by Bob Barr | Apr 13, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallGun control measures enacted in recent decades have failed to stop mass shootings. This has baffled Democrats in much the same way a dog chases its tail but never quite catches it. Even the liberal Los Angeles Times appeared exasperated by the latest criminal mass shooting near the state Capitol in Sacramento, lamenting that, while state “lawmakers have enacted the nation’s toughest gun control laws [they] remain confounded by how to stem mass shootings.” At least this one Democrat mouthpiece actually seemed for a brief moment to recognize that gun control is not the answer to criminal gun violence. Yet, they remain afraid to say so out loud. In this conundrum, what does the Left do? That’s an easy question to answer — they call on President Biden (as they did with presidents Obama and Clinton before him) to propose more gun control. This scenario confirms once again the definition of “insanity” often attributed to Albert Einstein, as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.”The latest gun-control boogeyman for the Left is the “ghost gun” — an apparition with no more actual substance than were the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future that tormented Ebenezer Scrooge. Unlike the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, however, the “ghost gun” apparition on which Biden now has seized, is a political maneuver rather than a morality play.The term “ghost gun” is a moniker conjured by gun control advocates to scare the uninformed into believing such devices are extremely dangerous, are the weapon of choice for mass murderers, and that if regulated, will stem the tide of such criminal activities as took place recently in...
by Bob Barr | Apr 6, 2022 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
TownhallWhy has the U.S. Postal Service been permitted to develop a domestic spy arm? And will the Congress ever rein it in?Red flags were everywhere regarding the United States Postal Inspection Service’s Internet Covert Operations Program, or “iCOP” for short. But no one in Washington cared enough to heed themThe first clue was that an agency supposed to deliver mail – that is, a postal service — was engaged in online surveillance. The next red flag was that in conducting surveillance, the postal service was employing controversial technology, including facial recognition, fake profiles, and social media scrapes of terms involving constitutionally protected activities (like “protest”). Finally, there was the fact that a recent audit by the USPS Inspector General concluded that none of this was legal to begin with. It gets worse.The most frightening aspect of the Post Office’s latest snooping program was not so much the tools the agency was using, but that their tactic, in the words of a Vice.com report, was “casting the widest net possible then working their way backwards” to determine who and what was a relevant catch in their high-tech fishing expeditions. This happens to be the polar opposite of what is constitutionally required of law enforcement agencies; namely, reasonable suspicion must at a minimum exist and precede an evidentiary search. Here, the postal inspectors would search for a potential target, and if one was found, work back from that to gather evidence justifying the search.Have we learned nothing about the nature of federal of law enforcement since Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the National Security Agency? Apparently not, as in the subsequent nine years, the same “investigate...
by Bob Barr | Mar 30, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallIn 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a website known as “TheFacebook” based on the value of enhanced human connectivity. Two decades later, however, Zuckerberg has a new project based on the complete opposite idea, something he calls “metaverse.” More than just “a place,” Zuckerberg intends for metaverse to be the centerpiece of “immersive digital worlds [that] become the primary way that we live our lives and spend our time.” In other words, Zuckerberg’s vision for the future is one in which humans are permanently tethered to digital technology, while the physical world becomes a secondary distraction around them.It would be easy to dismiss his vision as the moonshot project of a Big Tech CEO long detached from reality, but Zuckerberg’s comments should instead be viewed as a red flag that his nihilistic perspective of “living” is now entering the mainstream, especially and most concerning, among young people. The evidence of this is undeniable. Online dating, sex robots, remote work and schooling, and “streaming” church services have become popular alternatives to in-person experiences. While some do have benefits, for instance remote work helping save the economy from the worst ravages of Democrats’ COVID “lockdowns,” their cumulative cultural impact undermines the very essence of human-to-human connectivity.The use of technology as a surrogate for actual experience is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies,” movie-like events in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people are exposed to manufactured, full-sensory environments wherein they become conditioned against the ability to experience truly genuine emotion. When highly customized, on-demand experiences can be delivered instantly in a digital world, it dulls the imperfect yet...
