Latest updates from bobbarr.org http://www.bobbarr.org Atlanta, GA – Former Congressman Bob Barr has been invited to speak at the Oxford Union at the University of Oxford, the world’s most prestigious debating forum. Several U.S. Presidents have spoken at Oxford, including former Presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon. The topic of the debate will be “This House Believes that 1984 has Arrived.” Barr will discuss topics for which he is well-known in the United States, such as privacy, surveillance, and government power. Barr’s debate colleagues include Lord Tom McNally, Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. Those opposed to Barr include Gerad Baker, Editor of the US Times, Steve Richards, Editor of Politics for the Independent, and Howard Stapleton, inventor of the mosquito. The debate will be Thursday May 8th at 6:30 pm BST. For further information please contact Derek Barr at 770-836-1776 or derek@bobbarr.org. Barr, a former Member of Congress (1995-2003), also served previously as a US Attorney and with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a lawyer and currently works with national organizations on issues related to privacy and national security. http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=9385/7/2008SMYRNA - Americans' civil liberties as established in the Bill of Rights are seriously in danger, says Bob Barr. So much so, he says, that it prompted the Smyrna resident and former member of Congress to consider a bid for president as a Libertarian. "There is one set of issues that ought to be discussed during a presidential campaign - the Bill of Rights, what are our liberties, what are our freedoms and how can we protect these liberties," Barr said in an interview Monday at his office for his consulting firm, Liberty Strategies, near the Cobb Galleria. "I'm interested in working to begin dismantling the status quo because it stifles risk, it stifles free enterprise, it stifles individual liberties and it increases the size of government," Barr said. "Every dollar the government spends is one dollar less that the people have; every power the federal government exercises is less power and freedom individuals have," he said. On April 5, Barr, a former U.S. Attorney and CIA official, announced at the Heartland Libertarian Conference in Kansas City, Mo., that he had launched a presidential exploratory committee. That allows him to raise money and test the waters of support without officially declaring his candidacy. In 1994, Barr was first elected to Congress, representing Georgia's 7th District, as a Republican. He served four terms and was among the most conservative members of the House, supporting and sponsoring the 1996 Defense of Marriage act, for one. He lost the primary in 2002. In 2006, he left the Grand Old Party for the Libertarians. "The Republican party has made, if not a 180 degree turn, a 179 degree turn from the principles that attracted me and kept me as a member for so many years," he said. "Why spend more of my time with a party whose views have shifted so dramatically and that we had nothing in common?" Lessening government's size and power no longer seems to be a key issue for the Republican party, Barr said. He acknowledges some votes he cast as a member of Congress - namely in support of the Patriot Act and No Child Left Behind - added to the size of the federal bureaucracy. At the time, he said, No Child sounded like "a fresh approach to get the government out of education." It has instead done the opposite, he said. His vote for the Patriot Act is among the worst he ever cast, he said, because the Bush administration has not regularly reported on its use of the powers. The rights and liberties lost in those laws, he said, are key to making him a Libertarian today. But some political watchers across the county have said a Barr campaign would likely only benefit Democrats in November, by drawing voters away from the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. McCain's local supporters, though, say they aren't worried. John Sours, a lawyer who lives in Smyrna, is on the Georgia steering committee for McCain. "The McCain campaign is focused on winning the presidency," Sours said. That focus "will remain the same no matter who else runs or doesn't run." Barr, though, said voters across the spectrum, from independents and conservatives who would not vote for McCain to liberals who care about civil liberties, would support him. "I think this notion that Bob Barr would spoil anyone's race is preemptory sour apples," he said, and an excuse for the losing candidate. Barr's exploratory committee reports it has raised $25,000 and Barr said he has not decided yet whether to officially enter the race. About 1,000 Libertarian delegates will name their candidate at the party's national convention in Denver May 22 to May 26. At least three other candidates are seeking the party's bid. Ballot access is also an issue for third-party candidates, and Barr said federal and state laws have made that difficult. But the Libertarian presidential candidate appeared on ballots in 48 states in 2004, he said, and expects to again be on at least that many. Ultimately, Barr said, every American is Libertarian to some degree, whether it's how they educate their children, what they do in their homes, or how they run their business. "Everyone has something we wish to keep private," he said. ahungerford@mdjonline.com http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=9374/16/2008Compact and Feisty Bob Barr, 59, probably will seek and get the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party, which convenes in Denver on Memorial Day weekend. Given the recent fund-raising prowess of a kindred spirit—Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican nomination siphoned up $35 million, mostly