by Bob Barr | Apr 19, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerEver since the Supreme Court of the United States was instituted by Article III of our Constitution as ratified by the states in 1788, many of Western civilization’s greatest legal minds have served as justices on that august bench. One of these exceptional jurists was America’s very first Chief Justice, John Marshall, who served from 1801 to 1835.It was Marshall who, in 1805, authored an opinion that to this day remains a bedrock principle according to which our government, and indeed our very culture, has rested. In that seminal case of Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court declared that the final authority by which the constitutionality of any law passed by Congress and signed by the president is to be measured, is the federal judiciary, with the Supreme Court of the United States at its apex.Over the ensuing 216 years, presidents, members of Congress, lower courts and citizens of all political stripes have complained – sometimes bitterly – when application of this principle of judicial review results in a decision with which they disagree. However, Marshall’s assertion that such process is essential for “the government of the United States” to remain “a government of laws, and not of men,” is at least as important today as it was in 1805.Our 32nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was so angered by the Supreme Court’s decisions during his first four years in office declaring provisions of his “New Deal” to be unconstitutional, that in 1937 he launched a frontal attack on the independence of the court; a proposal that quickly became known as Roosevelt’s “court-packing plan.” FDR’s plan would have amended...
by Bob Barr | Apr 13, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerEditor’s note: We endeavor to bring you the top voices on current events representing a range of perspectives. Below is a column arguing that the current boycott against Georgia will not be effective in changing the state’s new voting law. You can find a counterpoint here, where Alan Tonelson argues that boycotts like the one against Georgia can be highly effective and may cause a wave of similar boycotts.Anyone searching for reasoned analysis or common sense in the decision by Major League Baseball to pack up this summer’s All-Star Game in Atlanta and trek it across the country to Colorado, are doomed to be disappointed. Also destined to be let down will be liberals hoping that the brouhaha surrounding the recent reform of Georgia’s voting laws will push Gov. Brian Kemp and fellow Georgia Republicans to back away from the ballot reform measures they worked so hard to pass.The ultimate question, of course, is whether Peach State voters will remember this controversy as a deciding factor a year and a half from now when Kemp, Democratic Sen. Ralph Warnock and dozens of other candidates from both major parties seek reelection. Only time will answer that political conundrum.But for now, and certainly once the dust kicked up by MLB’s precipitous decision dies down after the summer classic in Denver, it likely will be a return to business as usual in Georgia.The improbability that Democrat hopes for a surge of corporate support for their “woke” voting rights movement will grab hold in the short term, results from a number of factors. Most important among these is the fact that Kemp is...
by Bob Barr | Apr 12, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerLast week, under pressure from the extreme left wing of the Democrat Party, President Joe Biden emerged briefly from his safe house on Pennsylvania Avenue and re-declared his commitment to battle the “epidemic” of gun violence.The specific measures he outlined were covered by the mainstream media as a major newsworthy event, but in fact represented little of real substance. The importance of Biden’s message, however, lies not so much in the specific measures actually proposed, but in his words that reflect the president’s deep-seated animosity toward the Second Amendment and those who support it.For example, it was deeply disturbing that the country’s new Attorney General, Merrick Garland, echoed the president’s commitment to gun control, and that David Chipman, a fervent gun control advocate, was being nominated to head the government agency with primary jurisdiction over federal firearms laws – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or “ATF.”Biden began by going after the low-hanging fruit – so-called “ghost guns.” There is in fact nothing supernatural about such firearms. Calling them by this cute shorthand is a typical gun control ploy to use certain words designed to scare the public into believing there is a frightening menace lurking out there. This is the same tactic used by the Left when they call the AR-15 rifle, the most popular, lawful rifle in America, a “weapon of war” (which it certainly is not).In reality, what Biden calls “ghost guns” are nothing more than parts kits for firearms that can be purchased and assembled by an individual, usually a hobbyist, without containing registration markings for the government to track. Such firearms...
