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President Biden’s family, individuals within his Administration, and his political supporters will defend him aggressively when former President Trump and others in the GOP deride him for his many gaffes and policy blunders. Mainstream media pundits will continue to cover for him when presented with inescapable evidence of his advanced age.
There is, however, one trait exhibited repeatedly by the current President that is beyond dispute or defense even by his most ardent supporters – Biden’s utter disdain for the rule of law. This disturbing characteristic was on full display recently with the signing of a regulatory “rule” placing further limits on the Second Amendment without bothering to secure the legislative approval to do so as required by the Constitution.
Constitutional Law 101 reminds us that of the three branches of our government, only the Legislative is empowered to pass, amend, or change laws. In fact, the very first operative sentence of the Constitution makes this abundantly clear, vesting All legislative Powers in the Congress; not in the presidency and not in the Courts. Once the Congress has spoken by passing legislation, and once signed by the president, it becomes the law of the land and can be changed only by subsequent act of Congress.
It is black-letter law that a president cannot, consistent with the Constitution and the principle that America operates as “a government of laws, and not of men,” simply change terms defined and codified in statutes to suit his policy preferences.
This is, however, exactly what the Biden Administration has done with long-standing firearms laws which provide that if individuals or businesses regularly and as a matter of course sell firearms, then such transfers must first be cleared through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”). Importantly, neither the “Gun Control Act of 1968” (which set up the system of Federal Firearms Licensees) nor the “Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993” (which established the NICS system) required that every transfer of a firearm be first cleared through the NICS system.
In making such a distinction between what might be considered “occasional” gun sales and those by a business or individual engaged in the regular commerce of trading in firearms, the Congress properly limited the reach of mandated firearms background checks to the scope of federal power under the Constitution; namely, “commerce.”
Gun control advocates cleverly over the decades have hijacked the term “loophole” to characterize sales at gun shows in such a way as to imply that such sales were intended by Congress to have been covered by the background check mandate. In fact, however, federal law is clear on this point – there is no gun show “loophole” (defined by Merriam-Webster as “an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded”).
In recent years, there have been myriad legislative proposals to do what the Congress explicitly has declined to do – expand the definition of “engaged in the business” of selling firearms to close an imaginary “gun show loophole.” All such efforts have failed to gain a majority vote in the Congress – something that really chafes anti-Second Amendment advocates like Joe Biden, who believe the default for every transfer of a firearm should be a mandatory NICS background check.
Not only has there never been a “gun show loophole,” but even if such a thing existed, according to the federal government’s own data only a very small number of illegally trafficked firearms originate at gun shows (a mere three percent according to the just-published federal “National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment”).
Despite these facts, the Biden Administration on April 8th finalized its 466-page “rule” that changes the statutory definition of “engaged in the business” of selling firearms so that, as accurately noted in an analysis of the new rule by the NRA, tens of thousands of lawful private gun sales will now be unlawful. The April 11th White House “Factsheet” proudly heralding the new gun control rule includes the requisite fearmongering about untold victims of guns acquired at gun shows without NICS background checks but who now will be saved by closing the “gun show loophole.”
The only true victim in this latest gun control maneuver, however, is the rule of law.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
A recent FOIA request secured release of an article by an anonymous intelligence officer employed by the federal government’s Intelligence Community (IC), entitled “MY GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION MAKE ME A BETTER INTELLIGENCE OFFICER.”
Central to the theme of this apparently serious article appearing in an official publication of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), was the unnamed male author’s predisposition to dress in women’s clothes in his workplace, including the wearing of brassieres and high heeled shoes — actions that he asserts have “sharpened [his] skills as an intelligence officer” and “made [him] a better colleague.”
It would be easy to dismiss this crossdressing gobbledygook, published by Uncle Sam just one month ago, based on nothing more than its utterly nonsensical and bizarre thesis that an adult male donning high heels and a brassiere thereby gains knowledge sure to improve his analytical capabilities to assess foreign intelligence information.
The crossdressing article, however, does not represent or reflect a more fundamental problem infecting our Intelligence Community’s ability to provide accurate, timely and substantive intelligence for policy makers.
The far more dangerous document than the anonymous crossdresser’s silliness, is “Intelligence Community Directive 125,” issued on May 13, 2023, and titled, “Gender Identity and Inclusivity in the Intelligence Community.” It is this official directive from the most senior Intelligence Community official in our government that more broadly threatens to undermine the deadly serious business of gathering, analyzing and disseminating to policy makers sound foreign intelligence product.
Directive 125 goes far beyond justifying one crossdresser’s sartorial preferences. It mandates the manner by which senior Intelligence Community leaders must be guided in terms of “gender identity, transgender status, gender expression, and perceived gender” in virtually all human resource decisions, policies and results.
