by Bob Barr | May 4, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall From the east coast to the Pacific Northwest, the past week once again confirmed that Democrat political leaders prefer to address the serious problem of gun crime in America as a political rather than a law enforcement and mental health problem. In Washington state, Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law outlawing the sale of AR-style rifles. Inslee wrongly but sanctimoniously stated that such “weapons of war” have as their “only purpose” murdering people. Conveniently ignored by the Governor is the fact that the AR is the most popular rifle in the country, used regularly by millions of law-abiding citizens for competition, hunting, and self-defense. In the nearby, and also Democrat-led state of Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis lamented that he was not yet legislatively empowered to outlaw the same rifle, but pompously declared that by forcing citizens in the state to wait three days before being permitted to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to purchase a firearm, he was making it “safe” for them to go to the grocery store. Last week also, on Capitol Hill testimony by the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) made clear that today’s ATF remains more concerned with finding ways to limit the lawful ownership of firearms and accessories, than in meeting its avowed mission “to protect communities from violent criminals, criminal organizations, [and] acts of terrorism.” For example, during his April 26th appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, ATF Director Steve Dettlebach was asked how the agency intended in the future to enforce the agency’s new, self-dictated regulation on so-called arm or “stabilizing” braces, which as of May 31st will become...
by Bob Barr | Apr 20, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall A report on criminal law published last month by the International Commission of Jurists in collaboration with the United Nations, could easily serve as a handbook for the looting, filth, and general lawlessness now infecting many U.S. cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Typical of virtually every report drafted by the United Nations and related international organizations, this one was long in the drafting, taking a full five years to compose. Also, like other U.N.-created reports, it has a ridiculously long and convoluted title: The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty. A shorter and more accurate title would be How To Destroy Civil Society By Abandoning the Rule of Law. Central to the Report’s thesis is the notion that a society’s criminal laws must in every instance yield to and be secondary to “human rights.” In this approach, no criminal law should be permitted to “restrict the exercise of any human right” unless such a law is itself “consistent with other rights recognized under international human rights law.” To cement this circular thesis, the Report declares that if there might ever arise any question about the reach of a country’s criminal law, it must never be construed “to an accused person’s disadvantage.” To further undercut any legal system that might still employ a criminal code, the Report asserts that “international law” trumps any system of “domestic law,” which would include, for example, our Constitution. And, borrowing a phrase employed often by liberals here in the United States to justify...
by Bob Barr | Apr 12, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall America clearly is in the throes of a cultural campaign for transgender rights, privileges, and immunities. It is a multi-faceted movement at once entertaining and dangerous. The handwriting was on the wall six years ago, when the August 2017 National Geographic cover depicted a transgendered child and devoted its contents to the “Gender Revolution.” Now, in early 2023, we have Dylan Mulvaney, a well-known transgender “influencer,” as the new face of corporate giants Nike and Anheuser Busch. Soon we may see Mulvaney grace the cover of Popular Mechanics. When that same biological male – Dylan Mulvaney – is hawking not only Bud Light and sports bras but Tampax tampons, the question legitimately needs to be asked, “just what is going on here?” It is not only major corporations, including Nike, Proctor & Gamble, and Anheuser Busch that have jumped aboard the transgender bandwagon. Universities and now, the federal government and the judiciary are all in. Just last week, President Biden decreed that any education institution receiving U.S. taxpayer dollars (which is most every school in the country) cannot stop biological males who “identify” as female from competing against biological females. Even the Supreme Court seems to be intimidated — refusing to consider putting the brake on the practice even after state legislation declares it unfair. While videos of Dylan Mulvaney prancing around in a Nike bra or guzzling Bud Light in a bathtub full of soapsuds may seem comical on its face, with the feds now waiting in the wings to sue schools that consider it unfair for biological men to compete against biological women, the transgender glorification movement truly...
