Only a few days remain until the 2013 Ronald Reagan Dinner sponsored by the Charlottesville Republican Committee. The dinner will take place the evening of Sunday, April 7, at the Omni Hotel in downtown Charlottesville. (Last-minute tickets are still available for purchase at www.CharlottesvilleGOP.com -- just follow the links to the secure payment page.)
In addition to speeches by former U.S. Secretary of Transportation James Burnley and former White House advisor Karl Rove, this year's dinner offers a range of interesting and intriguing personalized items donated by conservative celebrities and Republican VIPs.
For instance, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is offering a Kansas state flag, flown over the capitol building in Topeka, with the winning bidder choosing the date for the flag to fly.
Similarly, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval has contributed a commemorative state coin and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has sent a coffee-table book about his state, with his autograph attached, called Iowa: Simply Beautiful II.
Former President George H.W. Bush has sent us a limited-edition lithograph portraying his presidential library in Texas, signed and numbered by the artist and autographed by the President himself.
Here are some of the other items that will be available for bidding during the cocktail reception at the Omni, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Be sure to bring a checkbook to pay for your purchase, or you'll risk losing it to the second-place bidder! (All of these items have been autographed or otherwise personalized by the donor.)
In addition to featured speakers Burnley and Rove, the dinner program will include remarks by Albemarle County Board of Supervisors member Ken Boyd and Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors Chairman Shaun Kenney, as well as a special presentation by the GOP candidates for Attorney General of Virginia, Delegate Rob Bell and state Senator Mark Obenshain.
There may be additional surprises in store, but people will have to wait until April 7 to find out what they are.
Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who was the 2008 presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, has launched a new activist group called the Opt-Out Alliance, in reaction to the assault on our liberties by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
The Opt-Out Alliance joins the Rutherford Institute, Republican Liberty Caucus, Libertarian Party, and countless other civil-liberties organizations, tea-party groups, and incensed individuals who are not just complaining, but acting on their anger with regard to the TSA's overreach (and underreach, for those whose nether regions have been patted down).
The Opt-Out Alliance, which states its mission as "fighting for basic dignity and decency for air travelers," provides its members with a wallet-sized card that explains your rights as a citizen against unreasonable searches.
The cards provide you with: -- The appropriate steps to Opt Out of TSA Full-Body Scanners and "enhanced" pat downs. -- Information on how to file an official complaint -- on the spot. -- A traveler's Hotline Number to report your experience to the media.
The Opt-Out Alliance is riding a tide of righteous discontent. Not only travelers, but Americans in general are finally waking up to the fact that the government wants to upend the principles of a democratic republic: It wants to cow us into submission and make us obey it, rather than the proper form in which government obeys us.
Benjamin Franklin's warning about giving up essential liberty for temporary safety has never been more appropriate, and more necessary, than it is today.
With little fanfare, former U.S. Representative Virgil Goode has joined the national executive committee of the Constitution Party, essentially severing his ties with the Republican Party.
This is not the first time Goode has switched political parties. Having served in the Virginia State Senate as a Democrat for almost 25 years, he was elected under that party's banner to the U.S. Congress in 1996, becoming an independent in 2000 (after having been one of the few Democrats to vote for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998), and finally switching to the GOP in 2002.
Goode ran as a Republican until he was defeated by one-term Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello in 2008, after a recount showed a razor-thin (727) vote majority. (Perriello was subsequently defeated by state Senator Robert Hurt of Chatham this past November 2.)
On November 18, former Virginia congressman Virgil Goode accepted an appointment to the Constitution Party’s national Executive Committee....
Goode has been somewhat involved with the Constitution Party ever since he left congress. He has spoken at several Constitution Party national meetings during the past two years.
Winger draws an analogy to Goode's joining of the CP's national committee to Bob Barr joining the national committee of the Libertarian Party. Barr, a former Member of Congress from Georgia, said at the time that he had no intentions of running again for public office, but in 2008 he sought the LP's presidential nomination and received it.
