by Bob Barr | Jun 23, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallMost Americans understand that in our system of justice, a person is “innocent until proven guilty” and that someone cannot be punished if they are not guilty. Bedrock due process, right? Not necessarily.For years, many judges have punished individuals who appear before them even though they have been determined to be innocent. These judges, all of whom have taken an oath to uphold our Constitution, are basically thumbing their nose at jurors who had determined the government failed to meet its burden of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Unfortunately, this practice has not been halted either by the U.S. Supreme Court or federal law.Finally, however, a bipartisan group of United States senators are pushing legislation that would prohibit this shameful practice of punishing people for crimes for which they had not been convicted. The bill is S.601, the “Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2021.” Observers might scratch their head and wonder why such a piece of legislation is even needed, considering the clarity with which our Bill of Rights guarantees such fundamental rights as due process, equal protection of the law, and freedom from excessive punishment, among others. But such a law is needed, and it is needed now.The practice of punishing individuals for crimes not proven results from a decades-long trend of giving judges and prosecutors ever more power over defendants coming before them. Mandatory minimum sentences may be perhaps the most visible reflection of this trend but is certainly not the only one.The problem had not escaped the attention of sitting Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his two late colleagues, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg....
by Bob Barr | Jun 21, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerLast week, the Biden administration proudly released its promised “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” At the same time, the White House issued a four-page “FACT SHEET” summarizing the 30-page strategy report. Presenting a “Fact Sheet” in this context is ironic, considering there is not a single fact or piece of hard evidence within the report; it is all opinion, wishful thinking and annoyingly repetitive verbiage.Still, a fair reading of the document reveals a host of legal and constitutional problems that its implementation would present, and it therefore must be considered seriously and not brushed aside as simply another exercise in federal government bloviation.At the outset, it should surprise no one that the overarching threat necessitating this entire strategy is “white supremacy” spawned by the “racism and bigotry” this administration clearly considers unshakably imbedded in our culture.Whether it is expanded government watchlists, additional federal criminal laws (including that of “domestic terrorism”), more gun control, a cozier relationship between social media platforms and the federal government or simply delivering more “financial relief to millions of Americans” (yes, more deficit spending is a specified priority), this “National Strategy” plants the seeds for more to come over the course of the next three-and-one-half years.Scooped up in its wide net as a threat to be addressed by the implementation of this program are pretty much any “ideologies” or grievances that might serve to motivate any person or group to violence. Indeed, at one point the report discards any notion that its broad sweep might be in some manner limited, by declaring that “domestic terrorists” could include “individuals [who] may develop their own idiosyncratic justification...
by Bob Barr | Jun 16, 2021 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn a free market system, sellers compete by offering products of either a higher quality, or at a lower price. However, when sellers collude to sell their products all at a fixed price, consumers pay a higher price because there is no longer a need for competition. In the private sector, this is called a cartel. In the public sector, we call it a G7 summit.Joe Biden fancies himself something of a straight shooter, so why is he not shooting straight with Americans when it comes to the G7’s latest scheme for a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent? Try as they might to spin it, the G7’s plan is a global tax cartel, and while this sort of socialism is par for the course for Europe, America should know better. America is a country whose entrepreneurs built the world’s greatest and strongest economy. We are home to recent success stories like Apple and Amazon, but also benefit from some three million businesses owned by immigrants that generated more than a trillion dollars for the U.S. economy. Why in the world, then, would we voluntarily agree to make doing business in America and with American companies worse, so that by comparison, it makes doing business in Europe better? It is not the American taxpayers’ job to subsidize European socialism, but that is exactly what Biden is volunteering them to do by pledging U.S. support for this tax cartel.If European countries want to band together and levy higher taxes on corporations, that is their business. America should be working in the opposite direction, however, by taking steps that make operating a...