Directive 125 commands the CIA and all other elements of the Intelligence Community, to “maintain a work environment free from discrimination and harassment based on … perceived gender.” Basing personnel and other workplace policies on whatever a person’s “perceived” gender might be, inevitably invites confusion for managers. That confusion is compounded because those same managers cannot, by the terms of the Directive, require employees to “disclose their chosen name, pronoun, honorific, gender identity, transgender status, and gender expression.”
In other words, Intelligence Community managers are mandated to respect and not question an individual’s “perceived” gender, notwithstanding they cannot know what any given individual’s chosen gender is. These absurd requirements extend not only to all aspects of an agency’s workplace “environment,” but even to the early stages of the individual’s “recruitment, interview, and selection.”
When it comes to decisions regarding foreign assignments (an essential part of the foreign intelligence gathering process), no Intelligence Community “element” — let’s say, the CIA — can, consistent with the mandatory language of Directive 125, deny a crossdressing male employee a desired assignment to a country that might in some manner discriminate against crossdressing men.
Cost appears not to be a consideration in fulfilling Directive 125’s gender and transgender mandates. Not only, for example, is annual “transgender and gender identity awareness training” required for every agency that is part of the Intelligence Community, but each component must continually “collect, analyze, and, as requested, submit … voluntary self-reported gender identity-related demographic data on their workforce, including metrics related to hiring, promotion, and retention.”
Apparently, in the Biden Administration, you just cannot put a price tag on guaranteeing gender and transgender well-being in the Intelligence Community.
In what currently seems the now distant past, an important responsibility of our government’s foreign intelligence capabilities was figuring out the intentions of America’s enemies and adversaries, with the goal of avoiding harm to our national security. Getting inside the minds of foreign actors has always been difficult.
Now, however, as reflected in Directive 125’s mandates, individuals within our Intelligence Community are tasked with the far more difficult task of determining the perceived sexual preferences of those inside our Intelligence Community, including those who perceive themselves as “aromantic,” so as not to cause them offense in the broad confines of the Intelligence Community workplace, at home and abroad.
You truly cannot make up this nonsense, although for the sake of our national security it would be far better were it made up.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
As former New York Yankees icon Yogi Berra is said to have opined, “it’s like déjà vu all over again.” So it is with the U.S. Congress repeatedly abusing its power over “interstate commerce” to play favorites and distort the free market. One of the latest targets of such regulatory overreach is fantasy sports betting.
This is a swimming pool in which Members of Congress have played previously. In fact, some of the same gaming companies I sought to help escape unfair government regulations when I represented Georgia in Congress back in the late 1990s are now trying to weaponize similar regulations against their competitors. It reflects the tired story of Crony Capitalism.
After I began my eight years of service on the House Judiciary Committee, I became dismayed at how federal legislation and regulations aimed at online gaming companies came at the behest of wealthy brick- and-mortar casino interests. In fact, in 1992, shortly before I began my congressional career, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which imposed a federal ban on sports betting throughout the United States. In a significant victory for consumer choice, states’ rights, and the marketplace, the Supreme Court in 2018 overturned PASPA, thereby reaffirming that sports betting deserves freedom from government overreach.
Now, however, FanDuel and DraftKings, two of the largest and most successful companies that were helped most by the High Court’s lifting of that anti-free market law, are looking to use Uncle Sam’s regulatory powers to kill some of their competitors in the same way that the brick- and-mortar casinos tried to stop FanDuel and DraftKings’ operations in the 1990s.
The Sports Betting Alliance, the trade association representing these two companies and other major online gaming interests, is working to convince government regulators across the country to unfairly categorize certain fantasy sports contests that compete with their products as “illegal sports betting.”
This most recent chapter in the saga of crony capitalism started early last year, when a lobbyist for Sports Betting Alliance emailed the Wyoming Gaming Commission asking it to reclassify their competitors’ operations as “proposition parlay bets” by regulatory fiat. Shortly thereafter, a representative from the Commission responded that his office would soon send cease-and-desist letters to those companies – which was done in an unusually expeditious manner.
Anyone familiar with government regulatory processes know how unusual it is for legal offices and regulators to make decisions quickly on matters such as the one brought to the Wyoming Gaming Commission, especially in the absence of authorizing legislation and without initiating any rulemaking process. Significant, publicized investigations and analyses (which would involve contacting the purported problem operators in question) would generally occur first. None of that appears to have taken place in this case — public officials seem to have acted on the lobbyist’s concerns without receiving input from anyone else.