Whether Goode has ambitions to be a presidential candidate -- one could not say that a nominee of the Constitution Party has ambitions to be President -- is not known. Commenters on Ballot Access News suggest a CP presidential ticket that would include Goode and former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who this month placed second in the race for Governor of that state, ahead of the Republican party's nominee.
Tancredo and Goode share a visceral xenophobia that would make them compatible as national ticketmates, regardless of which one was the presidential nominee and which was the vice-presidential nominee.
It should be noted that Virgil Goode's wife, Lucy Goode, is a vice chairman of the Fifth Congressional District Republican Committee.
The Constitution Party's press release welcoming Goode to its leadership ranks can be read here.
One of President Barack Obama's opponents in last year's general election, former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, has an early assessment of what we might expect under the new administration in Wednesday's edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Noting, at first, that on the surface the political circumstances of early 2009 are far different than those of early 2008, Barr argues that things have not changed much at all -- unless they are just going to get worse, at least in terms of the expansion of the size and scope of government.
Writes Barr, who ran last year as the Libertarian Party's nominee for president:
Our civil liberties continue under assault by the highest courts in the land, by the federal government, by state governments and by local governments here in Georgia. What am I talking about? Well, let’s see:
Just last week the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in which now-former President George W. Bush’s two appointees were in the majority, ruled that evidence seized illegally by the police nonetheless can be used to convict someone if the police maintain they seized the evidence “mistakenly.” So much for the Fourth Amendment, which used to protect against such inappropriate police action.
Thanks to a law expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) signed last July by Bush, the government may now legally monitor any international phone call or e-mail transmission without a warrant, regardless of who you might be communicating with or why.
You might have thought yesterday’s inauguration of President Barack Obama was a celebration. You’d be wrong. It was a “national emergency,” right up there with Hurricane Katrina.
Why was it a declared “emergency” and a “special security event”? Simple. Such designations enable government to spend more of our money and to exercise greater power to control and arrest people.
Think your DNA is private? Think again. The federal government and many state governments, including Georgia, are now developing vast databases of DNA information (including from newborns), and they are not asking “pretty please” before they take the samples.
Barr includes other examples of government overreach (such as the EPA's plan to tax farmers for the gas that comes out of the rear ends of cows, or "bovine emissions") but what I've excerpted tells the story well.
What's the moral? Remain vigilant. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." He wasn't being merely descriptive; he was sounding an alarm bell.
In a pre-election roundup by Will O'Bryan ("Outing the vote: Gay locals talk politics in the final stretch to Nov. 4"), Metro Weekly, a publication with a largely gay readership in Washington, D.C. (not to be confused with The Metro Herald, a publication with a largely African-American readership in Alexandria, Virginia, for which I write), quotes a supporter of Bob Barr who will be casting a write-in ballot for the Libertarian nominee:
Outside Washington, you might have former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, also of Georgia, on your ballot, running for the Libertarian Party. Of course, you can always just write him in on a D.C. ballot. That's what D.C.'s Berin Szoka says he'll be doing.
''When I vote for Barr, the point is not whoever the Libertarian candidate is. Voting Libertarian is a way of sending a message.... The more votes the Libertarian Party gets, that communicates something. That's why I'm voting at all.''
Before supporting Barr, however, Szoka had publicly -- and somewhat jokingly -- dubbed himself the ''HomoPaulertarian-in-chief,'' promoting Rep. Ron Paul's (R-Texas) dark-horse candidacy for president.
''He's always been a hero of mine. I was delighted when he ran for president,'' says Szoka. ''At the same time, I was astonished by the enthusiasm among young people.''
While Szoka's philosophical leanings tend toward the libertarian, the 28-year-old shares a view probably not uncommon among many who eschew Democrats and Republicans for smaller political parties.
''I think both the major political parties are philosophically corrupt.''
With such strong convictions, one can imagine how difficult it might be for Szoka to pull the lever for either.
