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...
by Bob Barr | Aug 17, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Arguments will continue to rage over whether President Trump is constitutionally permitted on his own to spend money to build the wall on our southern border, to fund measures addressing the effects of COVID-19 or to manage federal immigration policies. However, there is one order the president could give that is clearly within his authority to manage the executive branch he heads, and which is entirely consistent with the no-nonsense management style that has characterized his time in office: direct all federal departments, offices, and agencies to immediately stop sending employees to “critical race theory” training, also known as “white privilege” reeducation programs. While descriptions of critical race theory training have surfaced recently in the wake of racially motivated or racially excused rioting, training which teaches federal employees that “white privilege” and “racism” are systemic diseases that define American society, have been around for decades. It is long past time that such wasteful spending stop. It is difficult to place an accurate figure on how much taxpayer money is spent each year on these programs by federal agencies and by non-governmental entities receiving federal dollars, such as the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, but it is in the millions of dollars. Numerous self-styled experts in “white privilege” have reaped lucrative incomes from such lecturing. Just one of these charlatans, Howard Ross, reportedly billed the federal government $3 million in just one year. Robin DiAngelo, the best-selling author of “White Fragility,” reportedly charges $40,000 to share her “expertise” for just half a day. Just what taxpayers get in return, other than lectures on the evils of “hard...
by Bob Barr | Aug 10, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Politicians love anniversaries, especially those recalling tragic events. Every time an anniversary of such a public event occurs — whether the first, fifth, tenth or twenty-fifth — some politician will rush to remind the public of the past event as a way to position himself or herself as a true leader, by calling for the government to do whatever it is they want done that would have prevented the prior tragedy or which they claim will prevent its recurrence. This past week, amidst the myriad problems relating to the COVID pandemic and the recurring violence destroying lives, property and businesses in cities across the country, Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine used the bully pulpit of his office to again call for the state legislature to pass gun control measures he has long championed. The timing for his latest call was the anniversary of a shooting spree last August 4th by an individual outside a Dayton, Ohio bar who fatally shot nine people before he was shot dead by police. In the immediate aftermath of that 2019 shooting, DeWine issued a call for the legislature to pass a long list of gun control measures, including many that bore no relationship to the manner by which the Dayton shooter — a 26-year old white male with antifa sympathies — was able to obtain the firearm he used to carry out his horrific crime. Included in DeWine’s proposal were measures constituting what has become known in recent years as a “Red Flag Law.” Such a law empowers law enforcement officers and other individuals including friends or relatives of a gun owner,...
