by Bob Barr | Mar 7, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn a 46-page opinion ordering the national and state-level powerlifting organizations to allow men who have “transitioned” to female to compete as women, a Minnesota judge illustrates everything one needs to know about the contemporary leftist culture, which elevates subjective feelings above objective, scientific fact.The controversy between transgendered female powerlifter JayCee Cooper (nee, Joel Cooper, a biological male) had been percolating for some five years when, on Feb. 28th, Minnesota District Judge Patrick Diamond ordered USA Powerlifting and Powerlifting Minnesota to change their policies prohibiting participants born as male from competing as women, and to permit Cooper, who “in 2015 or 2016” had begun “a process of transitioning to a female identity,” to compete as a female.At its core, the judge’s ruling reflects the contemporary, liberal notion that the science of biology has no place regarding an individual’s “sexual orientation” to determine either their legal rights (in this instance, pursuant to the Minnesota Human Rights Act), or their rights to participate in organized sports. To Judge Diamond, all that matters is the individual’s “self-identity.”Thus, it matters not a whit what “sex” appears on an individual’s birth certificate – the document might as well no longer carry any significance. The only factor that, in this case a sporting organization, may legally employ to decide the category in which a member may compete, is what the individual “self-declares” at the time they wish to compete. The statutory underpinning for the court’s order is the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which defines “sexual orientation” as a person “having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness.” If,...
by Bob Barr | Feb 21, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerBritish and American sensitivities were properly offended when, in 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa or death sentence against author Salman Rushdie for the religious content of his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” Now, three decades later, British publisher Puffin Books has engaged in a similar, though less pernicious course of action against author Roald Dahl. Dahl’s sin, as it were, seems to be certain adverbs and adjectives used in his books, including “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” that in the woke publisher’s pinched perspective, might offend readers too immature to recognize the now-stricken words are simply descriptors in a work of fiction. For example, in a news account of this absurdity, the character named Augustus Gloop, has morphed from being “enormously fat” (Dahl’s words) into simply, “enormous” – “enormous” in what sense is left unanswered, but this omission apparently is deemed a worthy price to protect readers from the agony of learning that an individual in a fictional work was very “fat.”Authors employ words – especially adverbs and adjectives – to impart to the reader what they cannot see except in their mind’s eye, which is after all, the whole point of reading a book, as opposed to watching a film or a television show. One might, however, worry that in future films of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Mr. Gloop will be photo-shopped into a more lithe, even perhaps dare I say, “skinny” character, in order to protect viewers being triggered by the sight of an “enormously fat” screen actor or cartoon character.Where, indeed, will this nonsense end?Consider, in the same vein as the de-fattening of Mr. Gloop, one of the notable...
by Bob Barr | Feb 7, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerFirst things first. The Biden administration is weak, ineffective, and indecisive in its handling of America’s foreign and national security affairs. Based on its record so far, it would be easy, and likely accurate, to conclude that in handling the Great China Spy Balloon Caper of 2023, Team Biden showed itself to be weak, ineffective, and indecisive. Simply criticizing the administration for failing to shoot down the Chinese balloon earlier during the course of the wind-borne vehicle’s leisurely trek across America, however, misses important policy aspects of this episode.First, we do not know everything about the capabilities, intent, and purpose(s) behind either the Chinese operators of the clumsy balloon and its clunky cargo, or of precisely what our country’s capabilities were or are in defending against and neutralizing whatever threat it posed. Figuring out why China’s communist leaders do what they do, is no easier than deciphering decision-making inside the Kremlin, which, as Winston Churchill said, is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Did Beijing send this almost amateurish balloon device cruising over our sovereign territory simply to see what we would do? Was it actually equipped with listening devices of sufficient capability to pick up communications that are not collectable by other means, notably, satellites? Was China’s President Xi Jinping hoping that the Americans would take action to neutralize its capabilities in order to gauge our jamming abilities? Was it a ploy to accomplish a diplomatic goal, having no real intelligence purpose at the outset?What actually did our defense and intelligence agencies know about the balloon, and what in fact did we do about it? If our government is...
