by Bob Barr | Apr 18, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Just as “communism” is no longer seen in a negative light by many younger Americans, “atheism” no longer carries with it the adverse connotations that it held in the 1960s. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists, won the sobriquet the “most hated woman in America.” In fact, according to recent studies, atheism, Wicca and other forms of paganism are growing faster among Millennials and Generation Z than any other demographic groups. Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein has studied these matters at length, and as noted in his new book, “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up,” America’s youth clearly seem to no longer possess the “spiritualism” that Alexis de Tocqueville recognized as a national strength in his seminal work, “Democracy in America.” As the “metaverse” increases in popularity and as the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans increases, the trend about which Bauerlein writes is likely to accelerate, and with it, the further erosion of an historic and moral underpinning of our representative democratic political system. Regardless of whether one practices or is affiliated with one or another of the world’s great religions, being thus affiliated provides at least the nucleus of morality and ethics on which a freedom-based political and social system can grow and prosper. Becoming unmoored from both history and religion will, again as Bauerlein posits, result in citizenry, particularly the younger generations, searching for “happiness” in all the wrong places, especially the digital world. Interestingly, there already are emerging debates about whether “committing” criminal acts in the metaverse can, or even should be punished. Regardless of how such a question as this may be answered, the simple fact that users immersing themselves in the metaverse are committing...
by Bob Barr | Apr 11, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The increased defense spending in the Biden administration’s recently released FY 2023 Budget may have upset the radical left wing of the Democrat Party, but U.S. military policy continues to flounder under the leadership of President Biden and his “woke” Defense Department team. The setting for what has become an embarrassing national defense posture was laid out at the very start of Biden’s tenure and has only worsened since then. But first, the numbers. In the budget sent to the Congress at the end of March, the president proposed to spend $831 billion for defense, a number that drew a harsh rebuke from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is all for show. While the administration’s proposed 4% increase in defense spending angered the likes of Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, the fact is that a 4% increase in spending for the next fiscal year does not come even close to accounting for loss of military buying power due to the record level of inflation we are experiencing; now close to 8%. The actual weaknesses in the proposed defense budget are now becoming clear. For example, immediately after the anemic 4% defense spending increase was announced, the Department of the Army stated that its active-duty troop strength would be reduced to what is reported to be the lowest number since just before WW II – 473,000. A top Pentagon official, Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo, declared that cutting the service’s active troop strength was not a “budget-driven decision.” If not in fact budget-related, such a statement raises major questions about precisely what factors are “driving” this administration’s national defense policies. At the very same time...
by Bob Barr | Apr 4, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Recent headlines cause me to wonder seriously, where is the FBI? In the late 1980s, during my service as the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta, Georgia, I worked closely with the FBI, which had a large regional office in the city manned by top-tier special agents. Led often by the local FBI office, and in conjunction with investigators from other federal agencies, including IRS, DEA, Immigration, HUD, HHS and Labor, our office successfully prosecuted numerous corrupt public officials, drug kingpins, money launderers and all manner of white-collar criminals. In those days, the FBI was viewed widely as the country’s premier law enforcement agency. Despite the Bureau’s penchant for self-publicizing its operations, I recall no instance in which the fundamental ethical or nonpartisan nature of the Bureau’s work was called into question. I have no doubt today that the overwhelming majority of career FBI Special Agents today continue that long and honored tradition. However, a review of recent policy decisions by top-level bureaucrats and political appointees within the Bureau and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, calls into serious question whether the FBI has veered wildly off track. A major turning point certainly would be the shenanigans by top-level FBI officials to use the Bureau’s powers to thwart the 2016 election and subsequent administration of Donald Trump. This effort went from senior special agents like Peter Strzok all the way to the former Acting Director of the Bureau, Andrew McCabe. While these two collaborators eventually were fired during the Trump administration, under Trump’s successor McCabe’s full pension has been restored and his firing cleared from his...
by Bob Barr | Mar 28, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Much ado last week was made of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s leniency as a federal trial court judge in sentencing defendants convicted of certain crimes, especially those facing prison for child sex offenses. It was, however, the nominee’s staunch unwillingness to answer questions about her knowledge of basic facts that unmasked Judge Jackson as a truly woke individual; a student of the law unwilling to state the obvious for fear of divulging details that might cause the left to doubt her bona fides as one of them. In reviewing the manner by which the nominee steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there were in fact “differences between men and women that are enduring” — as premised in a series of questions posed by Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn – I was reminded of an article describing what might be considered a “New Legal Order,” published even as the confirmation hearings were being televised. “The Takeover of America’s Legal System,” authored by Aaron Sibarium in Common Sense, describes the manner by which Millennial (and younger) lawyers are being taught; namely, that objectivity as a foundational underpinning of our legal system, no longer is to be considered a constant. Woke lawyers, law professors and even judges now are openly declaring that certain individuals harboring disfavored social views (e.g., those considered “racist” or misogynistic) no longer are entitled to competent legal counsel because of those views or acts. In this environment, law professors holding traditional, contrary views must “self-censor” their lectures so as not to incur the wrath of “woke” students and law school administrators. As Sibarium further describes this deeply disturbing trend (especially...
by Bob Barr | Mar 21, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Following World War II, the prevailing Allied powers agreed to convene an International Military Tribunal, commonly referred to as the “Nuremburg Trials.” The deliberations leading to this unprecedented undertaking, as well as the trial itself (which lasted nearly one year), were painstakingly comprehensive, and consequently have achieved lasting credibility. The ongoing public debate as to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s culpability as a “war criminal” because of his invasion of Ukraine has rekindled the debate about what constitutes a “war crime.” Sadly, the level of this current debate has been superficial and not worthy of its importance to the foundations of international law or of serious public policy (though likely making for good politics). The issue deserves far more serious consideration than an off-hand remark by President Joe Biden last week to a reporter that, “He [Putin] is a war criminal.” The next day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed the president’s statement, stating at a news conference, that he “personally believes” the Russian president has committed war crimes in Ukraine. Has Putin committed “war crimes?” By ordering the invasion of Ukraine and then appearing to deliberately target civilian population centers, probably so. But if the United States is henceforth going to start labeling foreign leaders to be “war criminals” without amassing evidence and presenting a case beyond news videos, the credibility of such an important endeavor will diminish, and with it, the value of employing the term itself. In the decades since the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-1946, there have been a number of international judicial proceedings designed to identify, try and punish civilian and military leaders who engage...
by Bob Barr | Mar 14, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller When President John F. Kennedy made his bold declaration in 1961 that America would, before the end of that decade, send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth, there was little doubt our country would meet that lofty goal, and absolutely no doubt we would do it on our own. Now, six decades later, America’s ability to send astronauts into space, including to the International Space Station (ISS), clearly has been hobbled by a short-sighted (if not foolhardy) U.S. government decision at the turn of this century to rely on Russian-built rockets to launch heavy payloads into space. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting U.S.-led sanctions targeting Russia is proving the folly of allowing our country to have become dependent on a potential — and now demonstrably real — adversary in a key national security area. With the head of Russia’s space program late last month threatening to leave an American astronaut aboard the ISS with no way home, the stupidity of our space program becoming dependent on Russian heavy launch vehicles and space capsules has come into sharp focus, regardless of whether Putin’s government would actually follow through on such a threat. For decades, Russia and the United States have cooperated in their civilian space programs, especially in manning the ISS. This relationship has permitted both nations to reap the benefits of the space station’s breakthroughs in medicine, telecommunications and many other arenas, while sharing the expense of such dangerous and costly activities. There is, however, a pronounced difference between cooperation and dependency, and it is in the matter of...