Instead, says Szoka, ''I vote for limited government in all respects: social issues, economic issues, foreign policy. Keep the government away from the bedroom, the boardroom and invading foreign countries.''
In a winner-take-all political system, he readily admits, any ''third-party'' presidential vote will remain a largely symbolic gesture. But Szoka is surely not the only gay Washingtonian making that gesture.
I should note that I have known Berin Szoka since he was a law student at the University of Virginia, and I was pleased to see that Metro Weekly sought out his views for this article, which also looks at local elections in D.C. and its suburbs and congressional races as well as the big kahuna, the presidential race in which either Barack Obama or John McCain is the most likely victor.
That staid journal that is read more often for its cartoons than its articles (take that, Playboy!), the venerable New Yorker, has three good political reports that are worth a look.
For many people, including skeptical libertarians, Barr still has the reputation of a partisan, but his self-imposed exile from the Republican Party is representative of a broader disaffection among conservatives who did not immediately rally behind McCain. Republicans in the mold of Barry Goldwater, who believe in small government, minimal constraints on the free market, and expansive civil liberties, have become profoundly uneasy about the direction of the country under President Bush, who has presided over the largest increase in federal spending since the Great Society, raised the national debt to more than ten trillion dollars, suspended habeas corpus for enemy combatants, and recently proposed the seven-hundred-billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street. David Boaz, the executive vice-president of the Cato Institute, and David Kirby, the executive director of America’s Future Foundation, have argued that, because of such policies, the libertarian vote, which for decades has been solidly Republican, “may be the next great swing vote.” According to surveys, as much as a fifth of American voters hold libertarian values, and in recent years more than seventy per cent of them have voted as Republicans. But Boaz and Kirby noticed that in the 2004 Presidential election only fifty-nine per cent of them voted for Bush, and between the midterm elections of 2002 and 2006 three million of them drifted away from the Republican Party—a shift that Boaz and Kirby argue “may well have cost Republicans control of Congress.” In this year’s Republican primaries, Ron Paul, the congressman from Texas and a longtime libertarian, earned more than twenty per cent of the vote in Idaho, Washington, Montana, and North Dakota. “His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass,” Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist, told Time. “It’s not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff.” In August, Newt Gingrich warned that if McCain chose as his running mate Senator Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, Barr would win fifteen per cent of the vote.
Two other articles focus on the major parties' vice-presidential candidates.
Ryan Lizza profiles Joe Biden, who was chosen to be the running mate of his former rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama. A sample:
On August 6th, Biden said, the Obama campaign “smuggled” him into Minneapolis, where Obama was campaigning, and the two senators stayed up late in a suite at the Graves 601 Hotel working out the details of a potential deal. Obama told Biden that the vetting had gone well—Biden assured me that it was “very complimentary.” Biden happens to be one of the least wealthy members of the Senate, although his family’s joint income was more than three hundred thousand dollars last year. (His wife, Jill, has a Ph.D. in education and teaches at Delaware Technical & Community College.) His relatively straightforward tax returns and uncomplicated financial situation made the process easier. “All these years and you still have no money,” Obama said to Biden, teasingly.
The conversation in Minneapolis ranged from foreign policy and possible appointments to the federal courts to the legislative strategy that would be needed to pass an Obama agenda. Obama wanted to know how Biden had managed his signature achievements—such as the 1994 crime bill, which added a hundred thousand federally funded police officers to city streets. He also tested Biden’s understanding of how broad his role would be, as opposed to that of another contender—apparently, Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas and the only woman known to be on Obama’s short list. “He said, ‘Well, you know, if I offered this to somebody’—he named her, a person—he said, ‘That person would be very happy if I assigned them to reorganize the government.’ And he said, ‘They’d be very happy doing that. How about you?’ ” That didn’t sound like much of a job to Biden. “No,” he told Obama. “That’s not what I want to do.”
