Justice and Fortitude

Marc Gallagher has audio of Bob’s appearance on the Dennis Miller Show over at Liberty Maven, where Miller and Barr discussed FISA, the recent Supreme Court decision regarding habeas for detainees and what pushed him to the Libertarian Party.

Barr opposes the FISA Bill and isn’t hesitant to challenge Obama’s support of the legislation with this statement:

The House on Friday passed legislation that greatly expands the power of the government to surreptitiously surveil phone calls and e-mails of American citizens. If, as expected, this legislation is passed by the Senate and the President, as promised, signs it into law, it will represent the greatest expansion of the government’s ability to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans ever.

While the Administration will tout this as a bill to “listen in to phone calls with al Qaeda” and other terrorist organizations (a power the government already possesses), the fact is, under this legislation, every phone call or email that takes place between a US citizen in the United States and any person “reasonably believed to be” overseas, can be surreptitiously surveilled by the government without ever going to a judge. Yes – it is that broad.

It also gives telecommunications companies that previously allowed government agents full access to the private records and calls of their subscribers in violation of the 1978-FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) completely off the hook for such privacy-invasive actions; it grants them prospective immunity as well.

Barr also differentiates himself from both Obama and McCain by supporting exploration of ANWR as gasoline prices race past four dollars per gallon.

Some other recent news:

Here is a video interview of Bob Barr at MobLogic.tv.

Barr was interviewed by the Washington Post. From the interview:

“With regard to domestic policy, Sen. McCain really has put forward nothing that would indicate he believes in dramatically shrinking the size and cost of the government,” Barr said during an interview on washingtonpost.com’s “PostTalk” program. “He does talk a great game about doing away with earmarks, but that really does not get near to the heart of the matter of the massive federal spending, the massive federal debt and the deficits we’re running.”
[…]
Barr said that “the tremendous growth” of federal government powers since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “has so dramatically shrunk the sphere of personal liberty in this country … that it has really caused myself and many other Americans … to take a much harder look at government power than we did in the past.”

Finally, some upcoming media events:

Jun 26
Interview: McIntyre in the Morning (streamed here)
KABC 790 AM, Los Angeles, CA
8:05 am est

Interview: The Radio Factor w/ Bill O’Reilly
Fox News Radio
12:00 pm est

Interview: Tom Sullivan Show
Fox Radio Network
3:10 pm est

Jun 27
Interview: The Bob Grant Show
WABC 770 AM, New York, NY
9:20 pm Edt.

July 6
This Week with George Stephanopoulos
11am EST