by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallDuring the Cold War, which lasted for nearly half a century following the end of World War II, the small number of prisoner exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union were deadly serious affairs. Not so much now.Today, 31 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, there is a potential prisoner swap much in the news that bears no resemblance to the serious manner by which such exchanges took place in the past.In Russia’s corner, you have professional American female basketball player Brittney Griner, who recently pled guilty to the charge of bringing hashish oil into Russia. As a result of her plea, the six-foot, nine-inch player is serving a nine-year sentence in a Russian penal colony. In our corner is Russian citizen Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who, in 2011, was convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill Americans, and is mid-way through his 25-year sentence.In a bizarre twist to the widely publicized potential swap, former NBA star Dennis Rodman this week interjected himself into the thick of it.During the Cold War, such exchanges were taken most seriously at the highest levels in both Washington and Moscow, involving as they almost always did, clandestine espionage activities between the two superpowers. This was the case in the first and most famous of all spy-for-spy swaps — the 1962 deal that returned CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers to America from a Soviet prison and sent convicted Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel from a federal penitentiary to retirement in his native Russia.Negotiations for the Powers-Abel exchange, and the several other swaps that followed over the next several decades,...
by Bob Barr | Aug 23, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerUncle Sam’s irresponsible management of the massive student loan program, accelerated by the Biden administration’s loan “forgiveness” policies, will cost American taxpayers in excess of $311 billion – more than triple the annual budget for the sprawling U.S. Department of Education.The ballooning cost of the loan program, which includes previously projected income that will never materialize, plus nearly $200 billion in direct losses, has been calculated not by a Republican policy group aiming to undercut Biden’s pet student loan forgiveness policy, but by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.Both Democrat and Republican administrations have endorsed and funded the government’s direct student loan program, first launched 30 years ago. Since then, it has grown beyond a secondary source of funding for students’ post-secondary education into the single largest source of federal funding for such pursuits. It has also become the second-largest consumer debt category nationally after home mortgages, but with an astronomically higher default rate — projected to reach 40% by next year. It is these troubling aspects of the loan program that have fueled pressure on the Biden administration to pursue a reckless loan forgiveness policy.Biden faces significant pressure from within the Democrat Party, most vocally from its hard-left wing, to take the leap and simply “forgive” the outstanding loans — or at least a significant portion of them for certain classes of borrowers or up to certain amounts. While the president appears both philosophically and politically inclined to jump into that financial morass, his actions so far have been more tentative. For example, the administration already has written off the books more than $30 billion based on allegations that certain borrowers’ were misled or...
by Bob Barr | Aug 17, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallWith citizens across the country understandably focused on increased rates of urban violent crime, and with local and state law enforcement agencies suffering under manpower shortages, another crime headache could not come at a worse time. This is, however, what law enforcement may be facing in the coming months; and in fact, already is facing in Atlanta, Georgia – the resurgence of eco-terrorism.Just outside the bustling downtown environs of Atlanta, in a still-heavily wooded area known as “Intrenchment Creek Park,” a group of anarchists, environmental extremists, and anti-police activists have declared war on the construction of a new and desperately needed police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. Breaking with the largely non-violent measures employed in recent years by environmental absolutists, this new generation of “forest defenders” has returned to the violent tactics that characterized the movement decades ago and saw multi-million dollar arson campaigns from Oregon to Colorado and beyond. While the overarching goal of these environmental extremists is claimed to be reducing the “threats” to the environment causing global warming, the group in Atlanta has updated and expanded that mission statement.In a new wrinkle on the environmental focus of these “green defenders,” the still-loose “movement” that has reared its head in Atlanta, claims as part of its mission protecting minority and native American communities against harm allegedly caused by law enforcement and by commercial development (in this case, the construction of a new movie studio in the same area as the police training center).The tactics of these post-2020 anti-police activists, however, are well-known to law enforcement officials who have followed the trail of burned buildings and vehicles dating back to the...