Finally, Jane Mayer traces how Sarah Palin emerged as the leading contender for the Republican vice-presidential nomination. While Palin's name was known among political junkies for months before the GOP convention, she seemed to the general public to have sprung full-blown from the head of John McCain, who decided, without vetting, that he needed to have a Tina Fey lookalike at his side. Mayer sets the record straight. For example:
While Brickley and others were spreading the word about Palin on the Internet, Palin was wooing a number of well-connected Washington conservative thinkers. In a stroke of luck, Palin did not have to go to the capital to meet these members of “the permanent political establishment”; they came to Alaska. Shortly after taking office, Palin received two memos from Paulette Simpson, the Alaska Federation of Republican Women leader, noting that two prominent conservative magazines—The Weekly Standard, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.—were planning luxury cruises to Alaska in the summer of 2007, which would make stops in Juneau. Writers and editors from these publications had been enlisted to deliver lectures to politically minded vacationers. “The Governor was more than happy to meet these guys,” Joe Balash, a special staff assistant to Palin, recalled.
On June 18, 2007, the first group disembarked in Juneau from the Holland America Line’s M.S. Oosterdam, and went to the governor’s mansion, a white wooden Colonial house with six two-story columns, for lunch. The contingent featured three of The Weekly Standard ’s top writers: William Kristol, the magazine’s Washington-based editor, who is also an Op-Ed columnist for the Times and a regular commentator on “Fox News Sunday”; Fred Barnes, the magazine’s executive editor and the co-host of “The Beltway Boys,” a political talk show on Fox News; and Michael Gerson, the former chief speechwriter for President Bush and a Washington Post columnist.
By all accounts, the luncheon was a high-spirited, informal occasion. Kristol brought his wife and daughter; Gerson brought his wife and two children. Barnes, who brought his sister and his wife, sat on one side of Governor Palin, who presided at the head of the long table in the mansion’s formal dining room; the Kristols sat on the other. Gerson was at the opposite end, as was Palin’s chief of staff at the time, Mike Tibbles, who is now working for Senator Stevens’s reëlection campaign. The menu featured halibut cheeks—the choicest part of the fish. Before the meal, Palin delivered a lengthy grace. Simpson, who was at the luncheon, said, “I told a girlfriend afterwards, ‘That was some grace!’ It really set the tone.” Joe Balash, Palin’s assistant, who was also present, said, “There are not many politicians who will say grace with the conviction of faith she has. It’s a daily part of her life.”
Palin was joined by her lieutenant governor and by Alaska’s attorney general. Also present was a local woman involved in upholding the Juneau school system’s right to suspend a student who had displayed a satirical banner—“Bong Hits 4 Jesus”—across the street from his school. The student had sued the school district, on First Amendment grounds, and, at the time of the lunch, the case was before the Supreme Court. (The school district won.)
During the lunch, everyone was charmed when the Governor’s small daughter Piper popped in to inquire about dessert. Fred Barnes recalled being “struck by how smart Palin was, and how unusually confident. Maybe because she had been a beauty queen, and a star athlete, and succeeded at almost everything she had done.” It didn’t escape his notice, too, that she was “exceptionally pretty.”
This issue of The New Yorker also has an article that gives hope to those of us who still have creative ambitions long past the date we might have been considered precocious. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the difference between youthful genius and artists who succeed much later in life in an article called "Late Bloomers."
The two major party candidates for president, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, will not appear on the election ballot in Texas this year.
That is, of course, unless Texas ignores the clear violation of the law by both parties. The relevant section of the Texas code can be found here.
Texas, with 34 electoral college votes, is a dependable Republican state and is crucial to McCain's chances to be elected president. (This may be embarrassing for Obama but it is not nearly so consequential.)
Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is the only presidential candidate whose name will be on Texas ballot this year, according to the Texas secretary of state. His was the only campaign that fully complied with the law by submitting a sufficient number of petition signatures by the statutory filing deadline.
