by Bob Barr | Nov 22, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerMany of the compliments being heaped on Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the wake of her announcement that she is stepping way from leading the Democrat Party are well-deserved, including the fact that throughout her tenure as Speaker, she maintained a high degree of intra-party discipline. Republicans should take heed as they prepare to assume the majority in the House when the 118th Congress convenes in January, but if recent history is a guide, they probably will not.The fact that Pelosi was able to keep her at-times very small majority marching in the same direction, is a testament to her skills and leadership style. Often overlooked in analyses of Pelosi’s successes in the Congress, however, is the fact that, unlike Republicans, there is broad agreement among congressional Democrats that Party and individual Member discipline is essential if the goal is to achieve meaningful results. In today’s political environment, with the American electorate and its representatives in the Congress evenly divided, both aspects of discipline are essential in order to succeed at actually legislating.Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy, with a bare-bones majority in the coming 118th Congress, already is finding this out, as the far-right Freedom Caucus and a few of the most conservative members of his caucus already are reducing his flexibility to manage not only his conference but the administration of the House generally.For example, it appears that the Republican majority intends to strip several Democrat members of their committee assignments, in retaliation for the Democrats doing this to Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2021. When the Democrats inappropriately punished Taylor Greene in this way, they broke with long-standing House tradition that each Party decides which committees...
by Bob Barr | Nov 15, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerAs much trouble as Republican leaders in the Congress might have accepting the brutal fact of their candidates’ poor performances in last week’s mid-term elections, “fixing” the problem will take more than post-election tinkering. Sure, there were major problems affecting the outcomes of last week’s results that were unique to this cycle – foremost among them, the quality of several Republican Senate candidates, and the barrage of early votes by Democrats – but there are far more consequential problems facing the GOP.Even accounting for such problems as candidate quality, uneven funding, and questionable polling, the failure of the Republican Party to develop and communicate a coherent and positive message to the electorate stands as a major shortcoming now and moving forward. History shows it need not be that way.In the 1994 mid-term election, the White House occupant was the widely unpopular President Bill Clinton. The House of Representatives had been under Democrat control for 40 years. The stage was set for change. To take advantage of that momentum, then-Minority Whip (and future Speaker) Newt Gingrich broke with Republican tradition, and articulated a substantive, specific, and positive message to the electorate.The 1994 Contract With America did not mention, much less attack Bill Clinton, though he was vulnerable to such charges. That would have been the politically easier course.Instead, the Contract listed ten pieces of legislation the GOP promised to bring to the floor of the House for a vote within the first 100 days of being awarded a majority. Importantly, it did not overpromise. The widely publicized document promised only what we could guarantee. It worked.By running on a program of specific, positive issues — each...
by Bob Barr | Nov 8, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller President Biden’s prime time address to the nation on November 2nd, less than a week before today’s midterm election, was billed by the White House as a major speech about saving “democracy.” In reality, it was as pointless a presidential speech as America has heard in decades. It was doom and gloom delivered in Biden’s signature unfriendly, if not downright threatening tone, through clenched teeth. The speech was so bad, in fact, that a CNN commentator labeled it “head-scratching.” From a practical political perspective, Biden’s speech was about a far as one could possibly stray from the issue — as in election cycle after election cycle — that tends to drag voters from their couches to the polling place: the economy. Whatever the reason or whoever the author of the speech, it epitomizes the gulf between the real world and how the President appears to view it.Even as Biden was telling his countrymen that “democracy” is at stake because of “extreme MAGA Republicans’” subversive efforts, record numbers of voters already had already voted – hardly evidence of voter “suppression.” Biden tried his best to cast the nation’s situation in the most dire terms possible. Ignoring the clear fact that the economy is on the ballot this year, he claimed repeatedly that “Democracy is on the ballot”; and not only on the ballot, but “at risk” because of “dark forces” working against our freedom to vote in a true “moment of generational importance.”The President spoke of “election deniers” as the harbingers of democracy’s doom. Even were election “deniers” running for offices up and down the ballot and in every one of the fifty states, the question...
