Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it may be in order at any time on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, for the Speaker to declare a recess, subject to the call of the Chair, for the purpose of receiving in joint meeting His Excellency Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is inspiring to hear my friend, Mr. Russell, speak such inspiring words. It is interesting that the book from which he kept quoting is the best-seller book of all time and also happens to be the most quoted book in U.S. history here in both the House and the Senate. There was a time when most legislators felt it was helpful in getting legislation passed if they had a verse of Scripture from the Bible that supported their position. Then we arrive at the point today where, if someone in Congress makes the statement in quoting Jesus Himself when He discussed marriage and divorce and was asked about it, that He, God, made male and female. Haven't you read? Don't you understand He created male and female? So you would have to believe, if you supported the agenda that was exhibited today, that Jesus didn't know what He was talking about because God not only created male and female, He created a lot of question marks, like the cartoon that somebody did of a doctor holding a newborn and the mother asks, ``What did I have?'' and the doctor says, ``The baby hasn't decided yet.'' We have come so far. We thought we had advanced so far. Yet, as Solomon said: ``There is nothing new under the sun.'' I know Justice Ginsburg was talking about same-sex marriage when she said: Well, we just know so much more now than we used to know. In some ways--but in the nature of human nature, things haven't changed. Things from 3,000 years ago, just as Abraham Lincoln said in quoting Scripture in his second inaugural, are just as true today as they were 3,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago. It is why Lincoln quoted them. But when we get to the place as a Nation that truth is not important, everything is relative, and there is no absolute, unqualified, black- and-white justice or injustice, then our prisons fill up. You have more people committing suicide than ever. You have more people using drugs and trying to escape by using drugs. You have all kinds of problems in schools and in society. Things are turned upside down because a society loses its way, says there is no absolutes and everything is relative. But as C.S. Lewis pointed out, what led him from being an atheist to believing in God was in poking fun at Christians and saying: Why don't you just admit it. Wouldn't it just be easier to admit that there cannot be a just God when there is so much injustice in the world? After doing that for years, this brilliant man finally realized: If there were no just God, if there were no absolute-in-the-universe standard of justice and injustice, right and wrong, if that standard did not exist, then I would have no way of knowing whatsoever that injustice even existed. As he illustrated, if a man is blind from birth, then he would not ever know what light was like. If there were no absolute standard of justice in the universe, we could never know when there was injustice. We just wouldn't know the difference. But there is that standard. And as he points out, although some have a more heightened understanding of justice and injustice, of fairness and unfairness, and some of those standards differ, it doesn't mean the standards don't exist any more than the fact that some people can hit a musical note more closely than others. And just because somebody doesn't hit it exactly the same does not mean the music does not exist. So we arrive at all these massive problems, and we are told the cure for the problems of society is if we start letting more people out of prison much sooner. And then people misrepresent and mischaracterize the reason why people are in prison in order to justify having a massive prison break that is authorized by the President of the United States. He is already authorizing prison breaks from Guantanamo Bay and is continuing to do that. There is an article from the National Review by Sean Kennedy this week. The subtitle is, ``The Truth About the Sentencing Reform Act is Scary, and Not a Reason to Support It.'' The title is, ``Our Prisons Are Crowded Because We Have a Lot of Criminals.'' The article points out, ``mandatory minimums are for real bad guys.'' In Texas, as in many States, we have what we call ranges of punishment. If you do something wrong--you commit a felony, for example--then, depending on how serious that has been judged to be--it could be a State jail felony, a third-degree felony, a second-degree felony, or a first-degree felony, being the most serious. Well, actually, a capital felony would be the most serious, where the death penalty is authorized under certain, very strict conditions. But for noncapital, there is a range of punishment. For example, a third-degree, minimum of 2 years, maximum of 10 years; second-degree, minimum of 2 years, maximum of 20 years; first-degree, minimum of 5 years, maximum of life or 99 years. Some say we should not have those minimums, and certainly not a mandatory minimum that says you can't go below this point. For some of us, you are saying we have got to get rid of the bottom of the range. But as we saw, and with the circumstances that motivated the original sentencing guidelines in Federal court 30 years or so ago, we had Federal judges appointed for life, completely unaccountable, that would face some heinous, despicable act, and then give a very light slap on the wrist. So Congress came back and said, look, we are going to have to have some sentencing guidelines and keep judges within these guidelines. There was nothing wrong with that, as long as you give a judge at least some ability to discriminate between more serious and less serious, some ability to use judicial decisionmaking. Over time, we have seen the serious crime rates go down. Murders, assaults, rapes, a lot of those numbers have gone down for some time. They were a result not of society becoming more lawful and concerned, but actually just enforcing the law more strictly. Society has taken a turn for the worse as we have continued to say through the media, through entertainment, and through Congress everything is relative, there are no absolutes. Well, the Founders knew there were some absolutes. They knew the only way we could ever be considered to have rights that government could not take is to make clear that our rights do not come from the government. The government is the protector of the rights that came from our Creator. Once people decide your rights are given by the government, then obviously the government can take them away. But if those rights come from our Creator, as our Founders made very clear in the Declaration of Independence, then the government is supposed to protect them and not let anyone take them away. That is why it was a bit heartbreaking to hear the President say--I believe he was in Hawaii, but saying this week--oh, no. He was in a foreign country at the time. But he was explaining that, in the United States, we have these founding documents, and they indicate that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights. He went ahead and rewrote-- actually, omitted--the most important words of that line in the Declaration, not where it just said we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, but we are endowed by our Creator. He just failed to mention ``endowed by our Creator.'' Maybe it bothers him to say that, I don't know, but he left it out. And there is the problem: when people who are in leadership of the government of the United States think that they are the source of their rights. The oral argument in the Little Sisters of the Poor case should have gotten more notoriety than they got because some of the positions taken by President Obama's attorneys were absolutely outrageous. The indications basically were that the government can tell, potentially even a church, which religious beliefs you can practice and which you are not allowed to practice. The government has that right, which would mean those rights didn't come from our Creator; they came from the government. So the government giveth and the government will take away, which makes it very consistent with what the President just said in the last few days in eliminating that our rights were endowed by our Creator. There was no accident in the first part of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, having to do with religious liberty: ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'' They knew if that freedom is abridged in any way, the rest of them will not matter. Once the government, for