Barr is not the conservative you'd be led to think (according to Sal). He's running on the Libertarian party after being shunned by the Conservatives and not receiving their endorsement.

Robert Laurence "Bob" Barr, Jr. (born November 5, 1948) is the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election.

Barr was born on November 5, 1948, in Iowa City, Iowa to Bob and Beatrice Barr. His father, a West Point soldier, moved the family to various locations around the world while pursing his career in civil engineering. The second of six children, Bob Jr. spent his boyhood in Malaysia, Pakistan, Panama, and finally Tehran, Iran where he graduated from Community High School in 1966

He has served from 1995 to 2003 in the US House of Representatives from the state of Georgia. He has not been in public office since 03.

In 1999, during Clinton's impeachment trial, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt offered money to anyone who could provide evidence that a prominent Republican had engaged in an extramarital affair. According to the American Journalism Review investigators for Flynt found that Barr was "guilty of king-size hypocrisy"; the outspoken abortion foe had acquiesced in his then-wife having an abortion in 1983. Investigators also found that Barr invoked a legal privilege during his 1985 divorce proceeding, so he could refuse to answer questions on whether he'd cheated on his second wife with the woman who is now his third."

In the early 1990s, Barr was photographed at a fundraising event licking whipped cream off of a woman. According to the Washington Post "Two people who observed the act say it wasn't exactly a bosom lick but more like a neckline lick, at the sort of event where business and civic leaders perform dares to raise money. 'Not exactly Mr. Effusive', says Matt Towery, the former chairman of Newt Gingrich's political organization, who observed the brief and awkward licking. 'You can hardly get the guy to smile'"

Barr sat on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association from 2001 to 2007.

More recently, Barr has become a prominent member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), sometimes doing paid consulting on privacy issues

Up until 2007, Mr. Barr was one of the most fervent supporters of the war on drugs, once commenting about medical marijuana, “There is no legitimate use whatsoever for marijuana. This is not medicine. This is bogus witchcraft. It has no place in medicine, no place in pain relief...”  You will be happy to know that just last year Robert Barr had another change of heart – joining the Marijuana Policy Project.

Barr was also one of key contributors to the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that allows only marriages between men and women to be federally recognized and which allows individual states to choose not to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.  Just last week Barr apologized for this position, essentially saying that the federal government should recognize homosexual marriages and civil unions.  Another big switch!


Information obtained through Wikipedia and other sources including the campaign website, and The Prometheus Institute.