by Bob Barr | Aug 15, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Breitbart In a 2009 book highlighting the over-criminalization of modern society, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate explains how the federal government abuses its regulatory powers in order to effect policy changes it is unable to achieve through legislation. While the primary culprit in Three Felonies A Day is Uncle Sam, the current governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, deserves at least an honorable mention as a practitioner of this dark art. Cuomo’s ongoing crusade against the National Rifle Association presents a textbook example of how a governor can employ the regulatory tools at his disposal, to punish an otherwise lawful organization against which he harbors deep animosity. The tool with which Cuomo has been hammering the NRA is the general power of his State to regulate insurance companies so as to protect its citizens against unscrupulous purveyors of insurance products. Few would argue against the state regulating providers of insurance products as a general matter, in order to clear the marketplace of corrupt insurance salespersons or insolvent carriers. What is highly questionable and clearly unethical (if not illegal) is the manner by which Cuomo and his cronies within the Empire State’s bureaucratic labyrinth, are targeting insurance companies for doing nothing more than offering to defend insured persons who have used a firearm in self-defense. Unlike many politicians who try to hide their anti-gun sentiments under a cloak of “public safety,” Cuomo flaunts his gun-control sentiments openly; wearing his hatred of the NRA as a badge of honor. A decade prior to being elected Governor in 2010, Cuomo had used his position as a then-federal government official (Secretary of Housing and Urban...
by Bob Barr | Aug 8, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com The latest liberal outrage changes as often as the daily special at a diner. One day it is Cecil the Lion and “big game” hunting; the next day deciding which bathroom people had a legal right to use. This week, it is the specter of a 3D-printed gun that has the Left running around with its collective hair afire, proclaiming the end to civilization. While the manufacture of components necessary for a functioning firearm without a stamp from the government has been possible since, well, 12thCentury China, the fact that modern technology actually has been applied to that process by an individual without asking “mother, may I” from Uncle Sam, has pushed the Left to pull out all stops in an effort to shut down such freedom. Recently, the Left has discovered a new — and willing — ally in its constant battle against anything remotely akin to a firearm. The Left’s latest “best friends forever” are kindred spirits on the federal judiciary. This forum increasingly has become the Left’s default position, as its efforts to effect political change have been repeatedly stymied by a Republican Congress and a President opposed to their agenda. Just as President Obama figured out that he could sidestep Republicans in Congress, especially on Second Amendment issues, by utilizing regulatory powers lodgedin federal regulatory agencies, liberal state attorneys general and other Democrat officials have seized on a similar strategy, but using liberal judges in friendly federal district courts. Now, if President Trump does something in Washington, D.C. that liberals don’t like, their attorneys general in California, Oregon, Connecticut and New York can throw the brakes on national policy using court injunctions. Historically, injunctions are...
by Bob Barr | Aug 3, 2018 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller The famous adage admonishing us not to “put all your eggs in one basket,” may seem childish and outdated to 21st-century brainiacs at the Department of Defense, but it is in fact as relevant today as when it was authored anonymously in the mid-17th Century. And yet, such a mistake is precisely what Defense Secretary James Mattis appears hell-bent to make, as he moves to award a sole-source, multi-year, and multi-billion-dollar contract to Amazon for the Department’s cloud computing needs for at least the next decade. In the view of many knowledgeable observers, the move appears predicated on an overly cozy, some might say “crony,” relationship between Defense Department leaders and one of the world’s richest men, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Amazon has the largest share of the entire cloud computing infrastructure market – more than 44 percent, as noted recently by Bloomberg – and already enjoys a multi-hundred million dollar contract with the CIA for that agency’s cloud computing. Whether the “fix” is in for Amazon to now secure the lucrative, 10-year Defense Department-wide contract remains to be seen; but the prospect that it will be so awarded is raising bright red flags on Capitol Hill and within the intelligence community. A prime reason for such concern is the price Amazon had to pay just last year in order to ink a deal with China for cloud computing in that communist-run country. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the same Amazon entity vying for our country’s Department of Defense cloud computing contract, was forced to hand over to a Chinese company with close links to that country’s government (Beijing Sinnet...