by Bob Barr | Apr 6, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall Well, at least the wait is over. Donald Trump on Tuesday became the first former president to be charged with violating criminal law. Despite predictions by many of his supporters that his being charged criminally would cause the sky to fall, such calamity failed to materialize. Wednesday, April 5, 2023 dawned; the dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, our economy still is the largest and strongest on earth, and America’s armed forces remain the best in the world. Are there problems facing us everywhere, from our southern border to the Taiwan Strait? Sure there are but name a time when America has not faced serious challenges. Is our current President – Joe Biden – doing his best to make our domestic economy weaker by the day with his and the Fed’s bumbling decisions? That certainly appears to be the case. But here also, the odds are in our favor that we will survive to defeat him and his Democrat Party’s anti-free market policies in less than two years. Are there judges in states and federal districts across the country who deliberately or ignorantly misinterpret our Constitution and who seek to diminish our constitutionally guaranteed rights? Yes, there are. However, recent court decisions upholding such cherished but always-targeted liberties as the right to keep and bear arms are clear evidence that, despite the best efforts by the Left, the spark of individual liberty lit by our Founders has not been extinguished. And finally, are there prosecutors, such as Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and New York state’s Letitia James, who openly declare their intent to wield the power of the...
by Bob Barr | Mar 30, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The Supreme Court has agreed to decide a case that, if at least five justices render a majority opinion based on common sense and a reasoned interpretation of federal law, will stop an abusive practice that for three decades has cost businesses and consumers untold millions, if not billions of dollars. The law at the heart of the lawsuit (Acheson Hotels v. Deborah Laufer) is the 1990 “Americans With Disabilities Act,” commonly known as “ADA.” The case itself arose in Maine, but the Court’s decision will have significant effects across the entire country. ADA is a perfect example of a federal law with insufficient guardrails to prevent abuses, allowing lawsuits against businesses for even very minor technical violations, such as the height of a counter in a restaurant’s bathroom, then forcing businesses to defend themselves in court even if they desired to fix the problems without litigation. Consequently, there has arisen over the past three decades a “cottage industry” of ADA “testers.” q These “testers” hire lawyers to file lawsuits against businesses, usually small businesses, hoping – actually planning – that they will settle rather than engage in lengthy and costly litigation. Often, the individuals threatening or actually filing these lawsuits have not suffered any actual harm, but rely on alleged technical violations of the ADA’s language and detailed implementing regulations. (In one noteworthy case, a tester sued a “pedicure station” at a spa in New York City for an alleged ADA shortcoming, even though the “victim” had no feet.) Because of this costly pattern of ADA abuse, the “ADA Notification Act” was introduced in the House of Representatives...
by Bob Barr | Mar 23, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In a stunning, but not altogether surprising statement, America’s top Navy official declared that “fighting climate change” is a “top priority” for the U.S. Navy. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced this last week not at the Pentagon or the U.S. Naval Academy, but at a conference in the Bahamas. It is likely that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, meeting this week in Moscow to discuss closer military cooperation, shared a high five on hearing the Navy Secretary’s declaration. Del Toro’s admission that strengthening America’s dwindling fleet of naval ships is no higher a priority than is “embracing climate-focused technologies” was not totally unexpected. Since taking office two years ago, President Biden repeatedly has stated that “fighting climate change” is and will remain his top national security priority. This was made crystal clear in an October 2021 presidential “Fact Sheet” directed to our nation’s military, foreign policy, and national intelligence leaders. Rather than resist such a priority directive, the Navy Secretary joined other top Defense officials and saluted their Commander-in-Chief’s warped policy decision; one that will further weaken our country’s defenses. Making matters worse, Biden’s latest defense budget submission to the Congress proposes a 40 percent increase in “climate spending” and a net decrease in the number of operational ships in our Navy’s fleet, continuing a troubling trend highlighted in the Administration’s FY 2023 budget proposal. Such cuts reflect what one military expert refers to as “seablindness” — a short-sighted policy accounting for America’s shrinking dominance of the world’s oceans, a strength on which we and the entire Free World have relied since World War II. In an insightful analysis just published in The Atlantic (“The...
