panama Canal had been opened a mere three years, the United States entered World War I in April and the Jones Act granted American citizenship to the citizens of Puerto Rico in March. 1917 was also the year that the U.S. Congress passed the little-noticed “Rum Cover-Over” as a way to help the new island Commonwealth of Puerto Rico develop much-needed infrastructure by transferring back to Puerto Rico federal excise taxes on rum produced there. We are now 117 years later, and what was designed as a temporary tax rebate to help the newly acquired and at the time largely undeveloped island of Puerto Rico get on its feet following the Spanish-American War, is still with us; illustrating the adage that “temporary” tax measures are rarely, if ever, truly temporary. In fact, the rum tax “cover over” was broadened in 1954 to include the U.S. Virgin Islands, to help fund infrastructure projects on those islands. These tax rebate projects in recent years do little, if anything, to assist either Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands build schools, roads or power plants. What the revenue measures have done, is to greatly benefit private distilleries, including Diageo and Bacardi, that produce rum in these Caribbean locales, including by subsidizing major expansion of such facilities. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good rum drink from time to time, but where is the economic justification in this year 2024, for the governments of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to be benefitting from federal excise tax refunds that can total hundreds of millions...
by Bob Barr | Sep 12, 2024 | Townhall Article |
Townhall “Project 2025.” It was mentioned during last night’s debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, just as it has repeatedly come up over the course of this year’s remarkably unusual presidential campaign. True to form, it was criticized by Harris and disavowed by Trump. Much has been written about Project 2025, which is detailed in a 887-page book – Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise — published last year by the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based, conservative think tank, as a guide for a hoped-for conservative-oriented presidency to follow that of President Biden. The programs outlined in Project 2025 are neither new nor ground-breaking, and follow similar volumes issued by Heritage in the lead-up to presidential elections since the first edition was published in 1981. As noted by its authors, it is a “governing agenda” designed as a roadmap for a conservative president to implement where possible and advocate when necessary, for changes in an administration and in the individuals who will populate it, in order to reduce the size, scope, and power of the federal government. In no other election, going back to those in the 1980s, has this election-year project become a central and recurring target by the Democrat nominee and the Party itself. Why this year? On the broadest level, one could attribute Project 2025’s prominence this cycle to the basic parameters according to which virtually everything relating to national politics and to candidates and office holders, is subject to virulent objection by whichever side or individual disagrees with all or a portion of whatever is being put forward. Thus, insofar as Project 2025 describes a conservative...
