by Bob Barr | Nov 22, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The indictment charging former Trump adviser Steve Bannon with contempt of Congress has all the trappings of a legitimate government proceeding. All the linguistic fluff aside, however, it is nothing more than a partisan abuse of power hatched by congressional Democrats and abetted by President Joe Biden and his Justice Department. The authority according to which the House of Representatives charged Mr. Bannon with contempt derives from H. Res. 503. This resolution passed the House on June 30 and established a 13-member “Select Committee” to inquire into the January 6, 2021 turmoil in and around the U. S. Capitol Building. That Bannon was a prime target of the inquiry became clear shortly after the committee organized itself and got down to the business of trying to link Trump, Bannon and others close to him to the Jan. 6 events on Capitol Hill. In September, Bannon was subpoenaed to appear before the committee and to produce documents. Following his refusal, the committee voted to hold him in contempt, a step the full House quickly rubber-stamped. The contempt resolution then was transmitted to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. In earlier, more “normal” times, that would be where the matter would remain. For example, of the five criminal contempt citations referred by the House to the Department of Justice since 2008, none resulted in grand juries returning indictments. In fact, the most recent examples of criminal contempt of Congress cases actually being successfully prosecuted took place in the 1970s as part of the Watergate scandal. One reason for the dearth of criminal prosecutions for contempt of...
by Bob Barr | Nov 15, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Last week was especially bad for President Joe Biden’s plan to force all Americans to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. How the administration responds to the setbacks will reveal whether we have a president who actually believes in and will abide by the rule of law, or one who considers himself above such a bothersome technicality. On September 9, Biden angrily lectured the American people about the COVID-19 pandemic, laying out plans for vaccination mandates to include all civilian and military federal employees and contractors, and for anyone working for a private company with 100 or more employees. Biden’s plan was indeed bold. As it turns out, it was too bold. On Friday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans, answering one of some two dozen pending federal court challenges to Biden’s COVID mandates, told him to go back to the drawing board. Biden’s plan hit another snag last week. The Army general in charge of Oklahoma’s National Guard issued an order declaring that no troops under his command will be required to be COVID vaccinated; this in direct defiance of a mandate issued in August by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The November 12 opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dealt with the November 5 “Emergency Temporary Standard” issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) purporting to implement the 100 employee mandate portion of Biden’s September edict. (The court had issued a preliminary stay of the mandate on November 6.) Despite Biden’s declaring that this mandate was among those he deemed essential to save the country from the continued...
by Bob Barr | Nov 9, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Zurich, Switzerland is a major international financial center sitting at the northern tip of its namesake lake. Beginning in 1987 and continuing until 1992, however, this beautiful Swiss city was home to “Needle Park,” an experiment in illicit drug usage that went horribly wrong, and with consequences that plagued the city for years thereafter. Three decades after Switzerland’s heroin debacle, a new generation of “woke” mayors, prosecutors and governors in the United States is hoping to create Americanized versions of Needle Park. Advocates of “Safe Injection Facilities,” or “SIFs,” apparently believe that drug addicts are actually being helped if they are provided with needles and other necessary drug paraphernalia and offered a safe place to “shoot up.” In this Bizarro World, facilitating drug use will lessen drug use. History is less kind and has shown us that encouraging public use of illicit and highly addictive controlled substances such as heroin and methamphetamine is not such a good idea, especially when, as now in many major American cities, violent crime rates are on the upswing, law enforcement presence is declining and the homeless population is increasing. Undaunted by such reality, the soon-to-be-ex-Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, is proposing to carve out at least two areas in the Big Apple, including one in Harlem on Manhattan’s upper west side, where drug users would be permitted to openly inject drugs of their choosing without fear of arrest or harassment by public officials. This move comes on the heels of legislation signed last month by Gov. Kathy Hochul decriminalizing possession or sale of disposable hypodermic needles used by...
by Bob Barr | Nov 1, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Supreme Court decisions upholding the right to abortion or defending press freedom draw kudos and huzzahs from the mainstream media. The mere possibility that the High Court might issue an opinion supporting the Second Amendment, however, throws that same media into conniption. So it is with oral arguments scheduled before the Supreme Court this week regarding a closely watched firearms case — New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Considering the fervor with which the mainstream media is wringing its collective hands over this case, one would think the justices were preparing to place a rocket launcher into the hands of every man, woman and child in America. One writer, Ian Millhisen, authored an opinion piece last week that described the pending case as one that “could gut America’s gun laws,” and mused that if a majority of the nine Supreme Court justices were to side with the citizen-plaintiffs in the case, it would usher in an era of “unlimited” gun rights. Such hyperbole is typical of the manner by which the mainstream media and most Democrat policy makers have characterized the gun control debate ever since the High Court rendered a pair of decisions in 2008 and 2010 declaring the obvious – that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm, not some amorphous right enjoyed only by the citizenry in general. Neither of those two decisions opened the floodgates to unfettered concealed-carry gun possession in cities and towns across America. In fact, neither decision even dealt with the right to possess a firearm outside the home, and the numerous restrictions on...
by Bob Barr | Oct 25, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In the name of COVID, American citizens in 2021 are being subjected to a form of perverse religious persecution by elected officials and unelected regulatory bureaucrats. This is ironic, considering that the United States was founded on the principle that government is not empowered to dictate or negate, directly or indirectly, an individual’s religious beliefs. Now, centuries after our nation’s founding, government leaders and bureaucrats at the state and federal levels are punishing those who assert a religious objection to receiving a COVID vaccination. This intolerance is but the latest in a seemingly endless series of measures by government to use the COVID pandemic as a hammer to control virtually every segment of our society, from education to healthcare, and from the military to the entire commercial sector. A country that produced such advocates of religious freedom and tolerance as George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin now chafes under the intolerance and exercise of arbitrary power by the likes of President Joe Biden and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who recently declared categorically that “there are not religious exemptions” for people being vaccinated against COVID. In September, Biden confirmed by executive order what many citizens had feared for months he would do. He decreed that COVID vaccinations would be required for all federal employees, including members of the armed forces, but also for all individuals working for private companies with 100 or more employees. OSHA – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — will be Uncle Sam’s primary vaccine enforcer. (OSHA is a regulatory nanny agency signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1971.) OSHA was...
by Bob Barr | Oct 18, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In 1961 a previously unknown “doo wop” group, the Tokens, topped the singles chart with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Considering the “woke” leadership of the United States military and our foreign intelligence agencies, many are wondering if the U.S. military “lion” sleeps while our Russian and Chinese counterparts work feverishly to overtake us in at least one key technology – hypersonic weaponry. It is a concern worthy of serious study. Recent public reports establish that both Russia and China have made significant advances in developing hypersonic missiles, the next generation of warhead delivery systems. These reports come as America’s commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden and his top military and foreign intelligence leaders remain fixated on ensuring a “woke” defense establishment and on mandating COVID vaccines for all military and civilian employees under their command, regardless of how many resignations such a short-sighted policy will cause. When these factors are considered alongside Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley’s publicly reported views that Communist China is not “an enemy,” and his self-admitted friendship with his counterparts in the People’s Liberation Army that overrode his loyalty to former President Trump, it is indeed fair to speculate where his true priorities lie. In a similar vein, over at the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, on assuming office early this year, made clear that his top priority as Secretary of Defense is not China or Russia, but rather to ferret out “white extremism” in the ranks. At the CIA, recruitment videos soliciting future intelligence experts focus not on defending against foreign threats and equipping our nation’s decision-makers with the very best intelligence possible on which...