by Bob Barr | Mar 23, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallAs the oft-described Party of “Law and Order,” criminal justice reform tends to take Republicans out of their comfort zone. The continued, politically motivated prosecutions of January 6th participants, however, illustrates clearly why criminal justice issues must serve as a prerogative for conservatives, rather than a partisan blind spot. The federal government determines what is “legal” and what is “criminal” for purposes of federal policies and jurisdiction. Its agents then enforce that legality based on the administration’s interpretation of the law, and then deprive citizens of their life and liberty for crossing that line. Our Founders understood the huge responsibility of such power, and of the consequences when abused. This is precisely why much of our Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, concerns itself with the judicial process. Notwithstanding those many constitutional limitations, the unmistakable trend over the past half century has been to expand government power to criminalize all manner of behavior.Contrary to recent rhetoric from the Right, this is not a “guilty man’s” problem exclusively. Examples abound of law-abiding citizens being swept into federal investigations for nothing more than carrying large amounts of cash through an airport checkpoint, or making bank deposits the government considers to be “suspicious.” In fact, the federal criminal code has ballooned to the degree that legal scholar Harvey Silverglate posits that the average, “law-abiding” citizen commits three felonies a day. This makes criminal prosecution not so much a matter of if, but when the government decides its interests are advanced by enforcing one or more of the several thousand criminal laws on the books already. Defending oneself against the full weight of a federal prosecution is an enormous, often impossible...
by Bob Barr | Mar 16, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallThe “Green” Kool-Aid Democrats continue to guzzle is truly making them incomprehensively detached from reality. It has sunk to the point at which one senior Democrat congressional leader, Sen. Ed Markey from Massachusetts, openly (and with a straight face) declared that energy independence achieved by producing more natural gas and oil, is “one of the biggest lies.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a doomsday scenario for radical environmentalists. The war has exposed just how weak “going green” has made Europe, forcing leaders to choose between economic disaster, and subsidizing Putin’s barbaric war. On our side of the Atlantic, Democrats should be paying attention to the lessons of linking one’s national security to the cooperation of despots, but they would rather keep chugging their green Kool-Aid beverage. Europe’s fate will be America’s if Democrats continue to follow their radical environmental agenda. Decades of environmental activism, ironically funded in Europe by Russian money, destroyed Europe’s energy independence. This short-sighted policy has made the continent largely unable to absorb even minor disruptions to supply from the Russian-controlled energy spigot. The situation is so dire in Germany, one official said a boycott targeting Russia would lead to “mass poverty” for the world’s fourth-largest economy. While America is not in quite so precarious a position as Europe, it is certainly nowhere close to where our country should – and could – be. Consider how long it took the Biden Administration to finally pull the plug on our country’s imports of Russian crude following that country’s invasion of Ukraine. If it was that hard to replace just eight percent of our total oil supply, where exactly does the Left...
by Bob Barr | Mar 9, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallAnyone caring to see the folly of allowing the government to decide what is “fake news” or “disinformation,” need look no further than what Russia is doing right now with information emanating from the battlefronts in Ukraine.Republicans are angry with arbitrary bans by social media giants against conservative users of their platforms, while the GOP’s Democrat colleagues still remain upset with so-called “disinformation” on COVID-19. In response, both sides have taken aim at the tech industry by suggesting, if not demanding, greater government involvement; in the name of truth and fairness, of course. What is happening in Russia today illustrates vividly that such moves would be a grave mistake. Big Tech, and in particular social media companies, certainly are not blameless for the storm that hangs over them. Bowing to pressure from Woke Scolds and do-gooders in Congress and state legislatures, they established arbitrary rules, enforced by secret algorithms, to police subjective political content. Not unexpectedly, such “soft” censorship prompted backlash that has worked its way up to Congress. All of this could have been avoided if, as Elon Musk recently tweeted about his own policies on Starlink, social media platforms had maintained a “free speech absolutist” approach to content and let users drown out bad speech with more speech. Why conservatives, who historically have been averse to government regulatory intervention, would lift the privacy tent to allow the nose of the government camel to poke through, is mystifying, but it clearly is present.What the government would do with such control is written into the pages of history – and current events. As Russia’s military blunders in Ukraine pile up, Vladimir Putin is realizing...
