by Bob Barr | Jun 13, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Fox News.com If current generic congressional polling numbers hold, Republicans will lose their majority in the House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections – and a Democratic majority in the House will then likely vote to impeach President Trump. Republicans must start doing more now to prevent this nightmare scenario from becoming a reality. Of course, impeachment by the House doesn’t mean President Trump will be moving back to Trump Tower. As one of the leaders of the House impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998, I know from personal experience that the Senate is under no obligation to convict a president after the House votes to impeach. Through June 16, get $100 off the ultimate Garmin GPS watch with multisport features and advanced color mapping. A two-thirds vote of the Senate – meaning 67 votes – is required to convict a president of impeachment charges and tell him, in effect: “You’re fired!” Only 50 senators voted to convict President Clinton on one impeachment charges and 45 voted to convict him on another. Similarly, President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868 but the Senate also failed to convict him. But the high bar required for an impeachment conviction in the Senate shouldn’t prompt overconfidence by Republicans. It’s important for the GOP to step up the fight now to hold onto majorities in the House and Senate in November, and to prepare to fight the impeachment battle should Democrats become the majority party in the House and possibly the Senate as well. Rather than scattering like rats leaving a sinking ship – as many Republican...
by Bob Barr | Jun 11, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Breitbart There are certain words and terms in the English language that carry negative connotations and conjure unfavorable images in peoples’ minds, regardless of the facts or contexts in which the terms are used. One such term is “assault weapon.” Gun control activists long ago discovered that if they use the term “assault weapon” to describe a firearm, the vast majority of people reading or hearing such term, will picture in their mind a rifle capable of fully automatic fire; this despite the fact that private possession of fully automatic firearms has been essentially unlawful for more than eight decades The gun control movement’s love affair with the term “assault weapon” began in the mid-1980s in California. On July 18, 1984, one James Huberty murdered 21 individuals (and injured many more) at a fast-food restaurant in San Ysidro. None of the three firearms he used for his horrendous killing spree was capable of fully automatic fire; thus, none was an “assault weapon” as the term had for decades been used to describe military firearms having that capability. Still, the term provided sufficient emotional horsepower for gun control legislators in California to ban civilian, semi-auto “assault weapons” five years later, in 1989. The romance blossomed in the mid-1990s, when Congress enacted a ten-year federal ban on “assault weapons.” In recent years, almost always spurred by a mass murder involving firearms, several states have passed laws banning such firearms. In every instance in which federal or state officials have moved against “assault weapons” legislatively, the language follows the same narrative: “These are weapons of war that are made for...
by Bob Barr | Jun 10, 2018 | Uncategorized |
BY FORMER REP. BOB BARR (R-GA.), OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 06/10/18 12:00 PM EDT The Hill If certain green eye-shade bureaucrats in Washington have their way, funding for the International Space Station (ISS), which already consumes a miniscule part of the federal budget, would be pared back to nothing within a few short years. Such a move would have ramifications far beyond the scientific and national security “black hole” into which our manned space program would plunge if the budget were thus decimated. The 1960s space race consumed the public’s imagination and much national policy debate in both the United States and the then-USSR; it resulted in an unqualified “win” for the U.S., the fruits of which we continue to benefit from to this day When Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the surface of the moon in July 1969 (watched in real time by what was then the largest worldwide television audience in history), the feat heralded to the world that there truly was one and only one technological superpower on earth. America was “king of the mountain.” Over the next four decades, there were few real challenges to America’s hegemony in space. Whether sending unmanned probes to visit our neighbors in the Solar System, or providing the vehicles for astronauts to engage in lengthy sojourns in low earth orbit aboard Skylab modules and later the Space Shuttles, the United States reigned supreme in space. During this era, NASA and its supporters did their best to educate the public about the innumerable benefits of continuing manned space programs. Unfortunately, the lack of clear and consistent support at...
