by Bob Barr | Mar 13, 2023 | Uncategorized |
Democrats embrace antitrust attack on JetBlue merger with Spirit AirlinesFoxNews.comMarkets are more flexible, more innovative, and move faster than the government. Still, repeatedly over the years we have seen the government decide to take antitrust action against innovative private companies, only to realize years later, as the markets in question matured, just how costly and counterproductive such moves truly were. Now, as Yankees catcher Yogi Berra once said, it’s “déjà vu all over again.” In the 1960s, government antitrust lawyers at the Department of Justice targeted IBM. “Big Blue” was sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act, with the feds claiming it attempted to monopolize the market for “general-purpose digital computers.” Embarrassingly, a cottage industry of personal computers was coming into the computer market at the time, making IBM far from the only game in town. The case, however, lingered for more than a dozen years until, on January 8, 1982, the Department decided it lacked merit. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration targeted Microsoft for offering its Internet Explorer browser as part of its operating system, a move the Justice Department found unfair to Netscape, which at the time was its leading competitor. Today, neither browser exists. The market moved on despite government efforts to constrain it. More recently, a federal court in 2018 threw out the government’s case against the AT&T-Time Warner merger, reflecting the reality that the idea of a cable company having a viewer monopoly was laughable, considering that YouTube, satellite TV, Netflix, Roku, and others were all competing for the attention of the viewing public. Today, we are witnessing this same antitrust folly repeating itself, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, attacking the...
by Bob Barr | Mar 9, 2023 | Townhall Article |
TownhallFor more than five decades, the degree to which the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to “keep and bear arms,” and the extent to which that right may be “infringed,” have been among the most hotly debated issues demanding the attention of courts and governments at all levels.Now, two months into 2023 (and 232 years since the Second Amendment’s ratification) things have not changed a bit. In fact, the battle between gun control advocates and Second Amendment supporters is hotter than ever, especially with banks and credit card companies moving toward monitoring firearms purchases.The U.S. Supreme Court threw down the gauntlet to gun control advocates last June, when it ruled in a New York case that arbitrary and absolute government restrictions on an individual’s right to possess a firearm must be evaluated based on the meaning and history of the Second Amendment. Accordingly, only those government-imposed restrictions consistent with such analysis would henceforth be deemed constitutional.Not surprisingly, the Bruen decision has met with fervent pushback from New York and several other states where gun control proponents wield the levers of government power.Immediately following that decision, New York openly thumbed its nose at the Supreme Court, enacting a new anti-carry law even more restrictive than the one shot down by the Court. It has become clear the High Court will again be forced to tackle the underlying and fundamental questions surrounding how individuals in 2023 and beyond may possess firearms for self-defense in the real world.Precisely when the Supreme Court will decide to again weigh in on the Second Amendment (and hopefully slap down the arrogance and insulting manner by which...
by Bob Barr | Mar 7, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn a 46-page opinion ordering the national and state-level powerlifting organizations to allow men who have “transitioned” to female to compete as women, a Minnesota judge illustrates everything one needs to know about the contemporary leftist culture, which elevates subjective feelings above objective, scientific fact.The controversy between transgendered female powerlifter JayCee Cooper (nee, Joel Cooper, a biological male) had been percolating for some five years when, on Feb. 28th, Minnesota District Judge Patrick Diamond ordered USA Powerlifting and Powerlifting Minnesota to change their policies prohibiting participants born as male from competing as women, and to permit Cooper, who “in 2015 or 2016” had begun “a process of transitioning to a female identity,” to compete as a female.At its core, the judge’s ruling reflects the contemporary, liberal notion that the science of biology has no place regarding an individual’s “sexual orientation” to determine either their legal rights (in this instance, pursuant to the Minnesota Human Rights Act), or their rights to participate in organized sports. To Judge Diamond, all that matters is the individual’s “self-identity.”Thus, it matters not a whit what “sex” appears on an individual’s birth certificate – the document might as well no longer carry any significance. The only factor that, in this case a sporting organization, may legally employ to decide the category in which a member may compete, is what the individual “self-declares” at the time they wish to compete. The statutory underpinning for the court’s order is the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which defines “sexual orientation” as a person “having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness.” If,...