example, recognizes secular humanism as the official religion of the United States, then it can dictate to people of all faiths exactly what they can believe and disbelieve. That is exactly what has happened. There is a prior Supreme Court case that, in the footnotes, lists the different religions in the United States. Secular humanism was one of them. Secular humanism does not recognize a creator. There has been so much misinformation and miseducation of our young people. People were told that Ben Franklin didn't believe in God. You have to be totally fraudulent in your representation of Benjamin Franklin to tell any student that, when he said in his own words--which were later illustrated in his own handwriting exactly what he said when he spoke in 1787, the end of June, to the Constitutional Convention imploring them that they needed to be praying--when he told them: We have been going nearly 5 weeks with more noes than ayes on virtually every vote. How has it happened, sir, that we have not once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. He went on and eventually said: I have lived, sir, a long time. He was 80 years old. He had gout. He had arthritis very bad. He was overweight. He had trouble getting up and down. He said: And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that ``except the Lord build, they labor in vain that build it.'' That is the basis on which this Nation was built. We were endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Ben Franklin knew what the Declaration of Independence said. It was Adams who told Jefferson, basically: You do the first draft. In essence: You are the best writer we have. It was Adams that Jefferson showed the first draft to, and then they both showed it to Franklin. Apparently, Franklin made some little interlineations. It was brought up for debate, and some things were knocked out. He knew exactly what was important in that Declaration that would stand as the building foundation for this Nation for our rights. When that foundation is cracked, when parts of it are eliminated, the building on which it stands would no longer stand. That is the kind of erosion that has occurred. When the Federal Government of the United States can tell the Little Sisters of the Poor--these incredibly ethical, loving, caring, giving women, who devoted their lives to helping others, far more than anybody in this city in government--and people in this city would tell them, no, you cannot practice your religious beliefs because we are secular humanists, and we will tell you you cannot believe and practice what the Bible tells you. Of course, Moses said it came from God. That is why he is right up there as the only full-face image in this whole room of lawgivers, considered the greatest lawgivers of all time. Moses is the only full- face, because he was considered for most of our history to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. This is the guy that says it is coming from God, but a man shall leave his mother and father, a woman shall leave her home, and the two will become one flesh. And when Jesus was asked about it, he said: Haven't you read? Don't you understand? God made them male and female. He didn't mention question marks. These are people we need to love and encourage. The diagnostic statistical manuals for most of existence have pointed out that these are mental disorders. These are people that we are to love, encourage, and help every way we can. For among educated, compassionate people, for our civilized history, a man that didn't know which he was was pitied, loved, and encouraged. But educated people said that is basically where the word 'perverse' is most widely used. Now we have a government that says forget what the Bible says, forget what Moses said, forget what Jesus said when he quoted Moses verbatim and then added, ``What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.'' Even if you don't believe Jesus was part of the Holy Trinity, as our Founders did, do you really want to leave this life and potentially, whether you believe in a judge, a maker, or not, say, ``Oh, I didn't think you were serious when you said those things about marriage''? I didn't think you were serious. You just weren't smart enough to know that he didn't just create male and female. I really wonder how many people in this body who had the ultimate power to decide whether humanity would go forward or not, whether there was an asteroid coming or something that would end humanity on Earth as dinosaurs were ended at one time--okay. We have a spaceship that can--as Matt Damon did in the movie--plant a colony somewhere. We can have humans survive this terrible disaster about to befall. If you could decide what 40 people you would put on the spacecraft who would save humanity, how many of those would be same-sex couples? You are wanting to save humankind for posterity--basically, a modern- day Noah. You have that ability to be a modern-day Noah. You can preserve life. How many same-sex couples would you take from the animal kingdom and from humans to put on the spacecraft to perpetuate humanity and the wildlife kingdom? That is why it has been called part of the natural law, natural law given by the Creator; but when we continue to abolish the first words of the Bill of Rights--the First Amendment--and we continue to prohibit the free exercise of religion, we don't have much longer to go. Jonathan Cahn has a great book--interesting. The dialogue could be a little stronger, but ``The Harbinger,'' and the more recent one, ``The Mystery of the Shemitah Unlocked,'' really are thought-provoking even if you are a secular humanist. He makes the comparison that the United States, just as the Founders said, was founded by the grace of God and as an instrument to bless the world. Even for those who have not recognized the exceptional nature of the United States, it is still a fact that you can't find nations throughout history that have done what this one has, where we have sent our best and brightest and our most valuable commodity--American blood, sweat, toil--and fought for the freedom of others. We have fought to protect others, not just ourselves. You don't find nations through history that did that. This Nation had because they believed there was a higher power. They believe our rights come from our Creator, and we have an obligation to that same Creator. This Nation has spread goodness around the world despite those who would say otherwise. It has happened. We have been the most generous, charitable, helping, loving nation in the history of the world. We have more opportunities and more assets per individual than even Solomon's Israel. We have been blessed beyond measure. Jonathan Cahn makes the comparison to the ninth chapter of Isaiah, where at that point, long after Saul and long after David and Solomon, we come to 732 B.C. By that time, Israel is divided into two parts--the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. The southern kingdom of Judah is where Jerusalem was. Jonathan Cahn draws the parallel, which is actually scary when you start looking at the things that actually are parallel to that time. God is telling Isaiah: Look, the people whom I have blessed--I have provided more than anyone else--have turned away from me; so I allowed the Assyrians to come in and attack and harm them. I pulled back the hand of protection. Back in those days, the Assyrians were known as the true fathers of terrorism. They came in and attacked and did the strange thing of going back to Assyria. God is telling Isaiah: I have given them a warning to turn back to me. I know that for 90 days, churches all over America were packed after 9/11. Basically, we saw people say: Never mind, God. We don't have to worry anymore. We have got this. God said: They didn't turn back to me. I am going to let them go. Ten years later, he allowed the Assyrians to come in and wipe them out. The southern kingdom, where Jerusalem was, continued to turn away from him. Then, over 100 years later, he allowed them to be attacked as a warning. They didn't heed the warning. Now, they got about 19 years before God withdrew his hand of protection and allowed the children of Israel to be taken into exile, and the nation of Israel ceased to exist. The northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Judah ceased to exist because they wouldn't turn back. If Jonathan Cahn is accurate in that comparison--well, we are beyond 10 years since that warning. Maybe people believe there is a God and believe as our Founders did and as Ben Franklin said in his talking about the Bible, in quoting it, and as Jefferson did in the quote that is still engraved in his memorial: that he trembles for our country when he realizes God is just, but