by Bob Barr | Apr 24, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The Cold War years of the 1960s gave rise to two very different cinematic characterizations of spies – the debonair but ruthless James Bond (aka “Agent 007”), and the bumbling but likeable Maxwell Smart (aka “Agent 86”). Now, half a century later, the federal government has jailed 30-year old Maria Butina as a Russian spy and has asserted that her secretive actions posed a serious threat to our nation’s security. The reality, however, is that Butina’s activities fit far more easily into an episode of Get Smart than as a serious espionage case. During her time as both a visitor and a student in the U.S. from 2015 until her arrest and indictment last year, Butina attended numerous political events while maintaining contacts with officials in her home country. The Department of Justice appropriately has alleged that acting in this manner, Butina violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by failing to register thereunder. She ultimately was pressured into pleading guilty to conspiring to violate that statute. In spite of being arrested and held in solitary confinement for what essentially constitutes an administrative offense, Butina’s biggest mistake appears to be that her activities and her paperwork omission placed her squarely within the ongoing narrative of Russian collusion. The Sentencing Memorandum filed last week by the Justice Department, for example, concedes that Butina is neither “a spy in the traditional sense” nor a “trained intelligence officer.” The government instead asserts that Butina conspired to use “connections” developed during her sojourn in the United States to create “backchannel communications” to the Russian government. Characterizing all this as a serious espionage conspiracy, however,...
by Bob Barr | Apr 10, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com As the saying goes, “it was great while it lasted.” On Friday, March 29th U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez issued an 86-page Order declaring unconstitutional California’s law criminalizing possession of firearm magazines with a capacity to hold more than 10 rounds. The senior jurist, who was confirmed to his post in 2004 following nomination by President George W. Bush, went further than do most judges when striking down a state law as contrary to the U.S. Constitution. He directed that his Order be effective immediately. In other words, Judge Benitez did not allow California to continue to enforce the unconstitutional law while the state appealed the decision (a process that can be expected to take months). Unfortunately, less than one week later – on Thursday, April 4th – Benitez relented, and stayed his Order so as to give California’s very liberal Attorney General, former Congressman Xavier Becerra, opportunity to appeal the decision to the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Notwithstanding the judge’s about-face, his lengthy opinion declaring the magazine ban incompatible with the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the “right to keep and bear arms,” deserves continued scrutiny and praise. The opinion is strikingly lucid in explaining both the history and the practical necessity of allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, if they so choose, with a firearm capable of firing more than 10 rounds without reloading. At the outset, Benitez properly underpins his analysis of the magazine ban by asserting that at its core, the Second Amendment is about self-defense; not hunting, not gun collecting, but defense of one’s person, family and home. Moreover, as he explains further,...
by Bob Barr | Apr 9, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller If you were to guess the most critical problem faced by President Trump in dealing with the flood of illegal immigration at our southern border, what would it be? Foreign government-sponsored migration caravans? Funding for the border wall? A shortage of border patrol agents? Indeed, these all are aspects of the serious problems Trump is encountering in addressing the ongoing crisis at out southern border; but they fail to get to the heart of the problem the president faces in taking steps to solve the crisis. In a word, judges are the main obstacle standing between the president and his ability to seriously address the border crisis. Federal judges. Interestingly, our founding fathers warned of this very problem more than two centuries ago. “At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1823. “Experience however soon shewed in what way they were to become the most dangerous.” Jefferson’s comments reflect what many of our founders feared; that while the the powers of the republic were vested in three co-ordinate (not “co-equal”) branches, each acting as a check on the others, the furtive creep of judicial power over the years would lead to an imbalance in power, inviting a tyranny of the judiciary. This is exactly where we find ourselves today, 230 years after the Constitution was ratified. Article III of the Constitution outlines specific and limited responsibilities for the federal judiciary; but it was not until the 1803 Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, that the concept of judicial review of the nation’s...
by Bob Barr | Apr 3, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com In the aftermath of the February 2018 mass murder at a Parkland, Florida high school, it became readily apparent that danger signs and evidence abounded that a disturbed former student at the school was likely going to commit such a heinous crime. Despite local, state and federal law enforcement officials having possession of such knowledge, they failed to act on that information even though they had lawful and ready means to do so. Now, rather than hold responsible those who failed in their responsibilities in that tragedy, and to address specifically the reasons why our law enforcement and judicial systems failed in that instance, state governments and the Congress of the United States are moving to dramatically reduce due process protections for everyone, or at least for everyone who owns a firearm. The vehicle being used to thus undermine citizens’ rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, are so-called “red flag” laws (also known as “Emergency Risk Protections Orders”). The problems evident in the Parkland mass murder and others – Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017, Charleston, SC in 2015, and Sandy Hook in 2012 — are very real and very serious; and need to be addressed. However, doing so in ways that expand the government’s power to confiscate law-abiding citizens’ firearms without affording them long-standing and constitutionally-based due process, is neither necessary nor appropriate. Yet this is precisely what is happening. To gun-control advocates like 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Cory Booker, every mass shooting is the result of insufficient gun-control laws – “loopholes” in Liberal Speak. To them, the failure on the part of law enforcement and other government agencies...
by Bob Barr | Mar 27, 2019 | Townhall Article, Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Every day, I thank America’s Founding Fathers for their prescience in providing a Bill of Rights to protect against the government arbitrarily undermining fundamental civil liberties. The actions undertaken by the government in New Zealand in response to the mass murder by a lone gunman earlier this month, provides but the most recent illustration of why our Bill of Rights is so vital to the preservation of freedom. The First, Second, and Fifth Amendments to our Constitution guarantee — among other fundamental liberties — the rights to free expression, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to own property free from arbitrary confiscation. These civil liberties, which we enjoy here in America (and often take for granted), are being decimated by the New Zealand government in the name of “public safety.” Predictably, of course, has been the effusive praise with which many public officials and media outlets here in the United States have lauded New Zealand’s government for “moving swiftly” in the wake of the March 15th murder spree in Christchurch; actions making it even more difficult than previously for that country’s citizens to purchase or possess most handguns and many rifles. It would be surprising indeed, if the American Left had not quickly rallied in praise of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pressing for a sweeping ban on various firearms, including “military-style assault rifles” following the mosque murders. What is less understandable is the silence with which those same liberals who laud New Zealand and bemoan our own government for its gun-control lethargy, have reacted to the other edict issued by that...
by Bob Barr | Mar 25, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The college-admissions scandal announced this month involved public and private colleges and universities from coast to coast. It netted the perpetrators tens of millions of dollars, and ensnared media darlings along with working-class individuals. While it may be the largest such scandal in the history of modern higher education, it is not the first and likely won’t be the last. At the outset, it is important that this “vast college prep conspiracy” be considered and treated solely and precisely for what it is — a criminal enterprise fueled by greed. Grift on a massive scale.Advertisement Already, however, some on the Left are shifting the focus from the crass criminality of the scandal’s many participants, to a broader political attack on “privilege” in America. Others, on the conservative side are blaming affirmative action as the predicate for what the federal indictment properly characterized as a “racketeering enterprise.” While the cheating scandal very well may exhibit elements of “class privilege” and affirmative-action abuse, obscuring the scheme by viewing it through the lens of contemporary public policy debates diminishes its importance and increases the likelihood it will be repeated. Ten years ago, the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) system was shaken by a massive cheating scandal; orchestrated not by students trying to improve their grades, but by teachers and administrators fearful that lower student scores on standardized tests mandated by the federal “No Child Left Behind Act,” would slow the spigot of federal tax dollars on which the schools had become dependent. When news of the APS scandal broke, many educators and public officials in Atlanta and across Georgia sought...