Section 192.031 of the Texas election code says that political parties must certify their presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the November ballot no later than 70 days before the general election. It says, “A political party is entitled to have the names of its nominees for president and vice-president placed on the ballot if before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before presidential election day, the party’s state chair signs and delivers to the secretary of state a written certification of the name’s of the party’s nominees for president and vice-president.”
This year, that deadline is August 26. UPDATE: At 2:30 pm Texas time, August 27, Kim Kizer of the Texas Secretary of State’s elections division says neither major party’s certification has been received in the Elections Division. The Executive Office of the Secretary of State refers all questions back to the Elections Division.
This year, neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party obeyed this law. See this link to the Secretary of State’s web page showing a blank for the Republicans and Democrats for president. It does show Bob Barr on the ballot; scroll down a little bit. If the Republicans have indeed filed, one wonders who they listed for vice-president, and why their filing is missing from the state web page.
Since the major parties do not even obey their own rules (Democrats, for example, seated the Florida and Michigan delegations at this year's convention even though both states ostentatiously flouted the party's rules about holding early primaries), they will probably find some compliant judge to allow their candidates on the ballot.
Of course, when a minor party misses a deadline like this, the Democrats and Republicans insist on strict adherence to the law. Republicans and Democrats write the laws, then maneuver themselves into exemption; all others must obey.
As much as I hate to admit it, I had a pile of newspapers accumulate over the weekend while I was entertaining out-of-town guests, so I am just catching up on my reading tonight.
To my surprise, Monday's Washington Post carried a Style section feature on Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr. The story was placed well above the fold on page one of the section, and continued for a full broadsheet page on the inside.
Written by Libby Copeland (who, curiously, had another piece on the same page, this one on soap opera actors posing as Presidents and First Ladies for a magazine scheduled to be published coincident to next year's inaugural festivities), the article emphasized Barr's human side, with little attention to policy positions.
For instance:
Is there any human being on the planet more committed to his seriousness than Bob Barr? The 59-year-old Barr is so into the Founding Fathers that most of his phone numbers, including his cellphone, end in "1-7-7-6." He only reads weighty books, his wife says, like "George Washington on Leadership." He talks about himself in the third person. In his office, he keeps a photo of himself as a Republican congressman -- calling for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Even Bob Barr's mustache is serious.
Bob Barr's law: "Never run a 100-yard dash in a 90-yard room."
What does that mean?
"It doesn't mean anything," he says, and then adds, sternly, "It's a joke."
And yet, every once in a while, the strangest thing happens. He does something surprising, like announces he really likes Bob Marley. Or says he kind of liked that Borat movie, except for the part where he was unwittingly in it as the butt of a joke, eating cheese purportedly made from human breast milk. He's still Bob Barr the bulldog, but in person he can be quite solicitous. And every so often, he smiles.
I have been following libertarian presidential candidates since the 1992 campaign, when Andre Marrou was running, and I never remember seeing such a big article about one of them placed so prominently in a newspaper of record. (Marrou was able to snag a column by George F. Will, published in the dog days of July and thus earlier than election day than even this piece, but that was also the year that Ross Perot stole the bulk of third-party thunder, so any coverage at all, at any time, was gratifying.)
Despite the lack of attention in Copeland's article to policy issues, I can appreciate any attempt to humanize (and therefore make more familiar) a Libertarian candidate. As political consultants know, voters care less about issues than they do about their inchoate feelings about candidates. Remember the contest in 2000 about which candidate voters would rather drink a beer with at a backyard barbecue? Al Gore came out short on that one. So did John Kerry four years later, though he did win the brie-and-chardonnay vote.
I hope that this Style section piece will reassure editors of other newspapers that it is acceptable to publish features about Barr.
Circumstances prevented me from attending the Tuesday Morning Group Coalition meeting in Richmond this morning. The Tuesday Morning Group is hosted by John Taylor and Tertium Quids. It meets generally on the second Tuesday of each month so that Virginia political activists can hear from prominent speakers on the issues of the day and compare notes with each other about current events.