he is not going to remain silent forever--well, the southern kingdom got 19 years after their warning, and then God let them go. Tough times are upon us. We have a President who has now got an agenda to release more murderers, killers, haters of America to go forth and continue to kill and murder and hate Americans. I mean, I know some people are saying: But it has been 15 years; they have got to be released. No. The way it has always worked among civilized nations when it has come to prisoners of war is, when someone declared war on a nation or on a people, and when some of those warriors were captured, they were held in a civil manner; they were held until those at war said: We are no longer at war. Then the prisoners were released unless they had committed war crimes for which they could be tried. At any time in the last 15 years, all of them could have been released--unless war crimes had been committed--if their friends, their allies, had said: Okay. We are the Muslim Brotherhood, we are radical Islam, and we are no longer at war with the Great Satan, the United States. We want peace. We won't be terrorizing and attacking you and trying to destroy your way of life anymore. We are done. That is when they cease the violence against the United States. We can release the prisoners unless war crimes have been committed. Then at that point, as in Nuremberg, you try them for their war crimes. This President is jumping the gun. They are still at war. Muslim leaders in the Middle East and Africa have asked me: Why is it you don't understand that radical Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood, have been at war with you since 1979, and you are helping them? Iran is the greatest supporter of terrorism. You are helping them more than you are willing to help us. What is wrong with you? The answer is: We have turned away from the Creator, the source of our rights and our blessings. I believe God exists. For those who think that maybe he does, maybe they are agnostic. If God exists, the question is: Does he love us more than he loved Jerusalem? Because, if he doesn't, it is doubtful we have more than 4 or 5 years to go. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Greg Walden and also his staff. They have been superb to work with, and it has been refreshing to see how thorough both he and his staff have been in researching this issue. I came prepared to talk about the event and actually how it happened, but Chairman Walden did such a fantastic job that the emotion runs high at this point, and I am very grateful for the manner in which this has been presented. I also want to thank FCC Commissioner Pai, who in the early days stepped up and made this an issue to get people's attention, but no greater thanks goes to anyone than to Kari's father, Hank Hunt. It was December of 2013 in Marshall, Texas, which is normally known for being a kind and helpful city. Police respond often in 1 or 2 minutes. Kari's 9-year-old daughter has not had her name mentioned anywhere, to my knowledge, and that is because this child did everything she could possibly do, everything she had been taught and trained to do. What a phenomenal, quick-thinking child that she is. After Kari's death received an outpouring of comments from constituents and other Americans across the country expressing concern over the issue, every day this is an issue. Fortunately, every day someone does not pay the ultimate consequence of dying because it is an issue. When we looked into this matter, multiline telephone systems can easily be configured or reconfigured to enable callers to reach emergency personnel by dialing 911 without having to dial a prefix at all. Most of the time these changes can be made at no cost, and we have had programmers inform us that they have been doing it at no charge once the issue was brought to their attention. Some MLTS vendors have offered to upgrade or tune up their existing systems for free also. Additionally, the American Hotel & Lodging Association has worked aggressively with its members across the country to swiftly ensure that their systems in place allow guests to directly dial 911 from guest rooms. Most of the American Hotel & Lodging Association's largest hotel member chains have activated 911 direct dial access at nearly all of their owned and managed properties. This bill gives 2 years for those who have not done so. And in view of the fact that this is so widely public, I anticipate people will move much, much more quickly than 2 years. It is quite refreshing when both sides of the aisle can come together on an issue that saves lives, does not cost anything from taxpayers, is not a mandate that needs funding, and clearly involves interstate commerce and the telecommunications industry. So anyone who dials 911 would reach emergency personnel even if the phone normally requires the user to dial a prefix. Many phones in hotels, offices, even schools don't reach emergency personnel when a user dials 911 in a time of need because the person failed to dial a prefix. This bill changes that for good. I join Hank Hunt, and I thank full committee Ranking Member Pallone, Ms. Eshoo, and, again, Chairman Walden, Chairman Upton, and the staffs for the great work done here. We can avoid tragedy again, and it is just refreshing when we work together to make sure that happens.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet on Monday, May 23, 2016, when it shall convene at noon for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is amazing sometimes the way, in the heat of dispute, argument--sometimes any of us can have it happen to us--people don't think clearly. I have been here for nearly 11\1/2\ years in Congress. It is a tremendous honor to get to be the servant for the people of east Texas. But in that 11\1/2\ years, 4 of them the Democrats were in the majority, and my friend from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) was the majority leader during those 4 years, and the rules never changed with regard to how the electronic voting worked. For the last 11\1/2\ years, it has always been the same. And that is, we could take our voting card--and it has a little computer chip in it. It doesn't matter which we way put our card in the box. If the blue light on the box is lit, it means that box is open for voting. Most every other row has a voting box on the back. We take our card, and we put it in the slot whichever way. It recognizes the one-of-a-kind computer chip that belongs to that 1 of 435 Members, and then you can hit the green button for ``yea,'' the red button the ``nay,'' the yellow button for ``present.'' The blue light is on there. It is next in order on the box, but it can't be pushed. It just lets you know the box is open for voting. Toward the end of a vote, particularly a 15-minute vote, the Speaker will not have gaveled the vote dead, but oftentimes the box goes dead right before the gavel comes down. Even to that point, you can still change your vote, but it is just when the blue light goes out, you can't do it at the box. You have to come down to the well. What I have noticed every year for the last 11\1/2\ years that I have been here, if we are voting on a 15-minute vote--and all of us have probably done it at one time or another--if you need to change your vote, maybe you looked up and, for example, sometimes one person has multiple amendments, and you see their name and it is their amendment, and you say, ``Oh, I was not going to vote for that,'' and you vote ``no'' and you need to change your vote to ``yes,'' you can still change your vote at the box. On a 15-minute vote, once you get past 5 minutes, you normally have to come down to the well and get a green card for ``yea,'' a red card for ``nay,'' or a yellow card for ``present'' or ``abstaining'' and change your vote that way. But on a 5-minute vote or a 2-minute vote, if you need to change your vote, you didn't understand the significance, it constantly happens that people change their vote. But to change their vote, if you have your voting card, you have been able to change it at the box on a 5-minute vote or a 2-minute vote. Every now and then, before the gavel comes down, the blue light will go off on the box, so you can no longer change your vote or vote at that box. That is when you hear someone yelling, ``One more, one more,'' and they come rushing down the aisle to get the vote in before the gavel comes down. Now, in 11\1/2\ years, only one time has there been a massive and gross violation of the rules the way we have followed them in bringing a vote to a conclusion. I can understand my friend from Maryland being sensitive, because this happened on his watch as majority leader. But Republicans were in the minority, and yet there was a vote. I