by Bob Barr | Feb 23, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In a boon to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has afforded him exclusive access to tens of thousands of hours of heretofore unreleased Capitol Hill Police video of the turmoil surrounding and inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Pandora’s Box opened by this unusual move may not play out as smoothly as perhaps the Speaker hopes. McCarthy did indicate last month that he favored public release of the vast trove of video footage that had been provided to House Democrats previously by the Hill police. His decision this month, however, to grant access not to the media generally but to a single commentator, surprised many on Capitol Hill. House Democrats, especially those who served on the now-defunct January 6th Select Committee in the last Congress, have decried the Speaker’s decision as one that endangers congressional security. Crocodile tears in this regard – as shed for example by South Carolina Democrat Bennie Thompson who chaired the Select Committee – are misplaced. Thompson bemoaned the “significant security concerns” that will result from the Speaker’s actions, but provided no meaningful details to support those fears. The fact is that House Democrats maintained access to the 40,000-plus feet of the video footage for more than two years, while selectively releasing various portions during their extended and one-sided investigation. Claims that release of the entire video trove will enable would-be “insurrectionists” to better plan future attacks on the Capitol – a public building open to the public – are laughable. Such “security” concerns already had been rejected by at least one federal judge in 2021 in response to media demands, and portions of the otherwise...
by Bob Barr | Feb 16, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall For every patient tired of filling out repetitive and privacy-invasive forms every time they visit a doctor, a medical facility, or a hospital, here is a questionnaire those patients should present to their doctor for him or her to answer and return to them: Questionnaire To Be Filled Out By Physician and Returned To Patient* 1. Your intake form asked me about whether I feel “stress.” I sure do and I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment. I also don’t consider that the fault is mine. Unwanted stress comes to me from all sides in our polarized society. I don’t know about you, Doc, but the loss of some of my longtime friends, simply because they see one another as too far left or too far to the right, is devastating. Is this of concern to you as a physician? 2. I and most patients are bothered that doctors and hospitals ask so many questions that seem like a waste of time to regular folks, and that they do this over and over again, as if each time is the very first time. Does this bother you as well? 3. Do they really think that they are going to get an honest and useful answer to “Do you feel safe at home?” or “Are there any firearms in your home?” or “Do you think often of suicide and have a plan on how you would accomplish that?” I’d like to know how many times you have received a truly honest “yes” answer to those questions, but more importantly, what do you do with such information and who...
by Bob Barr | Feb 9, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The Concise Oxford English Dictionary I keep by my desk defines “conniption” as “a fit of rage or hysterics.” To illustrate more clearly what a “conniption” means in modern parlance, a picture of Gavin Newsom, the Democrat Governor of California, should accompany the definition. It is he and his anti-Second Amendment colleagues in other deep blue states who are having recurring conniptions over the June 2022 Supreme Court decision commonly known as Bruen. That decision, which arose factually in New York but applies to the entire country, declared that the Second Amendment means what it says, and that it is to be interpreted according to the historical context in which it was written and ratified in the late 18th Century. What exactly is it that sends these public officials, who regularly profess devotion to other civil liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, up the wall? At its core, it’s all about control. Under the century-old New York “Sullivan Act” law that the six-member Bruen majority struck down last June, local officials had enjoyed virtually absolute control to decide which citizens were deemed worthy to be permitted to carry a concealed firearm for self-defense. That power was deemed “arbitrary” by the High Court’s majority and therefore fatally defective as a limitation on an individual’s fundamental right to “keep and bear arms” expressly guaranteed by the Second Amendment against being thus “infringed.” For decades California, New Jersey, Hawaii, and a handful of other firearms-averse states had permitted officials to exercise similar control over citizens within their jurisdiction. Bruen swept away such noxious power and established – finally – what should have been obvious...