Today was quite a program and I had looked forward to it. (As recently as late yesterday afternoon, I had exchanged emails with John Taylor about my plans to record part of the meeting on video.) The speakers included Paul Jacob of the Sam Adams Alliance and the new chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, Delegate Jeff Frederick.
The star of the show, however, was to be former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who is currently running for president as the nominee of the Libertarian Party. I have not previously met Congressman Barr and I hope today's missed opportunity does not mean I will not have a chance to do so before the election campaign is over. (I am counting on the University Libertarians to invite the candidate to Charlottesville in September or October.)
Fortunately, I knew that Steven Latimer would be attending the meeting and I implored him to get Congressman Barr's remarks on video so that they could be posted to YouTube (and, by implication, here).
Steven was more than willing to take up the task.
(For those who might be interested, Norm Leahy has a full report of the press lunch Barr had after the meeting.)
"Neither of the two major parties has any vision or leadership whatsoever. It seems as if they not only have no leadership or vision or agenda for the American people, but they go out of their way to avoid it."
Here's the whole segment:
The expected third and fourth parts have not yet been uploaded to YouTube. When they are, I will post them here, too. Watch for an update soon.
Update #2:Part 3 of the video of Barr's remarks, in which he talks about ballot access challenges (especially Oklahoma and West Virginia, the hardest nuts to crack).
In this segment, Barr proposes a "new Grace Commission ... one on steroids" that would focus not just on government waste "but wasteful government," not just the "bad aspects of what government is doing, but the bad aspects of government itself."
He said we need to educate the American public about the tremendous waste, "not just in the money involved, but the power involved" and we need to characterize every government program according to three criteria: (1) "Is there a basis, explicit or reasonably implied, in the Constitution for that federal agency or program?" (2) "Even if there is, is it a program or a function that is best performed by the federal government ... as opposed to state or local government?" (3) "Do the benefits outweigh the cost?"
Waste in government, Barr said, represents a "loss of freedom."
See the rest here:
Update #3: Chelyen Davis has the story in the Free Lance-Star.
Update #4: This is the third and final part of the four-part Bob Barr video, in which the former Congressman says, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."
Asked by a member of the audience whether he is concerned that votes for himself might contribute to a victory in November by Barack Obama, Barr replies:
"Standing up for principle should never be something that any American shies away from or feels guilty about. It would be a sad state of affairs if we ever reached a point in this country where somebody stands up and stands for principle, does the right thing for the right reason, but is criticized because that gets in the way of practical politics.
"In point of fact ... it's not an accurate scenario. The fact of the matter is that individuals who would go to the polling booth on November 4th and vote for a Big-Government Republican, that is, Senator McCain ... it would be very difficult for us to pull them away, even if we were trying to, to vote for a small-government Libertarian.
"The voters on that side of the ideological spectrum, or political spectrum, that we are targeting and tend to reach and, I think, will reach, are not voters that McCain has or is likely to have, but are sort of libertarian or true-conservative Republican voters who would not vote for McCain at any rate. We intend to reach out to them, and I think we'll get an awful lot of them."
Asked about an issue that divides some Libertarian Party members (and other libertarians), Barr responds by saying:
"The Libertarian Party nowadays is a very diverse party, but the one thing that unites virtually all -- not every single, but virtually all -- Libertarians is a strong desire to have a meaningful role in reigniting liberty in America, to really begin the process through a legitimate political party and all the attributes that come with that: paying attention to raising money, paying attention to grassroots organization, selecting good candidates, prioritizing your issues, delivering those issues in language that the average voter can relate to.
"That is very much what the modern Libertarian Party is. There are differences, whether it is on the drug issue, the abortion issue, other issues as well. But I think it's a real sign of maturation of the Libertarian Party that we are able to largely (not entirely, but largely) put aside differences that we have and move forward, particularly in this election year where there is a tremendous opportunity for a party of change, as the Libertarian Party is ... even though our philosophy is not a philosophy of change, it's the core beliefs of our Founding Fathers, and it's a very mainstream message."