don't even remember if it was a bill or an amendment. I think it was an amendment. But the Republicans voting against the amendment had enough Democrats voting with us that we were bringing down a Democratic amendment or bill, and it was left open for enough time that anybody that wanted to change could have changed. When the Democrat in the chair felt that enough time had passed, no other changes were being made, and the measure being voted on had failed, then the gavel came down. The rule has always been that when the gavel comes down, there can be no further changing of the vote. Perhaps, the majority leader, at that time Hoyer, had forgotten. But that was the time they violated their own rules. A subsequent investigation confirmed that. They violated the rules and allowed someone whose arm they were twisting to vote after the gavel came down to change the vote, change the outcome of the vote. That didn't happen here today. And the vote wasn't held open very long at all after the end of the time running out. Sometimes, whether it is Democrats or Republicans in the majority, it runs to zero. But if, in the opinion of the Chair or the Speaker, there is somebody wanting to change their vote or somebody that is making a good faith effort to get here to vote, they will leave the vote open. Sometimes, like when Speaker Pelosi was meeting with President Obama at the White House and wasn't getting back in time, or Majority Leader Hoyer, and they weren't getting back in time, well, that vote would be held open to give them time well beyond the zero, zero, zero, so they could cast that vote. Nobody objected because we knew they were making a good faith effort to get here. I understand sometimes we forget things that we have been doing for a number of years. And especially in the heat of debate and a verbal battle here on the floor, people can forget what they have been doing for many, many years. But that has been the way the voting and the rules on voting have worked and been interpreted for many years. So I was greatly surprised to hear the former majority leader challenging on the basis that people didn't come into the well to change their vote on either a 5-minute or a 2-minute vote. Well, they have always been able to change their vote. The voting boxes were open. Anyway, we all have those mental lapses where we forget things that we have been doing for years. I mean, it just happens, and especially here on the floor. There is nothing to be taken from former Majority Leader Hoyer forgetting how the rules were when he was majority leader and forgetting how they have been all these years since, so no hard feelings. He just had a mental lapse and forgot how the rules have been ever since he has been here the entire time. There has been a great deal of to-do and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about what I would term the ``Iranian crisis'' because it truly is a crisis that this administration has enabled Iran to go ahead and develop nuclear weapons to continue down that path. Even though they are supposed to be prohibited, they continued to develop missiles that eventually will be capable of delivering nuclear weapons onto the United States. They have got missiles to deliver them on to Israel right now. But as Prime Minister Netanyahu so ably has pointed out from this very rostrum right up here, those missiles they are developing now are not for Israel. They can already reach Israel. Those are for the Great Satan. So it was deeply troubling to hear the confessions and admissions of the White House adviser consultant mouthpiece, Ben Rhodes, reveal that the administration--and I am being careful not to use any specific names. I am addressing generally the administration--that the administration had to lie to the American people and had to lie to the House and Senate about how evil Iran really was and had to talk about how moderate they were when, actually, the fact is, apparently, under the so-called moderate President Rouhani, there have been more people put to death than even under the former President Ahmadinejad. This man is no moderate. Though the American people were fed lies about the negotiations, they were having to negotiate, either directly or indirectly, with the Ayatollah Khamenei. They don't make big decisions like a nuclear weapons deal, unless the religious leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, actually agreed, just like his predecessor, the Ayatollah Khomeini. So just like with the revelations about ObamaCare, now that we have had someone working behind the scenes with the administration who revealed, yes, the reason ObamaCare passed was because people are such fools, they were able to fool them into voting for a bill that was really not anything like what was being represented. And yet along comes Ben Rhodes, and he admits they did the same thing on ObamaCare that they did on the Iranian treaty. Now, I understand the administration has never called it a treaty, and there are people in the Senate who have not had the courage to call it a treaty, but it is a treaty. You can't change a nuclear proliferation treaty with an executive agreement or an executive order. It can't be done. It has to be done with another treaty. So, clearly, there are a number of things that made clear that the Iranian deal was a treaty. It should have been brought to the floor of the Senate. It still should be. It is time. You can do it any time this year. You could do it with 51 votes of the Senate setting aside cloture and saying, the Iranian treaty is a treaty, it is going to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons that will allow them to devastate both the Little Satan, in their opinion Israel, and the Great Satan, the United States, and it needs to be stopped. So, hopefully, the courage will abound eventually in the Senate and we will get that vote. And therefore, people with standing could go to court and stop the flood of millions of dollars to Iran, which has already said that with the billions of dollars, $100 billion to $150 billion in the first year this administration is going to make available, they are going to commit so much more to terrorism than they ever had. Then we get this story just a few days ago from the Washington Free Beacon entitled, Iran Shows Off Third Underground Missile Site. It says: ``Iran's military recently publicized a third underground missile facility and showed the launch of a new ballistic missile through the top of a mountain. ``It was the third time since October that Tehran showed off an extensive network of underground missile facilities. The new video, however, for the first time, shows a missile launch from one of the country's underground launch facilities. ``Disclosure of the new video comes as Iran this week conducted the third launch of a ballistic missile since January, when the nuclear deal aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear weapons development went into effect.'' And I would submit, that part of the story is inaccurate. It is being considered to have gone into effect, but it is a treaty that was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, and it is an ineffective treaty. But the Obama administration is choosing to act as if the Iranian agreement really is an effective treaty. Iran has shown they have no intention of following that agreement. They have violated it a number of times. And the only reason Iran would have the gall to go forward and say, Hey, look, we have got a third underground missile site, we are going to let you see a launch, we don't care that the world knows that we are violating this last agreement with Obama and Kerry and Wendy Sherman that helped give North Korea nuclear weapons in the Clinton administration, we don't care that they know because we have now seen that this administration will not stand up to us, they will let us push them around, they will even let us take their soldiers or their naval officers, their naval seamen captive, violate virtually every treaty on the treatment of prisoners, humiliate the American sailors, force them to lie on camera, and after all that is said and done, we will get the Secretary of State to come back and thank us. I mean, it is like from ``Animal House,'' Kevin Bacon being beaten saying, Thank you, sir, may I have another? Iran has figured out they are the senior pledges, and this administration will take a beating and keep asking, Thank you, sir, may I have another? And Iran is all that willing to give them another and another. The trouble is this isn't a comedy movie, this is real life. Christians and Jews are being targeted, persecuted, and killed in greater numbers than at any time in the history of the world. The Middle East is on fire, except Israel is a