by Bob Barr | Dec 14, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerSelf-styled media “fact checkers” worked overtime last week defending Texas State Rep. Terry Meza’s bill to amend the Lone Star State’s “Castle Doctrine” from well-deserved criticism. No matter the effort to present Meza’s proposal as a serious measure, however, it remains at its core juvenile and dangerous.It is true that Meza’s bill (H.B. 196) does not repeal outright Texas’ Castle Doctrine, the law that codifies situations in which property owners are justified in using deadly force for self-defense. It would, however, gut much of the law by removing “robbery” and “aggravated robbery” from the list of justifying actions. In defending her bill from critics who joked she hoped the change could promote wealth redistribution, Meza used “stealing lawn ornaments” as an example of why the change was needed.One might be forgiven for not being able to separate the satire from Meza herself, but what cannot be excused is Meza’s ignorance of the law, as both a lawmaker and an attorney. It seems she has no clue that under Texas law, theft and robbery are two entirely different legal concepts. Nobody is being shot over “stealing law ornaments,” and if they were, the state’s Castle Doctrine would (rightfully) not protect the property owner from prosecution. At best, her bill is a bad solution to a problem that simply does not exist. The distinction between theft and robbery is important and is what makes Meza’s ignorance – whether deliberate or actual — so dangerous. Both theft and robbery are based on theft of property, but “robbery” and “aggravated robbery” are reserved for property theft in which the assailant either causes, or threatens...
by Bob Barr | Dec 7, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller On Tuesday, January 5, a runoff election in Georgia will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. Both of the Peach State’s sitting Republican senators will be on the ballot, and if both lose to their Democrat opponents, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will lose his job and the GOP will lose virtually all power to slow or stop the worst excesses of a Biden-Harris administration. What happens on that first Tuesday in January depends to a large degree on whether Georgia Republicans can maintain their focus and their priorities in the face of pressures pulling them off track.Last week, I joined with several of my fellow Georgia Republicans on a letter urging that our focus stay on this essential target – turning out the vote in order to keep David Perdue and Kelley Loeffler in the Senate, and thereby, in the majority. Despite the clear and undebatable need for ensuring as robust a turnout for the January runoff as possible, there are Republicans in Georgia who openly criticized those of us who signed that letter. We were labeled RINOs (“Republicans in Name Only”) and “elitists.”The nonsensical nature of this criticism aside, it does highlight a problem that too often encumbers Republican chances of winning elections — attacking each other over perceived or nonexistence differences.The letter was partly in response to other Georgia Republicans who in recent days have been urging GOP voters not to vote next month. This head-scratcher of a proposition appears premised on the notion that because there appear clearly to have been serious problems with the balloting before, during and after the November 3...
by Bob Barr | Nov 30, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller When he introduced his “national security team” last week, Joe Biden declared that “America is back.” A more accurate label would be, “the Establishment is back.” Long-time denizens of the Washington Beltway are hoisting more than one glass of champagne in anticipation of more such announcements in the coming weeks. Whether or not this “team” will “lead the world” as Biden boldly declared is at best open to debate, but what is not in dispute is the unmistakable Washington Establishment pedigree of the men and women he brought forth two days before Thanksgiving.His Secretary of State designee, Antony Blinken, is described by the media as a “veteran foreign policy hand” and a “longtime diplomat.” In other words, someone who will be greeted with relief by the many careerists at Foggy Bottom who have chafed for nearly four years at the current administration’s diplomatic bluntness.Biden also announced Alejandro Mayorkas, who had served in that Department for several years during the Obama administration, as his pick for Secretary of Homeland Security. While fellow Democrats unsurprisingly praised this choice, the fact that his 2013 Senate confirmation hearing to be deputy secretary at DHS was marred by a serious ethics investigation during his tenure as head of the Citizenship and Immigration Services is already raising red flags in the Senate, which remains for now at least under GOP control.Potentially problematic also is Biden’s choice as national security adviser – Jake Sullivan. While Sullivan possesses “extensive foreign policy background,” which certainly is appropriate for the job, he also served as a top deputy and close confidant of Hillary Clinton during her contentious...
