by Bob Barr | Sep 4, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comAnyone hoping to find consistency in how courts are assigning responsibility for the so-called “opioid crisis” will be sadly disappointed. Last May, a North Dakota judge dismissed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma that sought to hold the pharmaceutical manufacturer responsible for that state’s opioid problem. Just last week, an Oklahoma judge in a very similar case decided to take the opposite approach and found that another drug manufacturing giant, Johnson & Johnson, was responsible for the state’s high number of individuals using the opioids it manufactured; to the tune of nearly $600 million.In each of these lawsuits, the pharmaceutical company was charged under the respective state’s “nuisance” laws, with engaging in “deceptive” marketing practices that in turn caused and contributed to individuals’ opioid addiction. Using nuisance laws in this way — targeting deep-pocketed corporations selling or manufacturing dis-favored products within a state – is a legal maneuver increasingly favored by aggressive state attorneys general to attack everything from cigarettes to firearms. Considering the facts in these two most recent opioid cases were very similar, why were the judges’ rulings dramatically different? As Reason’s Jacob Sullum put it, the rulings “pit a simple narrative of the ‘opioid crisis’ with a clear set of villains against a more complicated story that’s closer to the truth.” In other words, the two courts had very different concepts of “justice” regardless of the facts presented.In North Dakota, both sides of the controversy were argued and weighed, with Judge James Hill holding that the State failed to meet its burden of proof; not that Purdue was completely innocent, but rather the State did not have sufficient evidence to find the...
by Bob Barr | Sep 3, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerWith the U.S. House reconvening this week, the agenda will be both predictable and meaningless. Led by Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York, Democrats will clamor for bans on “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazines. They will demand “universal” background checks and “red flag” laws. Nothing will happen that will help solve the problem of mass shootings.As has been the GOP’s standard operating procedure, Senate leaders could simply wait for the Democrat-controlled House to pass the same cookie-cutter gun-control measures it pulls out of its arsenal every time it has the opportunity and refuse to bring the legislation to the Senate floor for votes. Or, Senate Republicans could actually do something meaningful — immediately convene hearings and call as witnesses top administration officials who can substantively address the real issues and provide information that can guide meaningful solutions.Start with the law already on the books — the so-called “Fix NICS” Act signed last year by President Trump, and to have been fully implemented this summer. This statute was designed expressly to plug shortcomings in the system of FBI-administered background checks preceding every commercial firearm sale in the country; yet which has been demonstrably plagued by “bad information in” that results in mistakes being made with sometimes tragic consequences, as happened in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 and Sutherland Springs, Texas two years later.Bring forward the two key government officials most responsible for ensuring that the NICS system works as intended and as amended, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead of rote talking points, these officials could provide direct and relevant answers to the Congress and the...
by Bob Barr | Aug 28, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comHigher education in America today should come with the disclaimer, caveat emptor. The cost of tuition has more than doubled in the last two decades, with the value of a four-year college degree heading in the opposite direction. The “fix” championed by Democratic Party leaders – a bailout for those already graduated, and “free” tuition for those entering the pipeline – will only make matters worse.A part of this long-developing problem is simply supply and demand; the overabundance of bachelor’s degrees in the market means they are worth less in the eyes of employers. There also is more talent in the marketplace for specialized jobs, meaning graduates with narrowly tailored degrees in obscure fields are less likely to find employment regardless of how much they spent on those degrees. Moreover, employers cannot be sure about the quality of graduates; are they getting someone who is smart and capable in the workplace, or a lite snowflake who melts outside the “safe space” sanctuary of college.It is a badly broken system, and cannot be remedied by the Democratic Party’s much-ballyhooed “bailout” proposals. The $1.6 trillion student loan crisis is not to be ignored or overlooked. The massive amount of debt shouldered by mostly young Americans has been shown to have a sweeping economic and social impact — from delaying marriages and having children, to stunting small business entrepreneurship. Yet, a bailout of student loans, in the form of cancellation or forgiveness such as supported by almost all of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, absolves from responsibility those whose policies caused the problem, while doing nothing to address the root cause. In other words, the standard Democratic strategy.No...