Watch the full segment, in which Barr concludes by mentioning the campaign web site, BobBarr2008.com:
Update #5: Hugh Lessig reports on Barr's speech in Richmond in the Daily Press.
Update #6: The Free Lance-Starposted an editorial about Barr's appearance at the Bull & Bear Club on August 14.
Southern Voice, a gay weekly published by the same company that also publishes the Washington Blade, has a long article about Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and how (and why) his positions on gay issues have changed over the years (hat tip to Austin Cassidy's Independent Political Report).
What's most interesting to me is how Barr explains that it was conversations with members of Outright Libertarians, a partisan group of gay libertarians, that helped him refine (and change) his views on issues of importance to gay and lesbian voters. Southern Voice reports:
Bob Barr sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act when he served in Congress as a Republican representing Georgia’s 7th District. Now running for president as a Libertarian, Barr advocates repealing part of the law.
In a June 2 interview with Southern Voice, Barr, who served in Congress from 1995-2003, delineated between two sections of DOMA: a full faith and credit clause that protects the rights of each state to implement its own definition of marriage, and a section that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman under federal law.
“This [second part] was intended to apply to federal programs, such as survivor benefits, Social Security [and others],” he said.
Barr said it is the second part of DOMA he would work to repeal if elected president.
“Over the years and over the last year since I’ve been more active in the Libertarian Party, I’ve talked with a number of individuals, including members of Outright Libertarians [a gay Libertarian group], and have come to view the second part as having been used as a club, or the tail wagging the dog,” Barr said. “It has become in effect a national definition of marriage. This is not what I intended.”
The article continues:
Doyle Jones, a member of Outright Libertarians living in Tucker, plans to vote for Barr for president and said he believes Barr’s reversal on DOMA is “sincere.”
“I think Outright Libertarians have influenced him,” Jones said.
Rob Power, chairperson of Outright Libertarians, said while pleased with Barr’s change of heart on DOMA, he was disappointed to hear Barr wants to repeal only part of the law.
But Power, who lives in San Francisco, does believe Barr has “evolved” on the issue. Barr first talked with Outright Libertarians at last year’s Conservative Leadership Conference in Reno, Nev. While Power was not at the conference, he worked with fellow Libertarians on devising a strategy to convince Barr he was wrong on DOMA by stressing to him the law was an attack on federalism, or state’s rights.
After a conversation with current Outright Libertarian secretary Brian Miller at that conference, Barr essentially reversed his position on DOMA, Power said.
While Barr does not yet think gay marriage is a good idea, he is open to both civil unions and permitting gay couples to adopt children:
Barr also told Southern Voice this week he now believes in civil unions and that gay couples deserve legal benefits and rights.
He supports gay people adopting, saying he has seen “plenty of heterosexual people adopt that shouldn’t have.”
And in line with the Libertarian Party, Barr, a former federal prosecutor, opposes hate crimes legislation, saying such a law “actually makes cases harder to prosecute.”
He also does not support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban job bias based on sexual orientation, again citing the need for less governmental interference.
Barr's biggest break with conservatives may come in his opposition to DADT:
But Barr advocates dumping the federal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy prohibiting gay service members from serving openly. He said this week the firing of gay Arabic linguists, for example, is a threat to national security.
In a June 2007 op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “Don’t Ask, Who Cares,” Barr wrote, “As a conservative Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2003, I was hardly a card-carrying member of the gay-rights lobby. I opposed then, and continue to oppose, same-sex marriage, or the designation of gays as a constitutionally protected minority class,” Barr wrote.
“Service in the armed forces is another matter. The bottom line here is that, with nearly a decade and a half of the hybrid ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ policy to guide us, I have become deeply impressed with the growing weight of credible military opinion which concludes that allowing gays to serve openly in the military does not pose insurmountable problems for the good order and discipline of the services,” he added.