by Bob Barr | Nov 23, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerWhile our venerable Constitution describes the basic structure of our tripartite federal government and outlines the powers to be exercised by each of the three branches, the mechanisms whereby those functions are translated from word to deed reside in the real world, not on parchment. So it is with presidential transitions. The Constitution is silent on how the change from an incumbent president to a successor is to occur. A presidential term lasts four years and ends precisely at noon on January 20 of the year following the November election. That is where the certainty ends. How those nearly three transitional months play out often have been rocky rather than smooth, and occasionally downright hostile. The current stand-off between President Trump and apparent President-elect Biden promises to be no exceptionThat neither Trump nor Biden likes the other is no secret, and in this they are in good historic company. America’s second president, John Adams, disliked his successor, Thomas Jefferson, to such a degree he left Washington before the latter’s swearing in and never looked back (Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, repeated the snub by refusing to attend his successor’s inauguration in 1829). History records that the 31st president, Herbert Hoover, and the man who trounced him in the 1932 election, Franklin Roosevelt, were on such poor terms by the time of the latter’s inauguration that neither spoke a word to the other on the ceremonial car ride to the U.S. Capitol.At times, the presidential transition process has veered into the juvenile, as when Bill Clinton’s White House staff removed the “w” from typewriters and keyboards on their way out...
by Bob Barr | Nov 16, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Remarks last week by Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito, delivered remotely to the Federalist Society at its annual National Lawyers Convention, have sent liberal Supreme Court observers into conniptions. What was Alito’s sin? The George W. Bush-nominated judge dared defend religious freedom and other liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, a posture that in a previous era would have been widely welcomed by the very critics who now are savaging Alito. The Washington, D.C.-based publication Politico joined the anti-Alito bandwagon. A November 13 piece reporting on the justice’s speech, written by Josh Gerstein, called the remarks “inflammatory” under a headline that labelled them “politically charged.” In fact, there was nothing “political” about Alito’s speech; unless, of course, it is considered unacceptably “political” to draw attention to the important responsibility the High Court has “to protect freedom of speech” and other civil liberties.Alito also came under fire from the Left for stating the obvious – that the coronavirus “pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” He observed that the COVID-driven and liberty-restrictive environment in which the country now finds itself was not simply the result of a sudden and unforeseen emergency, but rather the consequence of a number of “disturbing trends” that had been present long before the pandemic broke. It was this observation by the 70-year old associate justice that seems to have been the flashpoint raising the hackles of liberals, some of whom flew off into La La Land with their reactions.For example, University of Baltimore law professor Kim Wehle is reported to have declared that Alito’s remarks were something that awakened her...
by Bob Barr | Nov 9, 2020 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller When asked to identify the most powerful force in the universe, Albert Einstein reportedly declared it to be “compound interest.” While I hesitate to disagree with a bona fide genius, the answer to the question thus posed is not compound interest, it is the status quo.The power wielded over political and legal matters by the status quo will become obvious in the days ahead as the country works its way through the pending and anticipated challenges to the November 3 election results.Now that the Biden-Harris ticket has been “officially” declared the winner by the mainstream media, social media and the political establishment, it becomes the “status quo.” This fact alone provides those who support the former vice president’s bid to assume the highest office in the land a significant advantage over those who favor President Trump remaining in the office.Efforts to dislodge the “declared winner” face Herculean challenges.It often has been said that just as insurance companies exist to deny insureds’ claims for coverage, appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court, serve primarily as mechanisms to not decide cases brought by lower courts. This explains why most decisions reached by trial courts that are appealed are either rejected for decision by the appellate courts or, if accepted, affirmed.The situation in the legislative arena is similarly daunting for those attempting to overturn or even simply amend existing law. Changes proposed to existing laws — even minor ones — rarely succeed. More than the partisan nature of the politics surrounding the substantive issues is the fact that a majority of Democrats and Republicans share a deep hesitancy to change any existing...