place of stability. But if this administration has its will, it will become a powder keg before long as well. Libya had become more stable. And after the United States went into Iraq, because Saddam Hussein continued to refuse to abide by the orders of the U.N. that were passed by huge majorities, requiring them to disclose what they had, he wouldn't comply, most everybody was-- including those who now say, I voted for it, I really wasn't for it-- but, at the time, people thought, look, this guy must have something to hide because he is certainly not letting us get in to see what weapons he has. Other reports indicate that they had been taken from Iraq and were no longer present. But either way, it scared Qadhafi enough that, as some of the Israeli leaders have told me, we were shocked when you provided the firepower, the planes, and the bombs that made it possible to eliminate Qadhafi because, yeah, he had blood on his hands before 2003, but after 2003, he helped you more in fighting terrorism than anybody but us, and you took him out, and look what happened as a result. It turned Egypt upside down. There are problems in Albania, problems all over North Africa, problems for the Middle East and North Africa both, problems coming down now of radical Islamists in Nigeria and other, more central African countries. They have paid a heavy price for the improper leadership of this administration here in the United States. It is just tragic how many have lost their lives already. Then we hear reports that in Nigeria--and I heard it when I was in Nigeria and was trying to help the Nigerian families whose daughters had been abducted--that this administration, behind the scenes, was saying: Look, we will help you with Boko Haram, with the terrorism-- although they don't like to use that word--with the radical extremism that is occurring in Nigeria. If you will change your laws, violate your religious beliefs, allow same-sex marriage, and pay for abortion, then we will help you. As one Nigerian Catholic bishop said: Our religious beliefs are not for sale, not to the U.S. President, not to anybody. I have an article that goes on about the situation with Iran. This is also from May 12: ``Kerry's Peculiar Message About Iran for European Banks.'' It reads: ``U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Thursday in London with a group of European financial institutions for a discussion about `Iranian banking matters.' The meeting, which followed repeated complaints by Iranian officials that they aren't getting the benefit of the bargain under the nuclear deal, was an effort by the State Department to persuade major non-U.S. banks that doing Iran-related business is not only permitted following the relaxation of Iran sanctions, but is actually encouraged. ``The irony will not be lost on these financial institutions. Most of them were similarly gathered almost 10 years ago by U.S. Treasury Henry Paulson to discuss Iranian banking matters, but that discussion focused on protecting the integrity of the global financial system against the risk posed by Iran. ``In the decade that followed, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the U.K. and other governments, the European Union, and the United Nations, all imposed extensive sanctions targeting Iran's illicit and deceptive conduct. Banks were briefed extensively and repeatedly by the U.S. Treasury Department on the details of Iran's conduct. The Financial Action Task Force, the global standard-setting body for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing, warned about the financial crime risks posed by Iran as a jurisdiction. The result: Iran became a financial pariah. ``No one has claimed that Iran has ceased to engage in much of the same conduct for which it was sanctioned, including actively supporting terrorism and building and testing ballistic missiles; but now Washington is pushing non-U.S. banks to do what is still illegal for American banks to do. ``This is a very odd position for the U.S. Government to be taking.'' It is shocking that this administration continues to be complicit with the largest supporter of terrorism in the world. How many lives will be lost because of this complicity? There was a time when America would not tolerate the kind of treatment of Americans that occurred to our seamen when they were taken captive. Not only did we not come to their defense, we praised Iran and thanked them for being so gracious for the manner in which they abused our sailors. This article goes on. It reads: ``On the one hand, Washington is continuing to prohibit American banks and companies from doing Iran-related business. In February, the FATF''--that is the Financial Action Task Force--``reaffirmed its prior concerns about the 'serious threat' Iran poses to the international financial system, urging countries to apply effective countermeasures. The U.S. Treasury Department's designation of Iran, including its central bank and financial institutions, as a primary money laundering concern also still stands. As part of that designation, Treasury determined that `the international financial system is increasingly vulnerable to the risk that otherwise responsible financial institutions will, unwittingly, participate in Iran's illicit activities.' ``On the other hand, Mr. Kerry wants non-U.S. banks to do business with Iran without a U.S. repudiation of its prior statements about the associated financial crime risks. There are no assurances as to how such activity would subsequently be viewed by U.S. regulatory and law enforcement authorities, which might seek to take enforcement action against banks that enter the Iranian market and run afoul of complicated U.S. restrictions. The State Department neither controls nor plays any meaningful role in the enforcement decisions of these authorities. ``Washington has warned repeatedly that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls broad swaths of the Iranian economy. The IRGC remains sanctioned by both the United States and the European Union because of the central role it plays in Iran's illicit conduct. When the U.S., EU, and U.N. removed sanctions from several hundred Iranian banks and companies, there were no assurances that the conduct of those banks and companies had changed. ``This will present a challenge for European banks. HSBC is endeavoring to implement consistent and high standards across its global operations, designed to combat financial crime and prevent abuse by illicit actors. We have more work to do, but achieving that objective is one of our highest priorities. This approach is rightly expected by our regulators, including in the U.K. and the U.S. ``Our decisions will be driven by the financial crime risks and the underlying conduct. For these reasons, HSBC has no intention of doing any new business involving Iran. Governments can lift sanctions, but the private sector is still responsible for managing its own risk and, no doubt, will be held accountable if it falls short.'' That was from May 12, and it appears to be somebody who certainly knows the banking business. I would like to comment a bit about, again, our illegal immigration problems and our porous borders because the administration continues to act as if all is well--all is well--when it is not well. An article from May 19: ``Previously Deported Illegal Alien Allegedly Killed Prom Teen.'' ``The man that Houston police say was driving drunk and evading arrest when he crashed into a car, killing a young woman on her way home from the prom, is listed by Federal officials as a previously deported illegal alien.'' ``Edin Palacios-Rodas, a 27-year-old previously deported illegal alien from Guatemala, has now had an immigration detainer placed on him after being processed into the Harris County Jail on one count of felony murder and one count of felony evading resulting in death and serious bodily injury.'' It is still going on. With that going on, this administration continues to push for and has allies in Congress pushing for what they are calling sentencing reform when, actually, it won't be reform as much as it will be rather devastating. The pendulum on criminal justice swings back and forth. Most history shows that it has always been and probably will always be, whether a totalitarian government or a democratic republic such as ours. My friend in the Senate, Senator Jeff Sessions, has an article, again, from May 19 that reads: ``Senator Jeff Sessions warns that Congress must be careful to ensure the sentencing reductions bills pending before Congress did not boost already rising crime rates and `sign death warrants' for innocent victims.'' ``The Sentencing Reform and Correction Act, which the Alabama Republican opposes, hews to Obama's anti-law enforcement