by Bob Barr | Jun 8, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller The FBI has long been considered America’s premier federal law enforcement agency. The Bureau has a storied history dating to the 1930s and was the subject of a laudatory television series from 1965 to 1974. The FBI helped bring down the Gambino crime family. In the 1970s, the Bureau aided in defeating the violent Weather Underground, which was led by revolutionaries Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. The FBI now has morphed into a pale reflection of its former self — almost a parody. Last week, in a scene I never dreamt I would see, a group of FBI personnel (“officials,” according to one account) were photographed kneeling before some of the protesters who had wreaked havoc on the streets of our nation’s capital city. The kneelers all wore protective vests with “FBI” emblazoned thereon and were equipped with holstered sidearms. It is unclear whether these individuals knelt out of fear, were ordered by their superiors at the Bureau to assume such a submissive pose, or whether each was doing so because they personally supported the protesters and rioters. What is clear is that the display confirms that the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this 21st century has lost sight of its mission and purpose, and apparently no longer even acts on its own intelligence information. This last point is especially relevant. As Attorney General William Barr stated on May 31st, mixed in with the protesters, demonstrators, looters and violent thugs who smashed windows, burned churches and engaged in all manner of other violent acts in cities across the country were elements of antifa and other extremist organizations. The...
by Bob Barr | Jun 4, 2020 | Uncategorized |
American Action News On May 31st, in response to the violent riots rocking American cities from coast to coast and border to border, President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr issued statements that, among other things, condemned Antifa. Trump declared his intent to label Antifa a “terrorist organization.” The response from the mainstream media and leftist politicians was predictable — criticize Trump, not Antifa or the other groups and individuals involved in the violence. The facts, as opposed to sentiment, support Trump and Barr. Antifa fits squarely within both legal and common-sense definitions of what is considered to constitute a “terrorist organization.” Moreover, if, as many Trump critics note, the federal government is permitted to designate organizations as “terrorist” only if they are “international,” a strong case can be made that Antifa satisfies that criteria as well. While Antifa did not come into wide public consciousness in the U.S. until sometime around 2007 when “Rose City Antifa” was formed in Portland, Oregon, it has a far longer history in Europe, where it began as a movement to oppose the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1930s. Exactly when the modern Antifa movement made its way across the Atlantic to our shores is not clear, but by the 1980s it was here. Its members openly have participated in and organized numerous demonstrations and violent confrontations in recent years, especially since the infamous 2017 violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Notwithstanding Antifa’s recent history of activity in the United States, its roots are in Europe where it remains active, most notably perhaps in Germany. In fact, when President Trump...
by Bob Barr | Jun 1, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller In the interests of accurate reporting, we need to drop the pretense that the violent protests rocking major American cities have anything to do with seeking justice for the Memorial Day death of George Floyd. Any positive concern for justice that might have motivated protestors in the immediate aftermath of his death evaporated as events quickly morphed into mass violence against businesses, government structures, police officers and even historic churches. If participants truly were concerned that without protests the person responsible for Floyd’s death would somehow escape justice, they would have backed down as soon as the indictment of former police officer Derek Chauvin was announced (within days of Floyd’s death). True, Chauvin has not yet been convicted and sentenced. But the process by which his guilt is to be established according to standards of due process under both Minnesota’s and America’s constitutions, will proceed as expeditiously as possible. No legitimate system of justice can operate with greater dispatch. So, in trying to answer questions about what the mobs in Minneapolis and other cities are seeking, we can rule out the premise that they are looking for justice against Officer Chauvin; unless, of course, they are seeking vigilante justice or the “sentence-first” brand of justice depicted in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. If members of the rampaging mobs were themselves victims of individual or group injustice of the sort that befell Floyd or many black men before him, there might be some sense of legitimacy attached to their actions (at least up to the point their actions turned violent). It becomes impossible to view these protestors with any degree of...
by Bob Barr | May 27, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com It has become commonplace for the Left to go into fits of conniption over things said by President Trump or in response to actions he takes. The latest Democrat outrage against the administration, responding to the president’s moves to weaken the federal Nanny State, however, is worth noting. What makes this most recent administration initiative especially delightful, is that Trump is turning one of the Democrats’ favorite aphorisms back against them: “You should never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Whether Clinton insider Rahm Emanuel coined the phrase or was simply quoting Winston Churchill, who is alleged to have said this decades earlier, modern leftists have taken the maxim to heart. Virtually every major crisis our country has confronted in recent years has prompted moves for greater and more costly government involvement in the economy. This has been the case whether the emergencies we face are man-made, such as the 2008 recession, or birthed by Mother Nature as was the case with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, spawned by the novel coronavirus, clearly is no exception. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s cadre of liberal and ultra-liberal federal legislators, and their mainstream media mouthpieces, have not for a moment let up in their calls for federal spending and regulatory mandates as the essential tools with which to defend against the virus. In fact, they have become increasingly extreme. The left-wing Guardian recently was moved to declare that the pandemic presents the perfect scenario to “make a greener world.” It is no exaggeration to conclude that for many on the left, including the prominent New York socialist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the...
by Bob Barr | May 26, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Blue state governors and blue city mayors are continuing to repeat their “sky-is-falling” outcries that people should be afraid to take a walk in the park without wearing a mask. Bureaucrats are continuing to issue repetitive dire warnings that the country, if not the world, is on the brink of Coronavirus Armageddon. Thank goodness the scientists at NASA and the entrepreneurs working at Elon Musk’s SpaceX are not basing their actions on such doomsayers as New York City’s Bill de Blasio or California’s Gavin Newsom. We all should be thankful that neither Musk nor NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine are following the inconsistent edicts of Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the exaggerated wailing of Rick Bright, the disgruntled HHS fearmonger who recently was demoted by President Trump. Weather permitting, just after 4:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon9 heavy rocket booster will lift off from the same launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo 11 crew began their awe-inspiring journey to the moon. This week, nearly 51 years later, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be strapped into a “Crew Dragon” spacecraft chock-full of technology that makes the interior of the Apollo 11 Lunar Command Module, which was state-of-the-art in its time, pale in comparison. They will rendezvous the next day with the International Space Station (ISS). Wednesday’s launch carries great significance; aside from the fact it is being undertaken while many government agencies and businesses remain afraid to do much of anything. The launch will be the first time in nearly a decade that American astronauts have been carried into Earth’s orbit aboard...
by Bob Barr | May 18, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Daily Caller Before the decision was made in the summer of 1945 to use the atomic bomb to end the war in the Pacific, the U.S. government planned for a massive invasion of the Japanese islands. Estimates at the time said that up to half a million American lives could be lost. Still, it was a risk our leaders were willing to take in order to decisively end the bloodiest war in recorded history. In 1945, America’s military and civilian leaders were poised to take that gamble not because they were in any respect foolhardy. Rather, they understood that in war, winning comes not to the timid but to those willing to assess and weigh the cost of defeat against the value of victory and act boldly. Today, 75 years later, it seems as if few in our government would be willing to engage in that calculus and act accordingly. “Risk” — when did the term come to be considered a four-letter word; something to be avoided at all costs? During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, governments at all levels are mandating measures that are supposed to minimize the risk of individuals becoming infected with the coronavirus, even though the overall risk of most people catching the virus and dying from it is extremely low. While certain measures to guard against becoming infected with the virus make sense especially among the elderly and already-infirm population, many border on the absurd. Just days ago, for example, officials at the Veterans Administration decreed that this Memorial Day, Boy Scouts would not be permitted to place flags on graves of fallen veterans at...
