by Bob Barr | Jan 28, 2021 | Uncategorized |
FullMAGnews Second Amendment supporters should take no comfort in the fact that President Biden issued no executive orders restricting firearms or ammunition during his first week in the Oval Office. The new Commander in Chief remains a clear and present danger to our Second Amendment rights, and with Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, it is only a question of when and how boldly he will move his gun control agenda forward, not if he will do so. Even by most Democrat Party standards, many of the Biden campaign’s gun control proposals were extreme. The former vice president is too sly and too experienced from his long tenure in the Senate to believe he will succeed in quickly accomplishing every item on that wish list. But, by having set the bar so high with his campaign’s radical gun control agenda, now as President he can make his Administration appear magnanimous and willing to “compromise” with the GOP by adopting the agenda bit by bit (a façade that always appeals to “moderate” Republicans). To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “there may be method to his madness.” The start of any real action on guns almost certainly will take place within the regulatory environment, which is where Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, found the most fertile soil for gun control. Here, the Biden Administration can work mostly in the shadows under the cloak of regulatory interpretation and rulemaking, largely hidden from the media and without attention-drawing hearings and floor votes. Rather than having to squabble with Republicans and moderate Democrats, like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Biden would be dealing with career bureaucrats...
by Bob Barr | Dec 8, 2020 | Uncategorized |
American Action News Runoff elections, required in Georgia if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the underlying primary or general election, historically have been relatively straightforward — all about turnout. Not this time. There is nothing straightforward about the runoff election scheduled for January 5, 2021. Nothing. To begin with, it is a double-header, with both of Georgia’s sitting Republican senators — Kelley Loeffler and David Perdue — on the ballot. Loeffler is in the runoff by virtue of having been appointed earlier this year by Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Then, in a field of 20 candidates, she came in second in the November 3rd special election. Perdue joins Loeffler on the runoff ballot because in his race to secure a second six-year term last month, he barely missed winning a majority. Loeffler’s opponent is Rev. Raphael Warnock, the fire-and-brimstone preacher at Atlanta’s venerable and historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. His well-documented views are far to the left of any person who ever has served as a senator from Georgia. Facing Perdue is Jon Ossoff, a self-styled “investigative reporter” who also has aligned himself with the extreme left wing of his Party. If those were all the elements for the runoff equation — two Republican Senators with solid conservative credentials each facing a Democrat with aggressively liberal views — you could pretty much draft the headline for January 6th: “GOP Easily Holds Both Georgia Senate Seats.” But there are other elements swirling around in this mix; factors that make it far more difficult to handicap either race one month out. Overarching everything in this runoff is...
by Bob Barr | Oct 5, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber is likely heaving a huge sigh of relief that the attention of the nation’s media is focused on COVID’s infestation of the White House, the Senate battle over the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett and, of course, the looming national election. Were it not for these stories (and a handful of other newsworthy events such as continuing violence in one American city after another), Eisgruber’s September 2 letter openly admitting that the fabled Ivy League school engages in “systemic racism,” would be vying for front-page news coverage. Eisgruber’s letter, however, did not escape the eye of lawyers at the U.S. Department of Education; and it should not be allowed to be swept under the rug. Two weeks after the Princeton President’s highly unusual mea culpa, Robert King, the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, sent a letter to the university demanding that the admissions made by Eisgruber be explained and documented. The Department gave Princeton 21 days to provide the required evidence of its self-admitted racism, and one more week after that to schedule interviews “under oath” by Eisgruber and other Princeton officials. So far, there has been no publicly acknowledged response to the Education Department’s demand letter, other than a September 18 press release by the University stating that it “stands by” Eisgruber’s letter and would “respond” to the federal government “in due course.” Not surprisingly also, several dozen other university presidents quickly leaped to Princeton’s defense. In a letter made public only a few days following the Education Department’s letter, presidents of the seven other Ivy League schools and...
by Bob Barr | Sep 30, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall Of all the methods of control and surveillance conjured by George Orwell for his dystopian novel 1984, the use of children as spies is one of the most disturbing. As with so many of the measures and actions depicted in Orwell’s fictional work, however, the use of child snitches has today become an eerie reality; fostered, not surprisingly, by the fear according to which governments and government-like institutions such as schools now seek to control the population. Today, it is fear of COVID that is transforming students into Snitches for the State. In seeking to ensure students on campus and off abide by rigid COVID safety protocols that essentially forbid the broad range of activities in which college students traditionally have engaged, universities are strongly urging (if not requiring) students to report other students for violations of COVID safety protocols. Yale University even established a “tip line” for individuals to file confidential reports against their fellow students. Offending acts need not occur in the classroom or anywhere on campus to qualify as reportable infractions. Students at schools such as Cornell and New York University have been suspended for allegedly participating in social events hosted off-campus after being the target of other students’ snitching. For example, at NYU a student was caught in a video recorded by another student at an outdoor, rooftop party that apparently was in accord with New York City’s rigid social gathering rules. The student, who claims he maintained what he believed to be safe distances while in attendance, was only aware of his grave mistake after receiving an email from school officials excoriating him for “threatening...
by Bob Barr | Sep 29, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller In a March 2019 decision certain to spur furious badgering from Democrats when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month, federal Appeals Court Justice (and now Supreme Court Associate Justice nominee) Amy Coney Barrett showed herself to be not only a supporter of the Second Amendment, but a thoughtful and courageous one. Transactions involving firearms are among the most heavily regulated of all commercial and legal activities in the United States. It therefore is not unusual for a federal judge to issue rulings on one or more matters involving the Second Amendment during their tenure. In the case of Justice Barrett, a decision by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, on which she currently sits, illustrates the depth of her knowledge about the Second Amendment and of federal firearms laws. More important, her dissent in the case of Rickey Kanter v. William Barr, shows that she is remarkably unafraid to go against conventional wisdom in order to apply an historically correct and common-sense based interpretation of both the Bill of Rights and federal gun laws. At issue in the Kanter case was the long-standing federal law that makes it a crime for anyone who has ever been convicted of a felony offense under either state or federal law to thereafter legally possess a gun. Although the federal ban does not kick in if the felony for which an individual has been convicted was for violating a federal antitrust law or similar trade-restraint provision, and while there is language in the law allowing for the person to apply to have their rights restored, in every...
by Bob Barr | Sep 21, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller It is easy to understand the fear in the minds of Democrat Party leaders prompted by President Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell stating that they will in fact move forward to nominate and schedule a confirmation vote for a replacement for recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg. That fear has ignited a barrage of proposals that prove beyond doubt the Democrats will stop at nothing to deny Trump a third appointment to the Court and to deny Republicans any future opportunities. They will stop at nothing. It is by no means certain that McConnell could muster 50 votes to confirm Trump’s nominee, but if he does it would result in a potential 6-3 “conservative” majority on the High Court. This drives abject fear into the very core of the Democrat Party and the pro-abortion movement in this country. The possibility of a Supreme Court that might to even a tiny degree limit abortion rights is a danger to be opposed with every tool possible, regardless of how such actions might damage the Court, the Senate, or the Constitution itself. The irrationality and borderline idiocy of some of the statements by Democrat leaders is stunning, even by today’s loose standards. Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar declared that the Republicans “stole” the last appointment to the Court (the 2018 confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh) and that the GOP is now “trying to do it again.” Actually, all President Trump has said he intends to do is exercise his clear constitutional prerogative and submit a nominee to the Senate for its “advice and consent”; nothing more, nothing less, and hardly indicative of “stealing”...
