by Bob Barr | Aug 10, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall George Washington University, located in the heart of our nation’s Capital, is widely considered a top-tier institution of higher learning. It also is among the most expensive schools in the country. Notwithstanding such pedigree, the university in recent months has shown the country that both its student body and its board of trustees rank among the dumbest in our nation. Just two months ago, for example, the GW Board of Trustees decided to “retire” the school’s long-time moniker, the “Colonials.” This decision resulted from a three-year long study which concluded that trashing the mascot was essential because the term “colonial” triggered visions of slavery and colonization, and was therefore anathema to the “unifying” purpose of a school moniker. Meanwhile, as the trustees now turn their attention to finding a more soothing and less “divisive” moniker (a process proposed to consume another year or more of their time), George Washington’s student body has been busy trashing no less a distinguished constitutional law lecturer than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has taught a seminar at the university’s law school for more than a decade. While the vast majority of law schools in America would trip over themselves to have a Supreme Court justice lead a seminar on constitutional law – or would have done so before today’s “woke culture” turned academia on its head – GW students have just thumbed their collective nose at such a godsend. The reason for such a move by the students? Abortion — the new holy grail of leftwing politics. In late June, the High Court rendered a decision overturning the 1973 landmark abortion-rights case, Roe...
by Bob Barr | Aug 3, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall There was a time long ago in America’s civic institutions, where men and women who had accomplished great things for our country and for mankind, were studied by students of all ages — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Jonas Salk, and many other notables adorned classrooms and textbooks in schools across the country. Now, in an increasing number of public schools children are present with a far different role model. The age of the Drag Queen has arrived. This loony phenomenon, presented as lessons in “diversity” and “acceptance,” has even found its way into churches, and not just fringe religious sects, but mainstream denominations – Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, and Episcopal — presented not only as lewd sideshows, but as official religious services. The United Methodist Church, for example, has accepted as a candidate for full pastoral ordination, a “Drag Queen Pastor” who proclaims himself a “dragavangelist” and laces his sermons with profanity and gibberish about “divine queerness.” It might be argued in defense of such activities that if adults wish to attend religious services extolling men dressed as women who prance down the aisle like court jesters, they are free to do so, as long as attendance is voluntary. Disturbingly, this lunacy goes beyond consensual adult activity, as with a Lutheran Church in Chicago recently hosting a “Drag Queen Prayer Time” for children during its Sunday service. As frequently happens with contemporary cultural phenomena, they tend to bleed across national boundaries, and churches in Canada reportedly are witnessing the same “Drag Queen Evangelism” infecting the U.S. Such expansive reach is made easy through social media, including...
by Bob Barr | Jul 27, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The medical profession for generations remained largely immune from the partisan politics that has affected virtually every other sector of our society, helping to protect the sacred bond of trust between doctor and patient from the rancor of petty, partisan political ideologies. Starting with gun control several years ago, and accelerating now with the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade, that bond is fraying significantly with woke doctors latching onto such issues as a way to tout their ideological bona fides. In one clear example of this, dozens of graduating doctors from the University of Michigan walked out of their “white coat“ ceremony to protest a speaker who was to address them not on pro-life issues, but who was simply known as being pro-life. While most people have little if any concern about the politics of an auto mechanic or a cashier at the grocery store, this understandably is not the case when it comes to doctors who openly, and even hostilely, espouse radical opinions affecting the medical profession and treatment of patients. Consider, for instance, the trend of emergency medicine physicians jumping into the gun control debate to assert their “expert” policy perspective on gunshot wounds. While it is true that these doctors see first-hand the effects of such violence, many are eager to share their opinions on such matters as the “lethality” of and need for “assault weapons.” Such views have nothing to do with treatment of patients, and often are not based on any degree of real knowledge about how firearms function or the ballistic properties of differing types and calibers of ammunition. These gratuitous opinions...
