Bob Barr

For the Major League Baseball player, see Bob Barr (baseball).

Robert L. (Bob) Barr, Jr. (born November 5, 1948) is an attorney and a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia. Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia, from 1995 to 2003. Barr is now a Life Member of, and on the National Committee for, the United States Libertarian Party.

Prior to his work in Congress, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to serve as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. He served from 1986 until 1990. Despite being an ardent supporter of the War on Drugs, Barr opposed the RAVE Act. He sat on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association from 2001 - 2007. Barr achieved significant notoriety as one of the leaders of the effort to impeach President Bill Clinton.

Early life

Barr was born in Iowa City, Iowa. His parents served in the military, and Barr spent many years with them in Iran. He attended the University of Southern California and later earned a law degree from George Washington University. From 1971 to 1978, he served as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. He retired to work as a private lawyer, and in 1986, was appointed by President Reagan to be U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, in which post he served until 1990. From 1990-1991 he was President of the Southeastern Legal Foundation.

Political career

Barr ran for the US Senate in 1992, losing the Republican primary to Paul Coverdell. In 1994, he was elected to the U.S. House.

Barr has been embroiled in controversy several times during his career. In 1998 he delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, which is viewed by many as white supremacist; he later stated he had not known the group's views until after the speech. His speech did not deal with race, however, and Barr publicly distanced himself from the council. Barr has also suffered attacks for his conservative stance on family values, which left-wing periodical Mother Jones deemed hypocritical: "Married three times and embroiled in a messy court battle with his second wife over his failure to pay child support, Barr had been photographed in 1992 licking whipped cream off two buxom young women's breasts and nipples.

He later sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act." In wake of Barr's adamant support for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, porn mogul Larry Flynt paid Barr's second wife, Gail Vogel Barr, for details of the child support battle and of her abortion. This caused political troubles for Barr, noted for his strong pro-life stance.

During the Clinton impeachment trials, Barr quoted former President John F Kennedy saying that "Americans are free to disagree with the law but not to disobey it”. This provoked angry reaction from Kennedy's nephew, Patrick J. Kennedy who launched into a furious diatribe about “a racist quoting my uncle, a racist like Bob Barr.”[3]

In Congress, Bob Barr controversially proposed the Pentagon to ban the practice of Wicca. This proposal was derided by some as witchhunt [4] [5].

Prior to the 2002 elections, the Democratic-controlled Georgia legislature split Barr's 7th district during the redistricting process, even though Georgia had gained two seats as a result of the latest census. The legislature intended to create a congressional delegation of seven Democrats and six Republicans. He chose to challenge fellow Republican Congressman John Linder in a district that, while retaining Barr's district number (the 7th), contained more of Linder's former territory. Barr was heavily defeated in the primary.

Post-political career

Barr considered running both for the House and for the US Senate from Georgia in 2004, but passed on both races. While Congressman Barr supported and voted for the USA PATRIOT Act, he was one of the chief architects of the 'sunset clause' which requires most new powers granted to the government under the act to be renewed by Congress in 2005. Since leaving Congress in 2003, he has become a vocal opponent of the Patriot Act and has stated that he regrets voting for it, and opposes any attempt by Congress to renew many of its provisions in 2005. In 2005, he helped found an organization called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, with the purpose of eliminating aspects of the Patriot Act that could potentially affect law-abiding citizens rather than terrorists, and to "restore traditional checks and balances on government power so the country can effectively fight terror without sacrificing the rights of innocent Americans, rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution."

More recently Barr has become a prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union, sometimes doing paid consulting on privacy issues. In the 2004 Presidential election, Barr abandoned the Republican Party and publicly endorsed the presidential ticket of the United States Libertarian Party. He briefly wrote a regular column for Creative Loafing, a weekly newspaper in the Southeast.

Barr is a commentator on political and social issues and is chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation's '21st Century Center for Privacy and Freedom.'

Barr hosts a conservative talk radio show on Radio America called Bob Barr's Laws of the Universe, on which he has had guests including Trent Lott, Tom DeLay, Oliver North, and Robert Bork. His first "law of the Universe" is that "the world is full of idiots, and he features on Idiot of the Week on his show, along with a top ten of Idiots of the Year selected from the Idiots of the Week. His Idiot for the Year for 2005 was the city of Newark, New Jersey for using a federal anti-terrorism grant to purchase ten garbage trucks, explaining that the trucks could “be used as barriers to protect possible targets” in a time of crisis.

Barr has been a vocal opponent of President Bush's claim of authorization to wiretap transnational phone calls without individual judicial license. Regarding the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy, Barr has said, "What’s wrong with it is several-fold. One, it’s bad policy for our government to be spying on American citizens through the National Security Agency. Secondly, it’s bad to be spying on Americans without court oversight. And thirdly, it’s bad to be spying on Americans apparently in violation of federal laws against doing it without court order."

In January 2006, to emphasize the bipartisan nature of the event, Barr planned on introducing Al Gore at a speech co-sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy to address what they called the "NSA Spying Scandal", although technical problems interfered with Barr's live satellite feed.

Barr made a brief appearance in the 2006 comedy film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. In it, he is interviewed by Borat Sagdiyev, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, and apparently does not realize the interview is a hoax. As a sign of good will, Borat offers Barr a slice of homemade cheese. Only after Barr eats the cheese does Borat reveal that it was made from "my wife's tit".

On 12 December 2006, he became a regional representative on the Libertarian National Committee, representing the Party's Southeast Region.

External links

• Barr's Official Website
• The FBI's Pre-Emptive Interrogations Of "Possible" Demonstrators - Article by Barr on Findlaw.com
• Barr's Article Archive at the American Conservative Union
• Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances
• Radio America: Bob Barr
• Posts by Bob Barr at Huffington Post
• Ex-Rep. Barr Quits GOP for Libertarians
• Bob Barr, Hillary Clinton and Impeachment: Eight years later
• Template:CongBio2

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