by Bob Barr | Aug 26, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerSenate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham is busy. He is openly touting the need for bipartisan legislation encouraging states to enact “red flag” gun confiscation laws, which place in the hands of local and state-level judges the near-absolute power to order confiscation of a person’s firearms. At the very same time, he talks openly of the well-known abuses by the federal Department of Justice and the super-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that set in motion unlawful surveillance of persons connected with the 2016 Trump campaign.Graham’s “love-hate” perception of judges — in which they are alternatively to be trusted or mistrusted with the power to take away individual liberties otherwise protected by the Bill of Rights — is a view apparently widely held within the Congress and in the real world.Many self-avowed Senate conservatives – Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz among them – now appear willing, if not anxious to vest lower-level judges with powers to secretly undermine individuals’ Second Amendment rights; just as the FISC judges appear to have done to the Fourth Amendment rights of Carter Paige, George Papadopoulos, and others in 2016.Such extreme faith in state judges is misplaced; not because judges are inherently bad or dishonest, but because they are human, just as are presidents and members of Congress. When a judge is asked to place limits on an individual with the goal of preventing future acts of violence or harm committed by that individual, it is only natural for the judge to err on the side of caution. After all, what judge wants to be later blamed for not having taken such anticipatory action, when...
by Bob Barr | Aug 21, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.comThe historically racist origins of gun control are hardly a topic for debate. As noted by Cato Institute’s David Kopel, the matter of arming blacks in America was the subject of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision; with one Supreme Court justice warning about the rights of free blacks “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Kopel also notes that as a part of the Black Codes passed in the South during the early post-Civil War Reconstruction, free blacks were required to secure permission from police in order to carry firearms. From Harriet Tubman, who carried a pistol with her during the heroic rescues of slaves, to abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who quipped “a man’s rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box” — there is perhaps no other group in American history whose members understand intimately the “right to self-preservation” embodied in the Second Amendment than black Americans. It is therefore more than a little curious as to why Democrats continue to push gun control measures that are inherently, historically, and intentionally designed to disenfranchise minority groups from their Second Amendment rights.In spite of a downward trend of gun violence in America, even as gun ownership soars, Democrats contend there is both an “epidemic” of gun violence sweeping the country, and that access to firearms is the culprit. This mindset guides virtually every part of the Democrats’ gun control agenda; with no apparent regard to who actually is or will be impacted the most by their plans. Carried to its natural end, the philosophy of gun control virtually ensures the only people left with firearms in a Democrat-controlled America...
by Bob Barr | Aug 19, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily CallerSenate Democrats are still seething over the Republican majority’s refusal in 2016 to schedule a vote on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Democratic senators now are brazenly threatening to “restructure” the Supreme Court, in an eerie replication of FDR’s effort to “pack” the High Court following his 1936 reelection.Democratic senators filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief this month in support of New York City’s draconian gun control policies, and used it to undermine the legitimacy of the court. “The Supreme Court is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured in order to reduce the influence of politics.’ Particularly on the urgent issue of gun control, a nation desperately needs it to heal,” the group wrote.The five Democratic senators who signed onto the Supreme Court brief, led by Rhode Island’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, proposed changing the very structure of the Supreme Court in order to better insulate it from “political” pressures that do not fit their policy preferences.While this approach is subtler than the party’s vicious attacks on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, it is far more sinister.While the Constitution mandates that there be “one Supreme Court,” with each justice holding what is in effect lifetime tenure, the number of justices on the court has by law been set at nine since 1869. This long-standing structure was challenged in FDR’s notorious 1937 scheme.Roosevelt’s true goal — despite language cleverly camouflaging it as an effort to streamline the court’s docket — was to dilute the power of some then-sitting justices who had declared unconstitutional a number...