by Bob Barr | Feb 2, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall In 1971, left wing provocateur Saul Alinsky published Rules For Radicals, which remains even today, a half century later, a favored handbook for extremists intent on undermining our nation’s economic, civic, and legal foundation and rebuilding it in the image of a socialist society. For the radical disruptor in Alinsky’s worldview, “everything is relative and changing”; in other words, to succeed as a revolutionary, existing values and norms must attacked and unanchored. Only by so doing can the new, radical ideas take hold and replace existing principles. This is precisely what the “woke” movement is doing, most disturbingly to our legal system. At the most fundamental level, the “anchor” for our legal system is the Bill of Rights, which provides a set of substantive and procedural guarantees designed to ensure that fairness and objectivity attach to all aspects of the civil and criminal justice processes. These well-known standards include among many others, the right to counsel, the right to be tried fairly by a jury of one’s peers, and the right to be considered innocent unless and until proven otherwise beyond reasonable doubt. These are not “relative and changing” standards, and if they were thus unmoored, legal chaos would prevail. Yet this is precisely what the “woke” movement is attempting to do to our judicial system and the legal profession. How about the right to have a lawyer to represent you? The idea that even hated defendants have a right to be represented by competent legal counsel to ensure their rights are protected, predates the incorporation of that principle in the Bill of Rights. John Adams, one of our Founders and our second...
by Bob Barr | Jan 26, 2023 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
Townhall During the 2020 election cycle, uber wealthy Mark Zuckerberg orchestrated much of Big Tech’s plan to ensure that more Democrat votes were cast and counted in key precincts across the country. In this, Big Tech was aided in large measure by three factors: the cover of COVID as an excuse to “facilitate” the voting process, lax election laws in many states, and the lure of “free” money for local officials (including Republican office holders) always eager to receive more of it. Three years later, some things have changed that will force these players to alter their tactics in manipulating election procedures, but Big Tech’s will to do so has not in the least diminished. Changes to voting procedures implemented in recent years, most notably widespread mail-in and multi-day voting, have become systematized to the degree that voters (and many courts) now consider it a right to be able to cast votes days if not weeks in advance of scheduled and lawful voting days. It has become the status quo. Granted, it has not always worked out the way Democrats hoped and planned; just ask Georgia Democrat super star Stacey Abrams, who lost decisively to incumbent GOP Governor Brian Kemp last November. On the other hand, Democrats have achieved several notable successes thanks to massive early and mail-in balloting. By all accounts, for example, Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate, and now sitting Sen. John Fetterman, benefitted greatly from having a huge number of votes cast for him in the days and weeks before his sole debate with his GOP opponent, during which he performed miserably. Much media attention was drawn...
by Bob Barr | Jan 19, 2023 | Townhall Article |
Townhall The Hippocratic Oath, for centuries a foundational recitation of the objective goal of physicians to preserve life, remain ethical, and above all to serve their patients wisely, has, like so much of contemporary civil society, been largely cast aside as outdated – in the words of a dean at the Yale School of Medicine, it had become “impersonal, cold, and too pat.” In many medical schools, the oath now taken by graduating medical students is personal and subjective rather than objective, thus allowing each newly minted physician to decide for themselves what code they will follow in their career. The dilution of a common, universal code for doctors is one of many reasons why the practice of medicine in the United States, and even more so in our neighbor to the north, has become unmoored from the formerly sacred doctor-patient relationship, and more closely tethered to “equity” and the whims of patients, including facilitating abortion and even euthanasia. As with many troubling trends in the country, the beat-down of scientific inquiry and reasoned debate within the practice of medicine is being led by California, where the primacy if not the infallibility of the federal CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is now the law. The COVID pandemic opened the door to perhaps the most unscientific approach ever to public healthcare policy, reaching its nadir with the new California law that prohibits physicians from communicating information critical of federal COVID guidelines. Failing to adhere to this prohibitory statute can result in doctors losing their licenses. Interestingly, one prominent medical organizations, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) blames the federal government for much...