off the Internet—libertarians are feeling their oats. Come November, Barr conceivably could be to John McCain what Ralph Nader was to Al Gore in 2000—ruinous. Nader was a weak third-party candidate but was the most consequential in American history. He won only 2,882,955 popular votes nationwide (2.7 percent), but 97,488 of them were in Florida, where, because of Nader, George W. Bush won by 537 votes. The son of a soldier, Barr graduated from high school in Tehran. In 1994, he was elected to Congress as the Republicans, led by another pugnacious Georgian, Newt Gingrich, ended 40 years of Democratic control of the House. Four years later, Barr, a former prosecutor inflamed by charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, was central to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Since losing his seat in 2002, he has been active in the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, an unusual tandem. Shane Cory, the Libertarian Party's executive director, knows that directing libertarians is like herding cats—almost a contradiction in terms. But he thinks his party is upwardly mobile. In 2004, its presidential candidate received just 397,265 votes, a mere .32 percent of the national popular vote. The party did best in Indiana (18,058 votes, .73 percent). But in no state was the Libertarian vote larger than the winning candidate's margin of victory. This year, however, Cory thinks the party can far surpass its best national performance—921,299 votes (1.1 percent of the total) in 1980. It has recruited 600 down-ballot candidates around the nation (including Michael Munger, chairman of the political-science department at Duke, who is running for governor of North Carolina) and expects to have 1,500 by Election Day. The party's immediate challenge is to win ballot access. Barr and Cory say the party almost certainly will be on the ballot in 48 states, and perhaps on West Virginia's, but probably not Oklahoma's. Although Libertarian candidates have been on all 50 several times, the two major parties use laws and litigation to impede ballot access. In 1968, George Wallace's supporters, with little national organization and negligible financing, got him on all states' ballots on the American Independent Party line. California required 66,000 signatures—not a daunting total but the signatures had to be gathered in 1967, and all signatories had to fill out a two-page legal-size form to register as members of Wallace's new party. More than 100,000 did. Ohio required Wallace supporters to gather 433,000 signatures—in 10 weeks. When that total was surpassed, an Ohio court ruled that Wallace's party was "fictional" because it was a phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. Wallace stopped execrating the U.S. Supreme Court long enough to ask it—successfully—to order Ohio to put him on the ballot. Wallace had the three traits that, when combined, make a third-party candidate formidable. He had a burning issue (national disorder that he blamed on the civil-rights revolution), a regional base (the South) and a vivid personality. Barr's issues are national. They include limiting government, defending civil liberties during the war on terror, opposing preventive wars and "nation-building," and combating the elephantitis of the presidency. He especially opposes the "unitary theory of the presidency," which he says is: Where the Constitution gives the president power (e.g., national security), no other branch of government has any constitutional authority to limit it. Barr's personality is an acquired taste. The 2002 edition of The Almanac of American Politics said that that Barr is "humorless, pessimistic, sarcastic, to the point that his wife beeps him when he is on TV, 'Smile, honey.' He says he has no close friends on Capitol Hill and usually sleeps in his office." Ron Paul, like Barr, has a sandpapery persona, and his Republican presidential campaign has been a mixed blessing for the Libertarian Party, whose presidential candidate he was in 1988. Paul has energized and enlarged the latent libertarian constituency. But his monetary fixations (trying to restore the gold standard and to inflame the public against the 1913 Federal Reserve Act) have deepened libertarianism's taint of quirkiness. And his money needs have competed with the Libertarian Party's: Its online fund-raising has declined 70 percent since he announced his run for the Republican nomination. But the party's membership has increased 20 percent since 2007. Barr's new party (he joined in 2006) also is handicapped by John McCain's handiwork. One wealthy libertarian would give $1 million if the McCain-Feingold law regulating political participation did not ban contributions of more than $28,500 to national parties. Another wealthy libertarian—he is dead, so he has none of the supposedly corrupt purposes that make McCain so cross—bequeathed more than $200,000 to the party. That would fund the ballot access struggles, but it is in escrow because of McCain-Feingold. If libertarian voters cost McCain the presidency, that will be condign punishment. http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=9364/14/2008Home schooling is an important component of Georgia’s educational framework. Many thousands of families across the state school some 40,000 children in their homes. It is a system that continues to work well for Georgia parents so inclined. From my own experience as a member of Congress who personally reviewed hundreds of applications for admission to our country’s military academies, I can attest to the fact that high school seniors who had been home schooled for all or part of their academic careers competed favorably in all aspects of academics with students who attended public or private schools. Georgia is not alone in recognizing the value of home schooling; virtually