by Bob Barr | Feb 12, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com As Rep. Nancy Pelosi stood behind President Donald Trump at the conclusion of the State of the Union address and childishly ripped his speech in half, it symbolized more than just the Democrats’ contempt for the president. It represented the party’s final break with reality — its shamelessness exceeded only by its transparent desperation for relevancy. In the blunt words of long-time Democrat guru James Carville, his party has “tacked off the damn radar.” The bizarre, leftward course now being charted by America’s oldest major political party did not start with Sen. Bernie Sanders becoming a presidential nominee front-runner, or with Pelosi throwing a series of very public tantrums. In many respects, the answer to the questions of how and why the Democrat Party reached this point starts with Twitter, the social media platform that in many respects now dominates news and politics. Democrats recognized early on Twitter’s potential for spreading their message, and party adherents quickly latched onto the social media platform as their vehicle of choice. In this, they have been joined by cadres of liberal reporters and journalists in the mainstream media, who similarly have flocked to Twitter to get the scoop on trending topics they then purport to transform into “news” stories. However, the very platform Democrats believed would amplify their message, has, in reality, become an ideologically incestuous echo chamber for extremist positions in which the party itself has become entrapped, and increasingly deaf to mainstream issues important to moderate voters. Adding to the danger of this closed feedback system are mainstream media reporters who believe the trending topics they read on Twitter — elevated by...
by Bob Barr | Feb 10, 2020 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The victory by President Trump and his team over the impeachment-pursuing Democrats was complete, and devastating. However, missing from the celebratory activities last week was one of Trump’s strongest, most consistent, and most loyal supporters – Roger Stone. Stone remains silenced under a federal court gag order that prevents him from publicly discussing anything about his conviction last November, even as he awaits sentencing for up to 25 years on February 20th. His case has been described as the last “loose end remaining from the Mueller investigation.” More accurately, it is the “last travesty of the Mueller investigation.” The one thing people might remember from the government’s prosecution of Stone probably would be the massive, pre-dawn SWAT raid on his Ft. Lauderdale home on January 25, 2019. The reason this incident may be the only aspect of Stone’s case at all familiar to the public is because the government apparently notified CNN in advance of the raid so as to ensure it produced sufficient coverage to paint the 67-year old political consultant as dangerous and a “flight risk.” Stone, who has been a decades-long supporter of Trump and assisted him early in his presidential campaign, was the target of a lengthy investigation by the FBI directed by Robert Mueller’s team of mostly Democrat-supporting lawyers searching vainly for Russian connections to the 2016 campaign. No such “collusion” was found, of course, but that did not slow Mueller’s quest to nail Stone’s scalp to his crumbling prosecutorial trophy wall. Stone was never charged with any substantive criminal offenses. The best the government could do was charge him with lying to...
by Bob Barr | Feb 5, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com As they say, “words have meaning”; even – rather, especially – words in the Constitution. Take the words found in Article 2, Section 4, which provide the only grounds on which a president can be impeached and removed from office: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Despite the interminable effort by Pelosi, Schiff and their merry band to ignore both these words and the historical context in which they were written, the President of the United States can be removed from office only if found to have committed a serious (“high”) crime. In a startling display of ignorance of history – which renowned historian David McCullough wrote recently is something that “keeps him up at night” – impeachment-focused Democrats appear to have forgotten our Founders established a government led by a “President” elected by the People, and not by a “Prime Minister” chosen by the legislative branch. The difference at the heart of the debate over how our country’s leader may be removed is more than semantic; it reflects clearly two of the principles – separation of powers and checks and balances – woven into the fabric of our constitutional republic. The President is elected by the People but can be removed by the Congress, that is, the legislative branch. In contrast, a British Prime Minister is chosen by and can be removed by the legislative branch in which he or she serves whenever that head of state loses the support of the Parliament, for whatever reason (including, for example, disreputable behavior or “maladministration”). While technically a prime minister can be removed by impeachment – an extreme procedure under old British law...
by Bob Barr | Feb 3, 2020 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Sen. Elizabeth Warren declared at a campaign event last fall that for a person to be considered as her Secretary of Education if she were to be elected President, that candidate first would have to be interviewed and approved by a nine-year old transgendered student. Notwithstanding the sheer lunacy of such a declaration (made by the candidate with a straight face and to a round of applause from her audience), it got me thinking – applying such selection criteria to other positions, what might a Warren cabinet look like? For the post of attorney general, the candidate would be vetted by a panel of convicted felons. This would help guarantee President Warren’s “top cop” would possess extensive, first-hand knowledge of how the federal penal system operates. It also would essentially guarantee we would have an attorney general whose dislike for law enforcement would fit the mold that seems to be the litmus test for Democrat Party candidates – supporting prosecutors who see the police rather than criminals as the bad guys. Secretary of state candidates would have to pass muster by a panel limited to citizens of other countries — preferably countries whose leaders despise the United States and share the Obama administration’s “America last” world view. Advocates of this philosophy adhere to the mindset of today’s Democrat Party, which is that every serious problem facing the world in the 21st century has been caused by the United States. The only candidates who could be considered by Warren’s transition team for the post of secretary of commerce would be individuals who previously worked for the federal minimum hourly...
by Bob Barr | Jan 29, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com In years gone by there existed an understanding that one’s personal information surrendered to private companies was a voluntary choice – the “cost,” if you will, to obtaining the benefit of a company’s goods or services. Importantly – and constitutionally – such a “trade off” was far different from the government obtaining personal and private information by way of surveillance or other information-gathering actions undertaken without a warrant. There was a relatively clear line between private company collection of personal information voluntarily provided, and the government gathering such information without one’s knowledge or consent. Today, that “line” has been blurred to the point of near erasure. Government officials, of course, have never been short on creative ways to circumvent the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions on unreasonable and warrantless gathering of information. We all are familiar, for example, with the abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures by previous administrations, whereby the federal government was able to unlawfully surveil U.S. citizens’ private communications. Some of us also may recall the FBI’s use of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” technicians to browse computers for illegal content while on service calls. But with the digital age have come new opportunities for companies and government agencies alike to spy on citizens. The rise of social media and other technological advancements — geo-tracking and at-home DNA testing — have led to an explosion of highly personal information shared openly with third parties — and in turn, government agencies as well. Like throwing chum in the water to attract sharks, this treasure trove of data in the hands of private companies has caught the attention of...
by Bob Barr | Jan 27, 2020 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller In one of his more outlandish pronouncements during last week’s never-ending impeachment managers’ Opening Argument in the Senate trial of President Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Schiff declared it vital that the President be found guilty and removed from office right now, because he has shown himself to be an electoral “cheater.” As seen through the hate-colored lenses by which Schiff and his Democrat Party view the political landscape, if Trump remains in office November’s election results cannot possibly be trusted. While voters clearly have reason to be concerned about vote manipulation, it is not Donald Trump who should worry us; it is Google. “Search engine manipulation effect” (SEME) has been familiar to behavioralists for several years. It is the process of manipulating internet users’ preferences through deliberate but subtle – more precisely, surreptitious – algorithmic changes in search engine preference rankings. One way to achieve this is through the “autocomplete function” that search engine Google provides users to facilitate their searches; directing them based on secret algorithms and user history. The autocomplete function used by internet search engines completes a search term or phrase being entered by a user before the user deliberately completes it himself or herself. In this way, the search engine interposes its search preferences for those of the user, in such manner that the user is not consciously aware of such manipulation. While the vast majority of instances in which a search engine engages autocomplete are those in which the user is simply searching for a factual term or phrase (e.g., “the Bill of Rights was ratified in what year?”), there is...
