by Bob Barr | Mar 15, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIt was only a matter of time. We knew it was coming – gun control.Newly installed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has long advocated for limits on the right of citizens to own guns, so has Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and Vice President Kamala Harris always has been a cheerleader for gun control. Who can forget then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2020 publicly declaring he might, if elected, make extreme gun control advocate “Beto” O’Rourke his “gun czar.”The waiting is over. The battle for the Second Amendment is underway in earnest, and the GOP had better be prepared to do serious battle or they (and the American people) will have their constitutional pocket picked clean.Last week, House Democrats sent two bills to the Senate. Measures that enthrall the gun control crowd, not by making it more difficult for criminals to obtain firearms but by making it significantly harder for law-abiding citizens to purchase guns for self-defense or other lawful purposes.Both bills — H.R. 8 and H.R. 1446 – come with the time-worn gun control label as “common sense” measures designed solely to close “loopholes” in the National Instant Background Check System. While the “NICS” system has not worked perfectly (what federal program has?), it has served surprisingly well for more than two decades at preventing sales of firearms to individuals prohibited by law from possessing them. Regardless, gun control advocates have been looking for ways to expand it ever since it was first passed by Congress in 1993.In fact, neither H.R. 8 nor H.R. 1446 are benign “reform” measures.H.R. 1446, the “Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021,” is the more insidious of the...
by Bob Barr | Mar 9, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Thirty-two years ago, in his final State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan described America as the “shining city on a hill.” That characterization of the United States was accurate then and it is accurate today, though according to a nonpartisan analysis of human freedom around the globe, our shine has lost some of its luster.The CATO institute in Washington, DC recently published its annual Human Freedom Index, according to which the United States dropped nine points, and now qualifies as only the 17th freest county among 162 nations ranked. New Zealand, Switzerland and Hong Kong continue to hold the top three spots as the freest countries on earth, with Venezuela, Sudan and Syria holding the dubious distinction as the least free. Japan and Estonia are among the nations whose citizens fared better than did ours in the encyclopedic survey.The data on which this 2020 index is based is from 2018, insofar as that is the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available to CATO. Looking ahead to 2019 and 2020, there is little reason to expect New Zealand or Switzerland to lose their coveted positions atop the list, as there have been no significant economic or political policy changes in either country as would likely affect their status, at least relative to other countries. For Hong Kong, however, it would not be surprising to see its top-three ranking suffer as a result of crackdowns over the past two years by the parent regime in Communist China on the degree of liberty that had been enjoyed by Hong Kong’s businesses and citizens.CATO’s analysts consider a dozen indices of...
by Bob Barr | Mar 1, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller As recounted by Lewis Carroll in his timeless parody “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Alice discovers her surroundings to be “curiouser and curiouser.” In many ways, the fictitious world conjured by Carroll more than a century and a half ago aptly describes the state of affairs in our nation’s capital after only the first weeks of the Biden Administration. The speed with which the new administration and its Democrat cohorts in both houses of the Congress are undermining substantive historic and common-sense norms of behavior and law, is deeply disturbing. For nearly two months now, since the violence on Capitol Hill in early January, Washington, D.C., has been turned into an armed compound. Thousands of armed military personnel patrol its streets, and miles of razor wire and metal fencing encircle the Capitol building itself and several blocks in every direction. This militarization of the Capitol, clearly with the approval of the president himself, is not only unprecedented but pointless from a substantive security standpoint, insofar as no threat as might come close to warrant such massive response has been cited and no evidence in support thereof has been produced.But what has been happening inside that secured perimeter is stranger still.Just last week, for example, Merrick Garland, nominated by Biden to serve as the next attorney general of the United States, stated with quite a straight face that he simply was unable to decide whether the act of entering our country illegally should remain an unlawful act. Other matters clearly appropriate on which a nominee for this high office would have views, confounded him as well.At the very same confirmation hearing...