agenda and could cost an enormous human toll, Senator Sessions said. `Frankly, this is Obama's policy and the Attorney General who he's appointed, Loretta Lynch's policy, and Eric Holder's before her, to basically cut people's sentences that have been lawfully imposed throughout this country, and it's impacting public safety and will continue to do so in the future.' ``The Senator also highlighted many high-profile cop killings as the Obama administration makes police work more difficult. ``He said, `In the last year, we've lost 123 police officers, 35 in the first 4 months of 2016. Violent crimes and murders have increased across the country at alarming rates. Let me just share with my colleagues some of the things we're seeing in violent crime. Recently, the Major Cities Chiefs of Police Association, a long-established group, called an emergency meeting to deal with the numbers I'm going to share with you today.' ``The numbers I will quote represent the percentage increase in total murders in the first quarter of this year, 2016, over the first quarter . . . of 2015. Las Vegas: 82 percent increase.'' This is the murder increase. ``Dallas, Texas: 73 percent increase. Chicago: 70 percent. Jacksonville, Florida: 67 percent. Newark, New Jersey: 60 percent increase. Miami-Dade: 38 percent. Los Angeles: 33 percent.'' And on and on. ``These are substantial increases in crime. According to FBI statistics released just this year, the number of violent crimes committed across the country was up in the first half of 2015 compared with the same period of 2014.'' So, actually, we are going up and up, and the percentage increase in these cities of 82 percent, 73 percent, and a 70 percent increase is even more dramatic than that when you go back 2 years. Sessions also quoted FBI Director James Comey's concerns about the rising tide of crime. `` `I was very worried about it last fall, and I am, in many ways, more worried because the numbers are not only going up, they're continuing to go up in most of those cities faster than they were going up last year. Something is happening. I don't know what the answer is, but, holy cow, do we have a problem.''' Yes, we do have a problem. One of the answers is mentioned in this article, again, from May 19, entitled: ``Obama doesn't think rapists, armed robbers, drug dealers are criminals.'' I think I found the euphemism of the year. ``According to Team Obama, criminals should now be declared `justice- involved individuals.' ``The neo-Orwellianism comes to us from the bizarre flurry of last- minute dictates, regulations, and bone-chilling threats, collectively known to fanboys as Obama's Gorgeous Good-bye. ``In another of those smiley faced but deeply sinister `dear colleague' letters sent to universities and colleges this week, Obama's Education Secretary, John King, discouraged colleges from asking applicants whether they were convicted criminals.'' It used to be a matter of common sense. Most Americans wanted to know. Especially in dormitories that have now become co-ed, where you have men and women living in and with and around each other, it was considered valuable information to know if your daughter was going to be living in, around, or with a convicted rapist. That was thought to be good information, but apparently that is no longer considered by this administration as good information. People all across America have shown an interest in knowing whether there are child molesters in their neighborhood where their children are growing up and children are playing around the area. They want to know if their child is at risk because they know there is a significant recidivism rate, particularly among child molesters. Yet, this administration says it is time to stop calling criminals criminals. Again, that is in keeping with the unwillingness to call radical Islamist, as the Muslim leader of Egypt, our friend, President el-Sisi, calls it--I mean, it is radical Islamists. He has had the courage to tell imams themselves that we have to get control again of Islam and wrestle it back away from the radical Islamists. As my friend, Carolyn Glick, pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, by this administration's refusal to call radical Islam radical Islam, it betrays our allies who are Muslim--like President el-Sisi in Egypt--who are wanting Muslims to stand up and say that these Islamists should not be allowed to represent our religion because they know that they do. When you have a man with multiple degrees in Islamic studies saying that, yes, radical Islam is the ultimate Islam and, on the other hand, you have a President who did go to school in Indonesia in Muslim schools and elementary school but does not have any degrees in Islamic studies, like the world expert in Islamic studies, al-Qaradawi, well, one is President of the United States with no degrees in Islamic studies, and he says it is not Islam. But a man who has studied Islam his whole life and has multiple degrees, including a Ph.D., says not only is it Islam, as the head of ISIS as he is, this is Islam the way it should be. We should be giving assistance to our allies, giving them cover by not going on with this facade where this administration refuses to call radical Islam radical Islam. They call radical Islamic terrorism exactly what it is. They are not helping our friends around the world that are trying to stand up and do the right thing. You could go back to Libya, the attack of Benghazi. We now know from what has been gathered from emails and information that Secretary Clinton basically told the President of Libya: We know that this Benghazi attack was not on a video, in essence, and that it was a planned attack. She told her daughter. Yet, she went out, as did Susan Rice, representing this administration and told us all, oh, it was all about the video; telling victims families that we are going to get the guy who did the video. Victims families from Benghazi have told me personally, when Secretary Clinton said we are going to get the guys that did the videos, which she now says she didn't say--how tragic is that? So basically calling these victims' families liars. But the families say, when she said we will get the guy that did the video, they were infuriated. They said: We didn't care about the guy that did some video. We wanted our government to get the guys that killed our loved one, and that was not the message. You have to understand that there were a lot of things to do, there were promises to keep, and miles to go before they slept. But we don't know if they just went to bed and slept. When they found out the personal ambassador of the Secretary of State was missing, Clinton and President Obama, did they just go to bed? They won't tell us. We know President Obama had a very important engagement the next day. He had to fly out early to Las Vegas for a big campaign speech. We know. We understand. Hey, that was more pressing. We got that. We understand. To him, that was more pressing. What do you do? Do you go to sleep when you get word that your personal ambassador is missing? For the first time since 1979, an ambassador ends up being killed. He wasn't given adequate protection. Now, we are hearing more and more reports from people that the assets were there to go help. They could have saved at least two, maybe more of the four, but they were not allowed go and save the American heroes. Well, there is an article from Conservative Review entitled ``Busted: The 10 Most Dangerous Myths About Criminal Justice Reform'' that is being pushed especially by this administration. And we do have some colleagues here in the House and Senate that are as well. ``Myth number one: The prison population keeps growing, even though crime is declining.'' ``Fact: The D.C. intelligentsia argues our criminal justice system is in dire need of reform. But ask anyone outside the beltway, and they'll give you a different definition of `broken.' Many Americans would agree that current laws are too lenient on criminals and disregard the victim all too often. It was the tough reforms put into place during the Reagan years and in the '90s that produced the sharpest decline in violent crime on record. Those reforms, coupled with more aggressive policing, led to the only positive social trend in public policy in recent memory. That trend is now being reversed precisely as incarceration rates decline and Obama and his allies ratchet up the war against law enforcement. While correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation, the correlation is indeed striking and in conjunction with the defanging of local police departments, the release of tens of thousands of Federal prisoners can only result in exacerbating this negative trajectory.'' From the information