by Bob Barr | Jul 20, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The votes had not been counted before the schemes to change the outcome of the election began. By the time of the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, there were at least nine separate plots designed to keep Donald Trump in the White House. Much as King Henry II’s rhetorical question, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” encouraged those around him to murder the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170, Trump’s incessant cries to have Biden’s 2020 victory overturned led his devotees to conjure all manner of schemes by which to accomplish what they perceived to be their leader’s desire. Even today, almost two years after the November 2020 vote, we still are finding out just how numerous were these varied plots. There was the use of disinformation to muddy the waters with claims of election fraud ranging from the credible, such as illegal ballot harvesting in several states and clear violations of Pennsylvania’s election laws, to the truly bizarre – like Roger Stone’s theory about North Korean boats delivering fake ballots through Maine, or Sidney Powell’s claim about rigged voting machines built by Hugo Chavez. Some of the schemes were simply self-serving efforts by Trump supporters to gain personal advantage, such as the patently absurd proposal by environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark to have Trump name him Acting Attorney General in late December 2020 so he could mastermind an election reversal. There were other proposed plots based on executive overreach. Virginia attorney William Olson suggested in writing that Trump replace both his own White House counsel and the Acting Attorney General with attorneys who would do his bidding to ensure...
by Bob Barr | Jul 13, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall There is a climate revolution happening across the world right now, but not exactly the type for which liberals had hoped. From the Netherlands to Sri Lanka, citizens fed up with government-imposed “green” mandates are pushing back, sometimes violently. Images last week showed more than 100,000 angry Sri Lankans storming the presidential palace in Colombo. Half a world away in the Netherlands, normally calm Dutch farmers angrily blocked roadways and sprayed government buildings with manure. Such moves as these result directly from government mandates forcing farmers to reduce nitrogen emissions or to stop using chemical fertilizers that have been widely used for decades around the world as a means of protecting crops and increasing yields. Predictably, farming then becomes costlier and consumer prices rise. The Sri Lankan fertilizer ban, implemented without any transition plan, has pushed the country near starvation as crop yields plummet and food prices soar. The mandated “green” initiatives in the Netherlands, which include cuts to both fertilizer and livestock, are making farming far more difficult for one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters. The consequences of these policies are made worse because they are taking place in the context of a developing global food and energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Europe’s rapid and ill-advised push for “renewable” energy left it dangerously reliant on Russia, and dramatically limited European countries’ options to respond to Vladimir Putin’s aggression. In nearly every way, the global push for “green energy” has left citizens and democracies worse for the wear — energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, and now, starvation. This forces one to ask, what aspect of the “green” agenda has made the lives...
by Bob Barr | Jul 6, 2022 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Polls illustrating the depths of the American public’s dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden are likely to have devastating short- and long-term consequences for his Party’s electoral successes this year and beyond. That is, unless the GOP, as it has been known in the past to do, loses its focus. The recent escapade between the White House and the oil and gas industry is a perfect example. When Joe Biden tweeted to “companies running gas stations” his demand that they immediately lower prices at the pump, it was not the U.S. Oil & Gas Association’s satirical response that stung. It was a highly critical tweet from liberal billionaire donor Jeff Bezos. There have been so many Biden blunders, big and small during his 18 months in office, that they no longer surprise most observers. Importantly, however, the real extent of their cost to the Democrat Party is finally beginning to register with the Party leaders and influential supporters. The collateral damage of Biden’s incompetence is showing serious cracks within the top ranks of his own Party. The lack of acceptance, much less control, over the numerous crises facing his administration – including those that are self-inflicted – are impacting voters Democrats desperately need in order to retain power. The Commander in Chief’s obvious incompetence and ineffectiveness does not occur in a vacuum, and whether his fellow Democrats like it or not, they are tied to Biden as their standard-bearer (much like Republicans with former President Trump). This puts the Party between a rock and a meatgrinder. Democrats could use what may be their last few months of congressional control to push an agenda independent of...