by Bob Barr | Feb 22, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Governments hate Bitcoin. In fact, several countries, including China with the world’s second largest economy, prohibit its use for transactions in their country or banking systems. While the U.S. government has not joined the ranks of nations banning Bitcoin, it has made clear in recent years that it does not like the so-called “cryptocurrency.” Why is Bitcoin, the most well-known cryptocurrency or “convertible virtual currency” (CVC), so disliked by the government? Uncle Sam and his counterparts in many other countries dislike such digital currency for the simple reason it is virtually impossible to control; and if there is one thing any government loves above all else, it is control.In a move designed to gain at least some measure of control over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the Treasury Department is proposing a federal regulation that would require banks and other “money service businesses” (MSBs) to file reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or “FinCEN,” whenever they engage in a cryptocurrency transaction above $3,000. MSBs include not only traditional banks and credit unions, but also casinos, stock brokerages, mortgage companies and insurance companies, among other businesses.Requiring financial institutions to file reports with FinCEN is nothing new. Such businesses for decades have been required to file what are known as “Suspicious Activity Reports” or “SARs” whenever a customer engages in a transaction that appears to be, you guessed it, “suspicious.”The extremely broad and vague nature of what might constitute a “suspicious transaction” by a banking customer, for example, and the fact that MSBs are prohibited by law from telling their customers that their transactions have been flagged and reported...
by Bob Barr | Feb 15, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Although our Founders correctly recognized that the overriding responsibility of the president is to secure our liberties by “protect[ing] and defend[ing] the Constitution,” in this modern era most Americans likely would consider that the most important job of the president is to serve as “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces, and thereby protect the nation’s security. If so, the new Biden administration is establishing a rather odd vision for how the Department of Defense will meet its responsibilities in this regard. The national defense priorities of this administration, as revealed in public documents issued already by the president and his chosen Secretary of Defense, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, reflect a sharp departure from his recent predecessors and from historic norms.In one of his first executive orders, Biden chose to exercise his power as commander-in-chief not to affirm or reaffirm the need for a strong military defense against our nation’s adversaries or to announce an important national security initiative as a way to send a message to a particular adversary. No, the most important national security issue on the mind of the new president, insofar as official public pronouncements reveal, is protection of transgenderism in the military. This was affirmed in presidential Executive Order No.14004 signed just five days after he assumed office.At the Pentagon, the first publicly revealed priorities regarding the operation of the world’s most powerful military under the Biden Administration were similarly unusual.On Jan. 29, four days after Biden’s transgender executive order, Secretary Austin followed with a military-wide order that all restrictions on transgenderism would be lifted, at least pending a thorough review of this...
by Bob Barr | Feb 10, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
TownhallMore consequential than 10 Republican House members voting last month to impeach former President Trump, was this month’s vote by 11 GOP members to strip their colleague, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of her committee assignments. The freshman member had been targeted by Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority because she had – before her election last November – engaged in social media communications that ran afoul of today’s political orthodoxy. The fact that 11 GOP members voted with the Democrats and against a Republican, reveals serious leadership, unity, and discipline problems within GOP ranks.But first, to the impeachment vote. Many Republicans understandably were upset that 10 GOP House members broke ranks and voted to impeach Trump during his final days in office. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was singled out for especially harsh rebuke because she occupies one of the top leadership positions in her Party’s caucus.If one considers what happened on January 6th not objectively, but in the light most adverse to the former President, one could construct an argument that something he said or did provoked the violence that occurred on Capitol Hill that day. It boils down to questions of opinion, bias, and perspective. As is their prerogative, 10 Republicans decided to adopt this view and vote for impeachment, a decision for which they will have to answer to their constituents.On the other hand, the highly unusual vote by the full House on February 4th stripping Ms. Greene of her new committee assignments, had nothing to do with evidence, ethics, competence, or legalities. The vote was simply a move by the Democrat majority to punish a new GOP member. There was no evidence or even an...