Since this occurred in Wyoming, several other states, including Michigan, New York, and Florida, have either taken or have begun considering similar action against “pick ’em” fantasy sports, and the Sports Betting Alliance reportedly is approaching Congress for similar help.
The upshot of this is that the very same companies that felt the heat and stress of abusive government regulations years ago are now going after their competitors in a similarly unfair way. Sadly, what we are witnessing is nothing new. All too often, smaller or upstart companies cry foul about the broken system of backroom political dealmaking by the big boys, but only until they become sufficiently successful and established to run those backrooms themselves. It is Crony Capitalism at its finest.
In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission blocked a proposed merger of DraftKings and FanDuel because it feared that this very same anti- competitive activity would occur. While the merger never moved forward, these two companies now appear to be operating as an exploitative duopoly instead of a monopoly.
The time now appears ripe for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL), chairmen of the respective House and Senate Judiciary Committees, to launch hearings into the online gaming sector to investigate these regulatory proposals and the behavior of these conglomerates more closely. The fate of the fair and free online fantasy sports markets and gaming that I and other former colleagues worked so hard to restore a quarter century ago, behooves them to do so.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He currently practices law in Atlanta, Georgia.
The budget for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is large and growing every year. The Biden Administration has asked Congress to appropriate $369.3 billion for the VA in 2025 – a nearly 10% increase over 2024. Roughly half of the VA’s spending goes toward providing disability benefits to compensate veterans for injuries or health conditions resulting from their service.
Yet, with all that money being allocated to support our nation’s disabled veterans, many still struggle to obtain what they are owed under the law. This makes it even more difficult to understand why some Members of Congress have proposed legislation that actually would make it harder for veterans to get the help they need.
It is hardly a secret that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has for years been plagued with problems – everything from computer systems that just don’t seem to work, to difficulties in setting appointment scheduling and lengthy wait times for many veterans once they do secure medical visits. The VBA currently has a backlog of more than 300,000 disability claims that have been pending for more than 125 days.
In addition to long waits to receive decisions on their claim, many veterans are also being assigned inaccurate disability ratings, often resulting in lower benefits than deserved. An NBC News story from fall 2023 highlighted a lack of training, understaffing and low morale at the VBA as contributing factors leading to errors in decisions. As one VA employee put it in that account, “You end up developing an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. When you stop caring, you stop processing claims, you miss stuff.”
Problems like these are causing large numbers of VA benefit decisions to be appealed to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals. During a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing in November, lawmakers were told that some 72,000 veteran claims were then pending before the Appeals Board, with many being repeat appeals for the simple reason that higher courts “determined the board’s findings were inadequate or incomplete.”
Adding to these problems has been the VA’s failure to successfully upgrade and manage its own technology. For example, Military Times reported in 2023 that 32,000 veteran disability claims were somehow lost in the VA’s computer systems for months if not years due to “technical glitches.” These technical failures and recurrent human errors have led to pervasive dissatisfaction with the VA’s performance.
Veteran Service Organizations, or “VSOs,” provide veterans with much-needed assistance in navigating the troubled VA, including helping veterans to file their claims. But these VSOs are too few in number and lack sufficient resources to fully address the myriad problems veterans face in confronting the VA bureaucracy.
Private companies, including many run by veterans and former VA personnel, have stepped in to help fill the vacuum, guiding veterans through the VA’s process for a fee, which many veterans willingly pay. However, some Members of Congress, led by Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Democratic New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas, are pushing a bill, the “GUARD VA Benefits Act,” that would make it illegal for veterans to hire such companies.
Limiting the choices and options for veterans to fight the bureaucracy and obtain benefits lawfully and morally due them is unhelpful and counterproductive. As Don Loren, a former Assistant Secretary at the VA, aptly noted in a recent column, such privatized options are readily available for American taxpayers to get help with their taxes, and Congress should not be limiting similar claims assistance for our country’s veterans.
The obvious answer is for Congress to embrace a competing piece of legislation introduced in 2023 by a former Marine Corps Lt. General, Republican Michigan Rep. Jack Bergman, and Democratic California Rep. Lou Correa. Their bill, the “PLUS for Veterans Act,” would allow veterans to continue using private companies, but require those companies to become accredited with the VA, thereby protecting veterans from overcharges and misleading sales tactics, which some companies have been accused of using.
It is fair to say that the VA’s disability benefits claims process is broken, but until it is fixed, the least our government can do is ensure veterans have as many options as possible to secure the benefits they are owed — benefits Congress intended for them to receive.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, where he was a member of the Committee on Veteran’s Affairs. He was the Libertarian Party’s nominee for President in 2008. Previously, he served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s.
©2022 Liberty Guard, Inc. All rights reserved.
Designed and Developed by Media Bridge LLC