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”...
by Bob Barr | Sep 14, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller It takes a lot to make China’s Communist Party sweat, but Beijing is seriously concerned with the Trump administration’s aggressive stance against its long-standing spying operations and theft of intellectual property and consumer data. In a clear indication of just how worried the Chinese government is, just last week it outlined what it dubbed a “Global Initiative on Data Security” in hopes of gaining allies to alleviate some of the pressure from Washington. Foreign Minister Wang Yi publicly stated that the purpose of the initiative is to debunk the “groundless accusations” of a “certain country.” This is typical Chinese legerdemain — issue a document full of flowery rhetoric but devoid of substance, as a smokescreen to camouflage what it is doing in fact. China’s theft of U.S. data was first elevated to the national spotlight in the late 1990s while I was serving in the U.S. House. In response to eyebrow-raising reports and testimony, we voted in 1998 to create a special task force investigating whether China was illicitly obtaining data on U.S. missile and weapons technology. The resulting “Cox Report” confirmed our worst fears; through decades of calculated intelligence operations, China had stolen design information on some of our most sensitive weapons systems. Sadly, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations did little to address the problems described in the Cox Report. China continued to spy and steal, while occasionally putting up a fig leaf or two to convince Washington and the world it was reforming past practices. Today, while the regime’s data collection methods may have shifted somewhat, the national security threat they pose are in fact even more serious...
by Bob Barr | Sep 8, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Most Americans – probably the vast majority – have very little idea what the United States Supreme Court really does. Sure, whenever the High Court issues a ruling on an abortion case or decides a matter involving the Second Amendment, the media is all over it and the public becomes aware that the Court is there. Abortion and guns aside, however, rulings by our nation’s highest court often impact our daily lives in far more ways than do those high-profile decisions everyone hears about. In just a few weeks, the Court will hear arguments in a truly landmark case that will significantly impact Google, the world’s most heavily used search engine, controlling over 92% of that market worldwide. Google actually is owned by Alphabet, but everyone outside the tech industry itself knows the search engine as “Google” not “Alphabet” or anything else. The search engine enjoys such a ubiquitous presence that its name has been recognized officially in dictionaries as a transitive verb. The specific case on which the nine Justices will hear arguments has little to do with the average person who “Googles,” but a great deal to do with copyright law. Although hardly a matter for dinner table chatter in suburbia, copyright law indirectly affects much of what every person reads, listens to or views on their computer; but perhaps most importantly, how they conduct research on a computer or smartphone. The specifics of the case to be heard by the Court – Google v. Oracle – relate to something called “application programming interfaces” or “API” for short. API play a major role in software development, which...
by Bob Barr | Aug 31, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Americans justifiably are concerned about foreign entities working to influence the outcome of our 2020 elections. There is, however, one party with just such a plan already well underway and well-funded that is far closer to Main Street, USA than any foreign entity — George Soros. Soros and a handful of fellow far-left true believers are well on their way to investing billions of dollars to ensure that tens of millions of mailed-in ballots decide who will be our next president. On the surface, their plan appears benign and wholly in the public interest, with nary a hint of the leftist agenda for which Soros is well known. For example, a recent story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described an effort by a pair of nonprofit organizations to mail more than two million applications for absentee ballots to voters across Georgia. The article noted that the organizations – the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center – plan to follow this initial tranche of absentee voter applications with additional mail drops in the coming weeks. These mass mailings are designed to ensure that as many voters as possible receive absentee ballots, ostensibly to protect them from the “dangers” posed by the coronavirus were they forced to vote in person. It is revealing, however, that the applications are not being sent to voters generally, but only to those described as “irregular voters,” who traditionally or historically do not vote. Americans justifiably are concerned about foreign entities working to influence the outcome of our 2020 elections. There is, however, one party with just such a plan already well...
by Bob Barr | Aug 24, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller In politics, if you say something loud enough and often enough, people will believe it. The Democrats have employed this strategy in the current controversy about mail-in voting, bellowing repeatedly that President Trump is trying to sabotage the November election by tampering with the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to handle mail-in ballots, which the Democrats see as the future for their party’s electoral victories. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s orchestration of last Saturday’s 257-150 House vote gifting $25 billion to the USPS was their latest gambit. The reality, of course, is far different from the Democrat narrative, as Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson established at a Senate hearing he chaired the day before the House vote, labelling the Democrat charges nothing but a conspiratorial “false political narrative.” The difficulties facing the USPS in the Internet Age has been one of the worst kept secrets in Washington. Study after study has documented how internet communications, especially e-mails, have taken a huge bite out of letter mail. A report by the Treasury Department in December 2018 accurately identified this culprit, noting that “the shift toward digital correspondence and the corresponding decline in USPS mail volume” has resulted in the Service “losing money for more than a decade and is on an unsustainable financial path.” This study was not the first to sound the alarm about the financial difficulties facing the USPS, nor has it been the last. A September 2019 report by the USPS Inspector General noted that the continuing challenges facing the Service were not being met, resulting in “processing mail with lower productivity for manual, flats, and letters.” In...