by Bob Barr | Nov 1, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerNew York is the state many conservatives love to hate because of its stridently anti-Second Amendment laws and public policies (most recently, reflected in a new law undermining the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision that declared unconstitutional the state’s century-old Sullivan Law that made it next to impossible for a law-abiding citizen to obtain a concealed carry permit). However, an Oct. 21 decision from Saratoga County trial court Judge Dianne Freestone, reminds us that even in the dark “blue” state of New York, reason can prevail, despite the overwhelmingly Democrat state legislature, the ultra-liberal governor, and the far-left wing state attorney general.The judge’s decision resulted from a constitutional challenge to an absentee voting law passed by the legislature in Jan. 2022. That legislation extended and expanded statewide absentee voting far beyond existing provisions in the New York Constitution — even though New Yorkers had overwhelmingly rejected this proposal in a Nov. 2021 referendum. The legislature was not content to stop there.Section 7(j) of the January 2022 legislation, for example, arrogantly robs the courts of their fundamental power to hear and decide challenges to improperly cast votes: “In no event may a court order a ballot that has been counted to be uncounted.” Although the state of New York has – unsurprisingly — appealed Judge Freestone’s ruling, the 28-page opinion is remarkable in its lucidity and boldness.For example, the judge’s explanation of absentee voting in the state presents in sharp focus the arrogant manner by which former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the legislature sought to expand absentee voting far beyond what was provided for in the prior law and existing constitutional provisions. As detailed in the court’s opinion, the narrow 1955 New...
by Bob Barr | Oct 25, 2022 | Daily Caller Article, Uncategorized |
Daily CallerA number of sheriffs in upstate New York are declaring that their officers will not prioritize or “aggressively enforce” the state’s recently enacted, highly restrictive gun control law. These elected sheriffs have concluded quite correctly that the state’s new law is at odds with both the Constitution of the United States and with the most recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared New York’s previous and long-standing gun control law – the Sullivan Act – unconstitutional.The sheriffs’ actions have rekindled a recurring debate about the powers of the more than three thousand local sheriffs serving in every state except Alaska and Connecticut. The United States has had elected sheriffs long before there was a “United States of America,” with the first one taking office in Virginia in 1652. Police departments, on the other hand, are a relatively new phenomenon. The first municipal police department not established until 1838 in Boston, Massachusetts. Unlike most county sheriffs, who hold their positions under their state constitutions, police chiefs answer only to local office holders who appointed them, not to the voters. It is this distinction that has caused a number of sheriffs in “Blue States” to earn the ire of the Left. Two factors have exacerbated this enmity in recent years – increasingly restrictive gun control measures and abusive COVID mandates by Blue State governors and legislatures. Sheriffs who decline to prioritize enforcing such laws find themselves increasingly maligned by the Left, notwithstanding the fact that they are carrying out their sworn duty to support the federal and state constitutions, and in accord with the wishes of the voters they represent.Consider Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who declared...
by Bob Barr | Oct 3, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerNot too many years before the declining quality of its cars forced the Oldsmobile division of General Motors to disband, the company launched a catchy but ultimately unsuccessful ad campaign – “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Today’s FBI is not your father’s FBI. The FBI with which I worked during my tenure as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990, was a law enforcement agency widely recognized as the country’s best. The Bureau’s investigative jurisdiction extended to hundreds of federal crimes — from the well-known bank robberies and counterespionage cases to highly technical and complex computer crimes.Rarely in those days was there evidence that the Bureau’s investigations were politically motivated. In fact, at times, the Bureau was hesitant to launch or continue investigations precisely because it feared appearing partisan.FBI special agents were well-trained in the use of firearms and in the most appropriate tactics for effecting arrests and serving subpoenas or search warrants. Its special agents and leadership had learned the hard way over the decades to be prepared for any eventuality when undertaking such actions. Excessive shows of firepower, however (firepower exhibited for its own sake or to “make a point”), was neither the norm nor the acceptable exception.How times have changed.As the American public has repeatedly witnessed in recent years, and not just since President Biden’s swearing-in nearly two years ago, dramatic and over-the-top exhibition of firepower in arrests of high-profile or controversial individuals, has become an accepted if not normal Bureau practice. Just ask Roger Stone, whose pre-dawn arrest at his home in early 2019, was carried out by a team of heavily armed and FBI...
