Bob Barr

Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr said Saturday that he had formed a presidential exploratory committee and may seek the Libertarian Party nomination. The former Georgia congressman left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration. Barr, 59, became a favorite of conservatives in the 1990s for his persistent attacks on President Clinton. He runs a lobbying and public affairs firm with offices in Atlanta and outside Washington.

There's little evidence in Bob Barr's office that the former Republican congressman is on the verge of running for president. There are no throngs of volunteers. Telephones do not ring off the hook. On a recent afternoon, a lone reporter paged through American Rifleman magazine while waiting for Barr to return from Starbucks. "Oh, we're very busy!" chirped his receptionist, who was surfing the Web for tourist spots Barr might visit on a trip to England.

Bob Barr, a onetime Republican congressman from Georgia, on Monday announced his plan to run for president as a Libertarian, promising to rein in federal spending and limit military involvement abroad. "The government has run amok fiscally," Barr said at a news conference. During the first quarter of this year, he said, the private sector lost millions of jobs while the federal government was "hiring with enthusiasm."

Signaling he has written off today's West Virginia primary, Sen. Barack Obama took aim this week at the five remaining Democratic contests -- and the fall election, planning a stop in suburban Detroit, home to many "Reagan Democrats" a generation ago. During a short visit Monday to West Virginia, Obama took a swipe at presumptive Republican nominee John McCain for not backing a Democratic Senate bill on veterans' benefits. Then Obama dropped by a pool hall before leaving the state -- which Sen.

When Bob Barr called a news conference last month to discuss his idea of the perfect Supreme Court justice, a phone booth could have accommodated the reporters who showed up. Nonetheless, the Libertarian Party's candidate for president was no-nonsense: Cuff links fastened, mustache trimmed, he ripped into John McCain's interpretation of the Constitution, words like "penumbra," as in "outside the penumbra of Sen. McCain's misunderstanding," rolling off his famously tart tongue.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, a conservative Republican who rose to prominence during the Clinton impeachment hearings, bowed out of a congressional race in a district some political commentators said was too moderate for him. Barr had touted himself as the front-runner to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Johnny Isakson, but he said he was withdrawing to spend more time with his family and pursue other opportunities.

When Republican Bob Barr was U.S. attorney in Atlanta a decade ago, he convicted a GOP congressman involved in money laundering, stirring enough resentment among party stalwarts to threaten Barr's political future. But he rode out that storm, and in 1994 he won his own House seat. And once again he is upsetting fellow Republicans with his prosecutorial zeal. This time, however, his target is a Democrat--President Clinton. Long before Monica S.

A spokesman for Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) acknowledged Thursday that Barr was a keynote speaker earlier this year at a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization promoting views that interracial marriage amounts to white genocide and that Abraham Lincoln was elected by socialists and communists. Barr spoke at the organization's semiannual convention on June 6 in Charleston, S.C. His presence was cited by Harvard law professor Alan M.