that the FBI provided to Senator Sessions, we know about maybe less than 1 percent of Federal inmates in Federal prison are there for possession of a controlled substance; that most are there for more. Ninety-nine percent or so are there for more than that. But those that have been involved in the criminal justice system, both in the State side, as I was, and on the Federal side--I mean, we work with each other. And we know the Federal Government never had interest, that I ever saw, in simple possession cases. Where the Federal Government had interest is if a real bad guy--maybe he had been involved in a shooting, a killing, a robbing, a possession--but they wanted him to turn on his boss so they could get the bigger fish. They had to offer something to get him to turn, and they would offer--I have seen it many times--okay, we can't have a plea agreement where we set a certain sentence, as they do in State court, but what we can do is agree to drop all the charges, except this one possession. So the sentence is not that great. Whatever the judge does won't be that great. It won't have the weapons charge in there, even though he used a weapon and engaged in violent activity, if he will help us get Mr. Big. That happens. I have seen it happened. Back in the early '80s, when I was court appointed in Federal court, I had approaches like that with regard to my clients: What can you help us with, and here are the charges we are willing to drop, even though we know we can prove them. Yet, this administration acts like that never happens and that, obviously, all these people in prison because of drug charges are really nonviolent. That is garbage. That is why the crime rate keeps going up as this administration forces the release of more and more people. This article points out another myth: ``There are millions of people incarcerated in American prisons for no good reason.'' ``Fact: While there are approximately 1.5 million people incarcerated in American jails, prisons, and other institutions, only 195,900 are Federal inmates (a 10-year low). And only 159,000 in the Federal system are housed in actual prisons. The rest are in privately managed facilities, home confinement, short-term detention, long-term boarders, residential reentry centers, pretrial/presentence holding, et cetera. At least 25 percent of the Federal prison population is comprised of illegal aliens and possibly more who are noncitizens. We should save money by releasing those criminals and deporting them.'' What good does it do to deport somebody now when the border is so wide open? ``Myth number 3: Incarceration costs so much money and criminal justice reform will save billions.'' Well, without reading through the whole article, I can tell you that is garbage as well. Myth number 4: ``This bill will only release low level, nonviolent drug offenders.'' As I pointed out, that is simply not the case. It is a good article. Myth number 5: ``We have a big government culture of overcriminalization that threatens liberty.'' Well, the biggest problem of overcriminalization is when Congress has passed a law that says you can go to prison for violating any of the regulations regarding this subject, and then bureaucrats in some cubicle somewhere put some regulations in place under this administration--sometimes 80,000 pages of new regulations a year--and people, as the Heritage Foundation has said before in one of their books, are probably all violating three or four Federal laws a day. One other thing I wanted to touch on because it has been debated and a lot of allegations made, people are trying to assert that Republicans somehow are supportive of the old ways of slavery. Mr. Speaker, I just want to read from the Democratic Party Platform of 1856. This is a part of the platform. This is the belief of the Democratic Party, the national party: ``That Congress has no power under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs, not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists''--that is those who wanted to end slavery--``or others, made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery . . . are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts''--talking about the end of slavery--``have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.'' The Democratic Party Platform of 1856 also declares that ``new States'' to the Union should be admitted ``with or without domestic slavery, as the State may elect.'' The Platform that year also says that ``we recognize the right of the people of all the Territories . . . to form a Constitution, with or without domestic slavery.'' The platform of 1860 of the national Democratic Party, in seeking to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act, states: ``The enactments of the State legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Act are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect.'' The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94 percent Republican support and zero percent Democratic support in Congress. The 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100 percent Republican support and zero percent Democratic support in Congress. The Constitution of 1902 in the State of Virginia disenfranchised about 90 percent of the Black men who still voted at the beginning of the 20th century and nearly half of the White men. The number of eligible African American voters fell from about 147,000 in 1901 to about 10,000 by 1905. The measure was supported almost entirely by Virginia State Democrats. In 1924, the Democratic National Convention convened in New York at Madison Square Garden. The convention is commonly known as the Klanbake due to the overwhelming influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the party. In 1964, the Democratic Party led a 75-day filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Leading the Democrats in their opposition to civil rights for African Americans was a member of the Democratic Party, Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia, who was known to be a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan. Senator Byrd spoke directly about the Civil Rights Act in a 14-hour filibuster, proclaiming: ``Men are not equal today, and they were not created equal in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was written. Men and races of men differ in appearance, ways, physical power, mental capacity, creativity, and vision.'' The Democratic Party identified itself as the ``White man's party'' and demonized the Republican Party as being dominated by African Americans. So it is interesting to hear these rewritten parts of our history. When you know the hearts and minds of the people on the Republican side of the aisle, you find out there is nobody who wants slavery. We wish that slavery that held this Nation back--because as Daniel Webster used to preach and John Quincy Adams used to preach, how was a good God going to keep blessing America when we were treating brothers and sisters in Christ this way, putting them in chains and bondage? America was harmed. It was devastating to African American lives to be placed in slavery--the degradation, the humiliation. I am grateful to be part of the party that stood up and made the change. But more than the Republican Party, the Judeo-Christian beliefs, especially in the 1700s after the Great Awakening, the First Great Awakening in America, revival in America where people turned to God, became Christians, they understood travesties better by understanding the Bible. They stood up, and they demanded equal rights for people, and it led to a revolution. In the 1800s, there was a lot of debauchery, but during the Second Great Awakening, churches were really the core behind the abolitionist movement. We should never be putting brothers and sisters in chains. That is an abomination. It held America back. It helped greatly prevent America from reaching the heights that it would once slavery was gone. But then even after slavery was gone, as a result of the great Republican father of our party, Abraham Lincoln, as he is sometimes referred to, people were not treated equally. As I just read, even in Virginia, this great State of Virginia, Democrats were determined to prevent African Americans from voting, and they were successful in large degree. Mr. Speaker, I think a good way to finish today is to go back to the final argument. We have the entire final argument from John Quincy Adams. He was elected President in 1824. He was defeated by Andrew Jackson in 1828. But in 1830 he did an incredible thing that no one has ever done since. After being President, he ran for Congress, for the House of Representatives. He didn't even run for Senate. He ran for the House of Representatives. He believed God