by Bob Barr | Aug 1, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Next time you board a commercial airliner, be careful not to sweat too much, glance out the window nervously, visit the bathroom more than once, or [if you are a male passenger] permit your Adam’s apple to bob excessively. Failure to control such movements may land you on a secret government watch list as a suspected terrorist. The above factors are not lifted from a screenplay for an upcoming episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who is America.” They are part of an actual list of characteristics included in a previously secret federal government program, code named “Quiet Skies,” administered by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and the federal Air Marshal Service, in cahoots with airline personnel. As noted in recent news reports, the program was launched in 2010 and has steadily evolved into an expanded version of the TSA’s earlier and much-maligned SPOT program (“Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques”). Like SPOT, a Boston Globe report of the Quiet Skies program confirms that passengers are flagged for all manner of “suspicious” behavior, including but not limited to those noted above. In a testament to the program’s faulty premises, and as noted also in the Boston Globe analysis, previous targets of this surveillance include a flight attendant and a federal law enforcement officer. “[J]eez we need to have an easy way to document this nonsense,” one Air Marshal texted his colleague; concluding that, “Congress needs to know that it’s gone from bad to worse.” The program detailed in this latest revelation is not the first time federal agents or agencies have engaged in profiling people as an easy way to identify lawbreakers. In the...
by Bob Barr | Jul 25, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com When it comes to identifying fake news, it is less science than alchemy; a task residing somewhere between asking “What is art?” and “What is beauty?” In other words, fake news is largely, as the aphorism goes, in the eye of the beholder. Though used excessively by Democrats and Republicans alike, the term itself is nothing more than a worthless catchall for content we might find objectionable for any number of reasons. Does the content seem biased and unfair against “our guy?” Fake news. Is the content from a news source we don’t like? Fake news. Did Jim Acosta file the story? Oh, definitely fake news. Clearly there are examples of objectively fake news, where an outlet (or blog) intentionally publishes misinformation or fraudulently masks its legal identity. In the case of the former, which is rare in the overall context of “fake news,” it is difficult if not next to impossible to prove the intent was malicious, rather than shoddy journalism. With regard to the latter, involving truly fraudulent masking of news sources, legal channels are available with which to address the problem. However, Facebook’s recent announcement that it was recommitting itself to fighting this particular scourge, brings to mind not so much a methodical, scientific endeavor that will reveal an objective truth; but rather an exercise in digital alchemy premised on what is revealed to the eye of the employee-beholder. The real-world results have revealed this dilemma. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got into hot water last week for off-handedly musing that Sandy Hook mass shooting conspiracies would be removed, but perhaps not content questioning the Holocaust. And then Facebook took flack for removing an ad...
by Bob Barr | Jul 18, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com There is an unwritten rule in government, at all levels, that whenever it fails, the appropriate (if not immediate) response is to double down on more government solutions. Is regulatory red tape making it impossible to do business in a state? No problem! Tax the remaining “rich” people. Having trouble paying for all those costly city social programs? Do as Chicago does, and get that money back impounding the cars of the underprivileged! Let’s also not forget that after the Bureau of Land Management’s suspect grazing policies nearly provoked a modern-day “range war” at Bundy Ranch in Nevada, the BLM’s first response was escalation with armed confrontation. It should come as no surprise then that this same rule applies to government’s approach to mass shootings. Take, for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s announcement that it was adding yet another database for background checks in screening gun purchases. The FBI claims the expansion is necessary to close the so-called “loophole” that let Charleston, S.C. mass killer Dylann Roof purchase a firearm. They make no mention of the fact that there was more than enough information to stop Sutherland Springs, Texas, killer Devin Kelley, but it was the Air Force who failed to properly report his domestic violence offense to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Another “loophole,” perhaps? A more accurate term for such lapses is simply run-of-the-mill government incompetence; the type of which cannot be compensated for, only hidden, with new and more complex layers of bureaucracy; solutions paraded to the public as an additional “failsafe,” which it claims were not in place the last time they screwed up. It is a...
