by Bob Barr | Oct 28, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The number of ways in which Democrats have abused the rules of the House of Representatives, the jurisdiction of committees, the importance of precedent, and virtually every other aspect of their so-called “impeachment inquiry” is clear beyond any reasoned dispute. However, if Republicans continue to focus their energies on process, no matter how accurate their complaints, they will never gain the offensive advantage critical to ensuring President Trump remains in office. Ask the average voter if he or she cares whether Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff has abused his power as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee by investigating matters that have nothing to do with oversight of the Intelligence Community, and the response is likely to be a blank stare. Sure, individuals who serve in the CIA care; but the average American voter, not so much. Debate whether a resolution has or has not been introduced in the House of Representatives officially directing the House Judiciary Committee to begin a formal “inquiry of impeachment” as had been the case in prior impeachments, and listeners’ eyes are as likely to glaze over as to express interest in what is a “House Resolution.” To those of us who are or have been involved in such matters, that is a valid and important question. But few others would understand or care about such a technicality. As we witnessed during the impeachment of President Clinton 20 years ago, it was far easier for his cohorts to defend the charges against him by claiming “it was all about sex,” than it was to argue the merits or lack thereof of...
by Bob Barr | Oct 23, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Thanks to today’s “Internet of Things” (IoT), there is an “automation” for almost every aspect of our lives. From such mundane if not downright silly things as kitchen faucets that activate on voice command, to the impressive — massive shipping warehouses run by robotics — many aspects of life today go beyond that imagined decades ago in science fiction. While we still are waiting for flying cars depicted in the Jetsons television show of the 1960s, or space hotels as portrayed in the sci-fi epic 2001, the array of technologically driven devices available to the average citizen is indeed impressive. Yet, while automation and artificial intelligence simplifies or altogether eliminates many of the activities of day-to-day life, the technology complicates others. For example, how do you program a self-driving car in an emergency situation to choose between the life of a pedestrian or that of its “driver?” Even more complex are questions now being asked in the context of judicial systems; decisions cutting to the heart of individual liberty. As a Forbes article propositioned, what does justice look like if, or rather when, many aspects of judicial procedures, such as sentencing, are left to computer algorithms? On the surface, injecting AI into certain legal procedures may appear to make sense for the same reasons it is used across other sectors of industry and professions. In many arenas, artificial intelligence can process information far faster than humans, even while incorporating astronomically more data; and doing so without “human error.” Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether all human “error” should be eliminated from decision-making, advocates for such technology would ask why wouldn’t we want to...
by Bob Barr | Oct 22, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives to wound, if not remove, President Trump from office illustrate what many of us realized long ago — the Democrats are street fighters who battle without regard for rules. Republicans (with few exceptions) prefer to play as gentlemen, according to “Marquess of Queensberry” rules. Thankfully, Trump is a master street fighter himself. I first became aware of this phenomenon in early 1995, the first year of my service in the House, and the first year in which the GOP enjoyed a majority since the 1950s. The occasion was a series of hearings to explore the manner by which the Clinton administration had conducted the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas two years before. The raid was initially planned and carried out by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. However, the raid went horribly awry; a number of ATF agents and Branch Davidian members were shot. A lengthy standoff eventually involved the FBI and U.S. military equipment and advisers, as well as Texas Rangers and other agencies and personnel. It ended weeks later in a fiery conflagration sparked by tanks inserting flammable gas into the compound’s main building, in which some six dozen men, women, children and babies perished. The “Waco hearings” were the first major set of hearings conducted by the new Republican majority, and as a member of the Judiciary Committee subcommittee involved, I was a participant. Just prior to the start of the first day of the hearings, the subcommittee chairman convened a meeting of Republican members who would be participating...
by Bob Barr | Oct 14, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The indictment and arrest of two U.S. businessmen of East European background is the newest development in the effort to weaken the president by attacking those close to him. In this case, it’s his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. While there may be some arguable basis on which to charge the businessmen — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — with incompetent business transactions, the timing of the indictment — in the middle of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment effort against Trump — makes it seem more than just coincidental. Neither Parnas nor Fruman appears to possess the business acumen such that Trump would bring them into his inner circle of confidence. Their links to the Trump family appear to be nothing more than as political hangers on; and their relationship to Giuliani seem to consist largely of legitimate business dealings. Still, the fact that there are such relationships, no matter how tenuous, has provided ammunition for the media and Democratic Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to draw direct connections that in less hyper-partisan times would have been considered out of bounds. As with so much of the ongoing impeachment effort being pressed relentlessly by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schiff, and others of their majority in the House, the Parnas-Fruman “connection” has to with Ukraine. In this case, the connection is not so much directly with the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, as with the American president’s effort to ensure that his Ambassador to that country is fully supportive of his policies and diplomatic goals. It is hardly a...
by Bob Barr | Oct 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Perhaps Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been reading too many Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy novels. This would explain why the Senator’s September report titled, “The NRA and Russia: How a Tax-Exempt Organization Became a Foreign Asset,” reads far more like a fantasy spy thriller than a legitimate Senate report. The dramatic cover for Wyden’s docu-novel sets the tone, that when it comes to the National Rifle Association and Russia, danger lurks! Give us a break. This minority committee report reflects the Democrats’ yearning to once again be in the majority, but in fact reminds us how important it is to our country that they are not permitted to regain that position. This latest Democrat effort to demonize the NRA centers around the comically pathetic exploits of Maria Butina, a Russian citizen convicted last year by the federal government for failing to register as an agent of a foreign government. In the post-2016 Russia-crazed paranoia in which the Democratic Party continues to dwell, that paperwork failure by Ms. Butina is tantamount to being a world-class secret agent, a la James Bond or Mata Hari. By any reasonable standard, the young woman’s elementary efforts to curry favor with Moscow by making some friends in the United States were never taken seriously by anyone other than a few federal prosecutors blinded by their desire to nail a Russian “hide” to the wall. Nevertheless, the Butina storyline is just too juicy for the Democrats to let go, especially when they can link it – however remotely — to their favorite bogeyman, the NRA. Attacks by the Left against the NRA have been the norm for decades but...
by Bob Barr | Oct 8, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Speaking as a former federal prosecutor and impeachment manager in the Senate trial of former President Clinton, and after having reviewed carefully the content and context of the Ukraine call and what we have learned about it subsequently, it is clear that no federal laws were broken and nothing close to an impeachable offense took place. In fact, in that call the president of the United States was doing precisely what a president should have been doing. In the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump emphasized that his administration was serious about getting to the bottom of corruption in Ukraine that had affected and had been affected by the United States. Our president made clear he was referring to evidence that Ukrainian interests had been involved corruptly in our 2016 election, and that a high government official in our country — former Vice President Joe Biden — had improperly interfered with that country’s effort to discover and prosecute corrupt acts. In considering whether the president’s conduct rises to the level of an impeachable or criminal offense, it’s easy to dismiss the rantings of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. The fiery congresswoman has been calling for Trump’s impeachment since he became president, and she is itching for a piece of the impeachment action for the Financial Services Committee she chairs. In Waters’ opinion, Trump has engaged in actions that not only are impeachable in nature, but so highly and criminally offensive as to warrant a sentence in “solitary confinement.” It is not, however, quite so easy to dismiss the analyses of such credible observers as...
