by Bob Barr | Jun 26, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller With days and weeks filled with law practice, political goings on, serving as President of the National Rifle Association, and other issues relating thereto, I find myself, like many of my colleagues, with little time for matters of the mind. I was, therefore, extremely grateful to a friend who last week invited me to a celebration in New York City for the unveiling of one of the most beautiful works of religious art I have ever seen – the Ark of the Covenant constructed as close as humanly possible to its biblical criteria and dimensions. Being able to view up close this astonishingly beautiful and gold-laden artifact was itself worth the visit to the Big Apple. It was, however, the speakers that made the evening event truly valuable. Many of the presenters, including a number of Rabbis and biblical scholars, amongst who was Christian Coalition founder and current chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed, were (at least in my experience) more inspiring and thought-provoking than any presentation or essay by a political leader in the modern era (with the possible exception of several speeches by Ronald Reagan, including his second inaugural address describing the “American Sound”). It was truly invigorating to step back from politics and controversies of the day and cogitate for those few hours on matters of import that far transcend such current events in importance to each of us as individuals as well as to our country. The closest in oratorical proximity to politics that figured into last Wednesday evening’s celebration came in the form of thanksgiving to the United States...
by Bob Barr | Jun 12, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller I recently returned from the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) 153rd annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, an event at which hundreds of retailers and manufacturers of firearms, firearms accessories, archery equipment and camping gear set up shop and attracted more than 72,000 visitors, including many families with children of all ages. As was the case at every NRA annual meeting I have attended since becoming a Board member in 1998, the overarching theme was safe and responsible use and ownership of firearms. On Monday, May 20th, immediately following the annual meeting and exhibit hall, I was elected by the 76-member Board of Directors to serve as NRA President for the 2024-25 year. I accepted this honor at a time of great challenge and opportunity for the NRA and its more than four million dues-paying members — also recognizing that every year is one of challenge and opportunity for the NRA. The fact is, when it comes to defending the Second Amendment (and indeed, all the rights guaranteed to us by our Bill of Rights), our opponents never sleep, and a win one day is guaranteed to be followed by another challenge the next. Thus it has been since the founding of our great nation. Thankfully for freedom-loving and law-abiding citizens, just as our adversaries never sleep, neither does the NRA in confronting challenges in the legislative, legal and regulatory arenas. And, since the turn of this century, those challenges have come also from the United Nations and other international organizations. Here at home, the recent prosecution of former President Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg illustrates the manner by which...
by Bob Barr | Apr 10, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller A recent FOIA request secured release of an article by an anonymous intelligence officer employed by the federal government’s Intelligence Community (IC), entitled “MY GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION MAKE ME A BETTER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER.” Central to the theme of this apparently serious article appearing in an official publication of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), was the unnamed male author’s predisposition to dress in women’s clothes in his workplace, including the wearing of brassieres and high heeled shoes — actions that he asserts have “sharpened [his] skills as an intelligence officer” and “made [him] a better colleague.” It would be easy to dismiss this crossdressing gobbledygook, published by Uncle Sam just one month ago, based on nothing more than its utterly nonsensical and bizarre thesis that an adult male donning high heels and a brassiere thereby gains knowledge sure to improve his analytical capabilities to assess foreign intelligence information. The crossdressing article, however, does not represent or reflect a more fundamental problem infecting our Intelligence Community’s ability to provide accurate, timely and substantive intelligence for policy makers. The far more dangerous document than the anonymous crossdresser’s silliness, is “Intelligence Community Directive 125,” issued on May 13, 2023, and titled, “Gender Identity and Inclusivity in the Intelligence Community.” It is this official directive from the most senior Intelligence Community official in our government that more broadly threatens to undermine the deadly serious business of gathering, analyzing and disseminating to policy makers sound foreign intelligence product. Directive 125 goes far beyond justifying one crossdresser’s sartorial preferences. It mandates the manner by which senior Intelligence Community leaders must be...
by Bob Barr | Apr 3, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The budget for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is large and growing every year. The Biden Administration has asked Congress to appropriate $369.3 billion for the VA in 2025 – a nearly 10% increase over 2024. Roughly half of the VA’s spending goes toward providing disability benefits to compensate veterans for injuries or health conditions resulting from their service. Yet, with all that money being allocated to support our nation’s disabled veterans, many still struggle to obtain what they are owed under the law. This makes it even more difficult to understand why some Members of Congress have proposed legislation that actually would make it harder for veterans to get the help they need. It is hardly a secret that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has for years been plagued with problems – everything from computer systems that just don’t seem to work, to difficulties in setting appointment scheduling and lengthy wait times for many veterans once they do secure medical visits. The VBA currently has a backlog of more than 300,000 disability claims that have been pending for more than 125 days. In addition to long waits to receive decisions on their claim, many veterans are also being assigned inaccurate disability ratings, often resulting in lower benefits than deserved. An NBC News story from fall 2023 highlighted a lack of training, understaffing and low morale at the VBA as contributing factors leading to errors in decisions. As one VA employee put it in that account, “You end up developing an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. When you stop caring, you stop processing claims, you miss stuff.” Problems like these are causing large numbers...
by Bob Barr | Nov 20, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In the 14 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted what it had for decades sought — power to regulate tobacco and tobacco products — it has sought to expand its reach. One way the agency has done this is by waging a misguided, years-long crusade against e-cigarettes. FDA’s broad tobacco mandate, overseen by its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), is to “regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect public health.” In this endeavor, the FDA claims that it “evaluates new tobacco products based on a public health standard that considers the risks and benefits of the tobacco product to the population as a whole.” Inherent in this mission statement is the underlying goal to reduce or eliminate cigarette smoking in the United States — arguably a reasonable though certainly not universally supported point of view. What is unreasonable, however, is the FDA’s regulatory record over the past several years as measured by its stated objective. For example, CTP has in recent years approved, without any scientific review, nearly 900 new brands of cigarettes produced by dozens of companies; new brands on top of the billions of packs of cigarettes already approved for consumers. This fact alone appears completely at odds with the parent agency’s mission. The confusion becomes bewildering when considering that, during this same period, CTP has approved less than two dozen e-cigarette products, despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to the far more health-damaging cigarette smoking. Simply put, e-cigarettes have not gotten a fair shake in the agency’s taxpayer-funded activities, the result (to some extent) of bad behavior by a select...
by Bob Barr | Nov 8, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller For centuries, and certainly to Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the value of an educated citizenry has been understood to be an imperative for good governance, if not for the very survival of a free people. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated the principle clearly in an 1874 speech to the House of Commons, declaring that “Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.” Based on recent decisions by top education officials in states like Oregon, however, the fate of our country in this 21st century is indeed bleak.The Oregon Department of Public Education recently teamed up with woke Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to render virtually meaningless the value of a high school diploma from any public school in the Beaver State. Dragging the already sinking ability by Oregon students to read, write and calculate into the education abyss is the unanimous decision just last month by the Public Ed Department. Thanks to these bureaucrats, a 2021 policy to not require Oregon students exiting high school to prove they can read, write or perform mathematically to any particular level will continue for four more school years. In the Bizarro World that has transformed many Democrat-run American cities and states into cultural and economic wastelands, those who support Oregon’s profoundly disturbing education policy decision may laud the fact that it has led to an historically high graduation rate of 81.3 percent. The fallacy of this artificial calculus is that in virtually every other state or city that has sacrificed educational standards on the altar of “equity,” proficiency in basic subjects like math, reading and writing...