by Bob Barr | Jun 6, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Townhall.com With the Trump Administration it often is difficult to determine whether a bizarre public statement is a clever smokescreen, or if the proponent actually believes what he or she is saying. While Trump is a true master at manipulating his enemies, his advisors are not always as deft. Take, for example, the recent proclamation by Trump’s latest Legal Eagle, Rudy Giuliani, asserting the president possesses the power to self-pardon. Considering all that has been happening in Washington these days, one might conclude that such a statement serves as an intentionally crafted distraction by Trump’s attorneys, thrown to the media like chum for sharks in order to keep them thrashing about. On pause, however, and again taking into account other recent statements by various legal pundits, it might be that Giuliani has come to actually believe such nonsequiturshave, in today’s world, become true. Contrary to Giuliani’s novel theory, which is like a “Magic Mirror” into which a president speaks and is granted a pardon, such fantastical pardon powers do not actually exist. And, if Giuliani were the lawyer he fancies himself to be, perhaps he would realize the reason this power does not exist in law is because the law — going back all the way to the Federalist Papers— makes such powers legally and factually irrelevant. In Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton lays out the two methods for dealing with corrupt presidents. The first is electoral, with Hamilton stating the president could be re-elected “as often as the people of the United States shall think him worthy of their confidence.” The second method is impeachment. Here, Hamilton declares...
by Bob Barr | May 30, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Townhall.com The Starbucks Corporation, which is credited with bringing premium coffee into the American mainstream, died this week as a parody of its former self, and following a long battle with acute Kumbaya-ism. The coffee chain was 47. Founded in 1971, the Seattle-based coffee company began as a supplier of premium roasted coffee and coffee equipment. In 1982, Howard Schultz was hired as director of retail operations and marketing, and after briefly leaving the company to start a chain of Italian-style coffee cafés, Schultz eventually acquired Starbucks in 1987; pivoting the company to its current business model. By the time the company went public five years later, it operated 165 stores in the U.S. and Canada. At the time of its death, Starbucks operated more than 25,000 stores worldwide. Though its rapid growth is attributable to Schultz’s extraordinary business acumen and vision in the marketplace, Schultz also is responsible for the chain’s untimely demise. An obsessed patron of the liberal occult (such as the belief in an invisible and unknowable force called “unconscious bias”), Schultz relentlessly injected his personal, left-wing agenda into the DNA of the company. While this strategy might at first have been innocuous, perhaps even commendable, including such tactics as offering full health benefits to all employees, and investing into numerous philanthropic endeavors, Schultz inevitably fell into a devastating cycle of political correctness, taking down with him the coffee empire he built. Precipitating factors to its fall started years ago with Starbucks’ experimentation in rabid liberalism, but a post-mortem suggests an incident occurring in April to be the pivotal moment in which its Kumbaya...
by Bob Barr | May 26, 2018 | Uncategorized |
Bob Barr Breitbart The United States Capitol Building often is referred to as “The People’s House.” For more than two centuries, access to the People’s House was largely unfettered. Visitors, whether American citizens or otherwise, could easily and freely walk into the building to see their Representative, listen to a congressional hearing, roam the statue- and art-bedecked corridors, or sit in the visitors galleries to watch one of the two legislative bodies in actio All that changed dramatically after July 24, 1998, the day a deranged gunman charged into the House entrance and mortally wounded two Capitol Hill police officers. That double murder set in motion an assessment of just how open to the people the People’s House should remain. Over the next several years, a massive and costly construction project took place that now funnels all non-official visitors to the Capitol through a huge, underground system of checkpoints and stairways before they can enter the building. Security measures on the Hill were tightened further following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. In similar fashion, it has now become far more difficult for visitors to gain access to public areas of the White House that once were within easy reach for citizens eager to do what people in other countries could only dream about – walking into the actual home of their country’s leader. These changes serve as very real, if unfortunate reminders of the 21st Century world in which we live; among other things, lengthening the distance between the people and their government. The same can be said with regard to America’s schools. Where once a parent...