While Bob Barr still has a bit more room to evolve and improve -- it would be nice for him to say that it's a good idea for gay couples to have not just the responsibilities of marriage but also all of the rights and privileges associated with it -- he deserves credit for listening to his erstwhile opponents and coming around to their point of view.
Bob Barr's "conversion" is an example of why libertarians have to be out in the arena, making arguments, trying to change minds. He is also an example of how nobody is a lost cause and why it is important to engage in dialogue even with people with whom we vehemently disagree.
After six ballots in which he was virtually (and sometimes precisely) tied with left-libertarian Mary Ruwart, former GOP Congressman Bob Barr has won the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination for 2008.
After 6 ballots, the Libertarian Party national convention has nominated former Congressman Bob Barr. Barr has turned around on many major issues since leaving congress. He now favors:
– Ending the Iraq War, withdrawal of all American troops from all foreign countries.
– Ending the federal War on Drugs.
– Repealing the Defense of Marriage Amendment, which he had authored.
– Repeal of the PATRIOT Act and Real ID.
Barr's nomination came after third-place finisher Wayne Allyn Root endorsed him over Ruwart, a longtime libertarian activist. (By contrast, Barr joined the party just about two years ago.)
Congratulations to Bob Barr and to the Libertarian Party.
A writer for National Review once described 1992 LP presidential candidate Andre Marrou, who served two terms in the Alaska state legislature, as having a résumé that, for Libertarians, was the equivalent of Elliot Richardson's. Not since Ron Paul in 1988 has the LP nominated a presidential candidate with as much credibility as a vote-getter, policymaker, and public speaker.
Bob Barr will represent the party and its issues well in the months to come. Let's hope he can get enough attention from the MSM that he can affect the terms of the debate and force the two bigger party candidates to discuss things like ending the War on Drugs and repealing the most repugnant components of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Update: The media is already getting the story wrong. The AP reports:
Barr beat research scientist Mary Ruwart, who was the party's presidential nominee in 1983 and vice presidential candidate in 1992. Barr left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration.
Mary Ruwart has never been on the LP ticket. The 1984 (not 1983) presidential candidate was David Bergland. The 1992 vice presidential candidate was my friend, Dr. Nancy Lord. I know, because Nancy and I shared a hotel room during the nominating convention, and it was through her that I became the chief foreign policy advisor to the 1992 LP presidential campaign. (Mary Ruwart was a candidate for the veep slot that year and she lost to Nancy.)
As announced earlier today, the Jefferson Area Libertarians sponsored a reading (out loud) of the Bill of Rights on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall this afternoon. The occasion was the 215th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The weather cooperated nicely: temperatures were in the 50s (perhaps even the low 60s) and the sun was just beginning to set, giving the setting a nice, even light that was neither too bright nor too dull. This resulted in some good photos, like this one taken near the big city Christmas tree at Central Place:
I was at the event and managed to get most of it recorded with my handy cell phone. Unfortunately, while the audio is pretty good, the video is rather blurry. Still, it's the words that are more important than the images.
The three gentlemen who conducted the ceremony were John Munchmeyer, Jim Lark, and Arin Sime. (Arin is also a candidate for the Virginia State Senate, running in the 2007 election in the 24th District.)
The ceremony was introduced by John Munchmeyer:
Then the three traded off in reading sections of the Bill of Rights, including the seldom-referenced preamble:
This was followed by comments by Jim Lark:
Arin Sime then spoke briefly about the threat to the Bill of Rights from eminent domain abuses:
Finally, John closed out the ceremony with a few summary remarks:
I thought it noteworthy that the commemoration took place just an hour or so before the beginning of Chanukah (at sunset), which may be the most libertarian of religious holidays, in that it memorializes a righteous uprising against tyranny.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
, except for the part where he was unwittingly in it as the butt of a joke, eating cheese purportedly made from human breast milk. He's still Bob Barr the bulldog, but in person he can be quite solicitous. And every so often, he smiles.