by Bob Barr | Jan 31, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIt sounded like a good idea. A new, reform-minded police chief in a crime-ridden city, coupled with a specialized, neighborhood-focused police unit to target crime “hot spots.” It even had a cool acronym – the “SCORPION” unit, short for “Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods.”As with many similar specialized law enforcement units formed over the years in major metropolitan areas, however, the seeds of failure, if not disaster, were present as soon as the Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn Davis launched the SCORPION unit in late 2021. For starters, the mission for the 40 officers manning the special unit was ill-defined – basically to go into self-identified “hot spots” and make arrests. The strategy presumably would bring “peace,” even if it meant stopping individuals for minor offenses, such as suspected “reckless driving.” In fact, the initial predicate for the Jan. 7 SCORPION stop of the now-deceased Tyre Nichols was precisely that. In stopping Nichols, the officers appeared to be following a directive from Chief Davis herself when she set out her crime-fighting strategy shortly after assuming the department’s reins in 2021. At the time, she reportedly emphasized explicitly that “reckless driving” was to be a police department priority. By green lighting the practice of initiating police stops in “hot spot” areas for nothing more than “suspected reckless driving,” she set in motion a series of events that easily could, and did, spiral out of control.The now-disbanded SCORPION unit appears also to have suffered from a defect common to many specialized police units over the years – insufficient and poorly trained supervision. In fact, it appears the unit that stopped...
by Bob Barr | Jan 24, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerIn addition to writing one of the seminal novels of the 20th Century in 1984, British writer George Orwell was an accomplished linguist. In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, he sized up the language of politics as the practice of designing something “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Lewis Carroll put it perhaps less eloquently, but no less accurately, in Through the Looking Glass – “When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” A perfect example of Orwell’s and Carroll’s pithy observations was displayed last weekend when a freelance write named David Peisner, described the torching of a police cruiser and smashing of bank and storefronts in Atlanta by a group of eco-terrorists angry about the construction of a public safety training center in a wooded area just outside the city, as something — anything — other than “violence.” His sophomoric rambling was defended by a pedigreed CNN national security analyst with gobbledygook of her own.Though not alone among media outlets in its pursuit of linguistic fluidity, CNN in particular has made a practice in recent years of describing scenes of destructive rioting as “mostly peaceful,” and in fact not even meeting the network’s threshold of being “violent” in the first place; as in its 2020 coverage of widespread disturbances in Kenosha, Wisconsin following a police shooting.CNN’s practice of torturously twisting language in order to avoid calling violence “violence” may be premised on the fact that the network disagrees with the underlying acts or the...
by Bob Barr | Jan 17, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerOn January 10th, Democrat Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, fresh from being sworn in to a second term, signed into law a sweeping gun control bill that bans so-called “assault-style weapons”(which he absurdly calls “weapons of war”), including numerous handguns, rifles, and shotguns, and, of course, the AR-15 platform rifle which is the most popular rifle in the country. Pritzker’s action has put him on a collision course with more than seven dozen of the state’s elected sheriffs who are refusing to enforce at least some of the new law’s provisions because they consider it, rightly, to conflict with the Second Amendment. Among many provisions onerous to otherwise law-abiding firearms owners, the new law requires that individuals fortunate enough to have owned any now-banned firearms prior to Pritzker’s action must register them with the state police in order to avoid becoming instant criminals. The broad reach of the governor’s mandate, including the draconian registration mandates, is the flashpoint between him and the sheriffs who have publicly stated their disagreement with the law.The new law became effective when Pritzker signed it, and the governor indicated he expects all law enforcement officials in the state, including sheriffs, to enforce its many mandates. In response to the sheriffs’ statements indicating they will not do his bidding, the governor issued a veiled threat that the offending sheriffs would not be in office long.Sheriffs in Illinois, as in the vast majority of the 50 states, are elected by voters, and thereby immune from Pritzker’s huffing and puffing. Still, the confrontation between these two elected public figures – a governor and local county sheriffs – illustrates one of the key dynamics of American government: the absence of “one-size-fits-all” governance.We...