all other states do as well. However, that vital system of home schooling is now threatened. Georgia parents, legislators and others who care about fairness and choice in education, and who value parental rights and individual freedom, should take note and take steps to ensure that a recent court decision in California does not take hold in our state. While those of us east of the Mississippi, particularly here in the South, are aware that California courts generally render decisions favoring maximized government control and minimized individual liberty, a recent appeals court in that state is breathtaking in its disdain for historic notions of individual and family freedom. The California Court of Appeals has effectively outlawed home schooling, and the ripple effects of this judicial tsunami may be felt even here in the Peach State. The facts underlying the California case did not even relate directly to the institution of home schooling, but rather involved alleged abuse and neglect. Notwithstanding this, the decision took an unexpected turn when the majority ruled that every child in the state must be enrolled in and attend full time either a public or accredited private school, where they are to be taught only by state-certified teachers. Only parents who are state certified could home school their children. The intent of the California jurists to completely abolish home schooling could not have been clearer: “Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.” To ensure the message was not misunderstood, the court held that violators could be prosecuted and jailed. With the stroke of a judicial pen, home schooling parents in California became common criminals. In Orwellian language, this decision sends a clear message that children are to be considered obedient wards of the state. Parents who might disagree with the state-developed and state-sponsored curriculum or teaching methods are slap out of luck. Home schooling is simply not an option. The California court decision not only bows to longstanding cries from teachers unions that home schooling undermines their role, but also wholly disregards the unique needs and wants of both parents and students who choose to home school. For many children, home schooling is the only viable alternative to a system that is not effective in light of their specific needs and desires. Home schooling also offers a constructive way of keeping children from becoming dropouts, by promoting tailored curricula to help students excel and want to learn —- traits glaringly lacking in much of the public school population. Even more troubling is the risk this decision poses to home schooling nationwide. California, as the nation’s most populous state, unfortunately serves in many respects as a model to other parts of the nation. The huge number of textbooks used by California’s public schools, for example, often prompts publishers to tailor the content of their publications to that state’s desires. Clearly also, the California court decision raises the truly dangerous possibility that shortsighted courts in other parts of the country will rush to act in a similar fashion. There is the harrowing specter of dissolving entirely a family’s right to control education. Rather than calmly waiting for the effects of the California court’s opinion to be felt here, Georgia legislators and other state leaders should be speaking loudly and clearly against this destructive decision. They should already be reviewing our laws as they relate to home schooling —- to strengthen them against the onslaught that has now been empowered by the California Court of Appeals. http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=9354/2/2008Atlanta, GA – Former Congressman Bob Barr today issued a statement praising U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds as she struck down part of a Michigan state law that would have just given the state Republican and Democratic parties, and no other parties, party preference lists for voters who participated in the January presidential primary. The ACLU filed a lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land (R), barring the State from providing the party preference declarations of voters solely to the two major political parties of the State in accordance with the primary election law. In a 21-page opinion, Judge Nancy Edmunds struck down the portion of the law which made it a misdemeanor for anyone other than the two major parties, including other political parties, journalists, academics or historians, to have access or use the lists. She declared that this section of the law violated the equal protection rights of third parties, including the Libertarian Party. Barr said “Michigan, or any other state for that matter, should not be allowed to limit access to such voter information to just the two major political parties while making it a crime for anyone else in the state to use or acquire this information. I applaud Judge Edmunds decision. Even though Michigan is not required to provide the party preference information to any party, now when it decides to do so, it must share them with the other major political parties.” Barr, who serves on the National Committee of the Libertarian Party, said the ruling “will, in at least a small way, open up the political process so governments cannot discriminate against third parties in favor of the two major, status quo parties.” For further information please visit http://www.bobbarr.org or contact Derek Barr at 770-836-1776. Barr, a former Member of Congress (1995-2003), also served previously as a US Attorney and with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a lawyer and currently works with national organizations on issues related to privacy and national security. http://www.bobbarr.org/default.asp?pt=newsdescr&RI=9343/27/2008