by Bob Barr | Aug 17, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallWith citizens across the country understandably focused on increased rates of urban violent crime, and with local and state law enforcement agencies suffering under manpower shortages, another crime headache could not come at a worse time. This is, however, what law enforcement may be facing in the coming months; and in fact, already is facing in Atlanta, Georgia – the resurgence of eco-terrorism.Just outside the bustling downtown environs of Atlanta, in a still-heavily wooded area known as “Intrenchment Creek Park,” a group of anarchists, environmental extremists, and anti-police activists have declared war on the construction of a new and desperately needed police training facility for the Atlanta Police Department. Breaking with the largely non-violent measures employed in recent years by environmental absolutists, this new generation of “forest defenders” has returned to the violent tactics that characterized the movement decades ago and saw multi-million dollar arson campaigns from Oregon to Colorado and beyond. While the overarching goal of these environmental extremists is claimed to be reducing the “threats” to the environment causing global warming, the group in Atlanta has updated and expanded that mission statement.In a new wrinkle on the environmental focus of these “green defenders,” the still-loose “movement” that has reared its head in Atlanta, claims as part of its mission protecting minority and native American communities against harm allegedly caused by law enforcement and by commercial development (in this case, the construction of a new movie studio in the same area as the police training center).The tactics of these post-2020 anti-police activists, however, are well-known to law enforcement officials who have followed the trail of burned buildings and vehicles dating back to the...
by Bob Barr | Aug 10, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallGeorge 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 v. Wade. In the opinion of...
by Bob Barr | Aug 3, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThere 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 the Chinese-controlled Tik Tok platform,...
by Bob Barr | Jul 27, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe 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 medical doctors on “gun control”...
by Bob Barr | Jul 20, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe 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 pro-Trump vote counts in key states....
by Bob Barr | Jul 13, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThere 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 of people anywhere in the world better? California’s energy...