by Bob Barr | Apr 5, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerWhen the sitting president of the United States closets himself and refuses to appear publicly or to personally articulate his policies except when pressured to do so, people notice. When a president of the United States fumbles and mumbles publicly to the degree that what he is saying borders on undecipherable, people notice. When a sitting American president publicly disparages his own country, people notice. When America’s national security policies are delivered as indecisive, weak and apologetic, people notice.When a U.S. president behaves in such ways, it is not only people in America who notice. Leaders of other nations, including key allies and major adversaries alike, take note also.Weakness and vacillation may carry a political price domestically for a president, costing him and his political allies votes. More important, however, that same perception of weakness and inconsistency comes with a price abroad, and in terms of national security the price can be far more dangerous.While President Biden may be comfortable saying little and doing even less, governing as an absentee president places our country in a decidedly uncomfortable posture abroad.On the world stage, where since the demise of the Soviet Union three decades ago, the United States has reigned as the only true superpower, the absence of leadership is seen as weakness. If you are perceived as weak, you will be challenged accordingly.As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and many others have understood, a nation’s bargaining power to negotiate with other nations is based as much on how it is perceived by others as on its inherent power. A nation’s posture will be diminished in direct proportion to the degree it...
by Bob Barr | Mar 29, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerWhile age may have slowed Jesse Jackson’s political activities (he is nearly 80 years old), the strategy he launched in the early 1980s of using race as a lever to pressure corporations into donating money to causes he championed lives on, with renewed vigor in today’s hyper-partisan political environment. Truly, no sporting event or business is safe from becoming a racial football.In Georgia, the 85th Masters Golf Tournament, which has withstood charges of racism and sexism in recent years, now is under attack not for anything it has done (or not done), but simply because the governor of the state in which it is located last week signed legislation making the state’s voting procedures more secure. That act alone was enough to initiate calls by Black Lives Matter groups and others to both boycott and move the venerable tournament out of Augusta, Georgia.Baseball, which historically was considered America’s apolitical national pastime, now also is in the crosshairs of these same groups for the very same reason. The annual All-Star game, scheduled to be played this summer at the Atlanta Braves stadium in a suburb of the city long considered the “Capitol of the New South,” is being targeted for boycott and transfer to a stadium in another state.For now, at least, neither batting averages nor handicaps define professional sports in America, only race.This actually is nothing new since racial activists five years ago discovered that disrespecting the playing of our National Anthem prior to professional sporting events garnered them significant publicity. What is new, however, is the widening scope of activities that now trigger calls for boycotts, and the vehemence that accompanies such...
by Bob Barr | Mar 22, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerDemocrats are sniffing glue and reading the New York Times again. How else can one explain their reduction of the deeply complex and innately subhuman act of slaughtering eight individuals to a run-of-the-mill “hate” crime, on par with screaming racial slurs at a passerby on the sidewalk? It is an explanation so sophomoric that it borders on irresponsibly stupid.No act of mass murder is an ordinary crime, whether fueled by anger, passion or psychosis. Intentionally murdering innocent strangers requires a detachment from basic humanity that is not an attribute common to the vast majority of criminals. Comprehending how an individual arrives psychologically at such a dark depth is a key to preventing similar tragedies in the future.Progress in understanding such horrific criminal behavior, however, grinds to a halt when a key stakeholder refuses to scratch even a micron below the surface of the overt acts. Worse still, in the case of last week’s murders at massage parlors in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, Democrats have displayed actual hostility toward those who delve beneath the surface, when facts and analysis begin to contradict their simplistic narrative. As cultural commentator Jon Stokes recently noted on Twitter, it “isn’t just the incuriosity, but the . . . anti-curiosity” that strikes him as particularly troublesome with the Democrats’ reaction to the Atlanta shootings. “You’re just supposed to say ‘amen’” and move on.Consider Georgia’s newly elected, far-Left Sen. Raphael Warnock, who clapped back at the FBI last weekend when the agency suggested the Atlanta shooting did not appear to be racially motivated. Warnock’s un-inquisitive explanation for the murders was simply, “we all know hate when we see it.”Which narrative is more...