was calling him. As William Wilberforce believed God had called him to bring an end to slavery in Great Britain, Adams believed God was calling him back into government after being defeated as President, that he would lower himself to run for the House of Representatives. He got elected in 1830. Speech after speech was against slavery. How can we expect God to bless America when we are treating brothers and sisters with chains and bondage? Sermons were so powerful that those sermons given against slavery, as he filed bills to end slavery, to free specific slaves over and over, those sermons he preached on the floor of the House right down the hall had a powerful impact on a homely-looking guy with an unpleasant sounding voice named Abraham Lincoln. He overlapped briefly before the massive stroke that took John Quincy Adams out. Adams knew when he died back in the Speaker's suite that he had not done what he thought God had called him to do--end slavery. It was 1848. But we now know, and Lincoln knew and said as much, as Steve Mansfield was telling me. He wrote a great book on Lincoln's struggle with God. He knew that those speeches on the House floor down the hall, they didn't end slavery, but they materially changed the attitude and affected that man named Abraham Lincoln that, 13 years after Adams would die, he would see to slavery's end. At the end of his argument, he was afraid he had not prevailed on behalf of Africans who were taken as captives by another African tribe, sold into slavery, and taken to the African coast. They were put on a ship and taken to the Caribbean, where they were put on a smaller ship called the Amistad. ``Amistad'' is a great movie. Longview, Texas, native Matthew McConaughey plays the trial lawyer representing the Africans. Their position was: We are not anybody's property. When the Africans took over the ship, landed accidentally in America, the Spanish said: These people are our property, and this ship is ours. Let us go. The Africans' version: Hey, we are not anybody's property. We want to go home. That case was argued downstairs in the old Supreme Court Chamber. Adams knew if he didn't do an adequate job, those Africans would leave in chains, their children would wear chains; and he was scared to death that he would not have been up to the job, and, as a result, there would be more suffering. We have his exact argument. He finished like this. This is after he had been President. He said: ``Little did I imagine that I should ever again be required to claim the right of appearing in the capacity of an officer of this Court; yet such has been the dictate of my destiny--and I appear again to plead the cause of justice, and now of liberty and life, in behalf of many of my fellow men, before that same Court, which in a former age I had addressed in support of rights of property I stand again, I trust for the last time, before the same Court.'' He goes on to say: ``I stand before the same Court, but not before the same judges--nor aided by the same associates--nor resisted by the same opponents. As I cast my eyes--`` he stood looking at the judges-- ``along those seats of honor and of public trust, now occupied by you, they seek in vain for one of those honored and honorable persons whose indulgence listened then to my voice. Marshall--Cushing--Chase-- Washington--Johnson--Livingston--Todd--where are they? Where is that eloquent statesman and learned lawyer who was my associate counsel in the management of that cause, Robert Goodloe Harper? Where is that brilliant luminary, so long the pride of Maryland and of the American bar, then my opposing counsel, Luther Martin? Where is the excellent clerk of that day, whose name has been inscribed on the shores of Africa, as a monument of his abhorrence of the African slave-trade, Elias B. Caldwell? Where is the marshal--where are the criers of the Court? Alas. Where is one of the very judges of the Court, arbiters of life and death, before whom I commenced this anxious argument, even now prematurely closed? Where are they all? Gone. Gone. All gone--gone from the services which, in their day and generation, they faithfully rendered to their country. From the excellent characters which they sustained in life, so far as I have had the means of knowing, I humbly hope, and fondly trust, that they have gone to receive the rewards of blessedness on high. In taking, then, my final leave of this Bar, and of this honorable Court, I can only . . . ``a fervent petition to Heaven, that every member of it may go to his final account with as little of earthly frailty to answer for as those illustrious dead, and that you may, every one''--talking to the judges--``after the close of a long and virtuous career in this world, be received at the portals of the next with the approving sentence--`Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' '' We should all hope as such. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appeal the ruling of the Chair, but given the hour, the fact that there aren't that many of us here on the floor at this time, that it would require a quorum and would require under the rules an immediate vote, what I will do is withdraw my amendment at this time. I am assured that we will still be taking up limitation amendments in the morning, and I can offer it at that time without dragging all of our friends out of their places of repose at this time.

Mr. GOHMERT. I would address the point of order in that it really doesn't require any new act or law or activity. The thing should speak for itself unless my friend across the aisle has some concerns that some organization he wants to protect has supported slavery, and he is seeking to protect that. Otherwise, the law will speak for itself as does this amendment.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, it should be pretty straightforward. My friends on the other side of the aisle continue to push forward amendments that seem to want to leave the appearance that the Republican Party still wants to retain some fight that it has never had. The Republican Party opposed slavery. The Republican Party and everybody that I know of in this Chamber on this side of the aisle has never supported slavery, has never supported anything that wreaks of slavery. Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, all of those early leaders in this country, had it very right--it is an abomination. It kept God from blessing this country. I am surprised that anyone would wish to reserve a point of order to try to prevent this amendment from going forward. Anything, as my friends across the aisle have repeatedly pointed out, that reminds people of slavery is repugnant and is abhorrent, and I would think that that is something that we could all agree on. If it is an organization that supported slavery, then why would we want to give that organization any more credence and cause those who may have lived through the vestiges of the civil rights problems that lasted after slavery? It is time to put this to an end and let the dream of Dr. King finally come to fruition. I reserve the balance of my time. Point of Order

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are back in session and things have continued to proceed on. I appreciate so much my colleagues calling attention to this national disaster, really. Opioids are being used at what seem to be unprecedented levels. I know, since I have been here, there was basically a war against the use of methamphetamines. So we restricted law-abiding citizens' access to Sudafed, one decongestant that works on me and has since it was discovered. We have had more drugs pouring across our southern border, according to what DEA agents and local law enforcement have been telling me in Texas and Border Patrol down at our border, DPS at our border. Drugs pouring in seem to have more purity and be more devastating to people that get hooked on them. Obviously, we have had doctors and nurses. I have sentenced many professionals, a number of them at least, for crimes committed. And they are getting access to opioids, but it is a problem. What concerns me, also, is that it appears this administration is saying: We will help you clean up the criminal justice inadequacies as long as you will pass bills that will get a lot of people, thousands and thousands of people, released from prison early. We have seen from the figures that were provided to Senator Jeff Sessions, pursuant to his request, that, of all the people in Federal prison for possession of illegal substances, 77 percent of them are not citizens of the United States. That is 77 percent of those in Federal prison for possession are not U.S. citizens. So, obviously, this President has been giving illegal, unconstitutional amnesties out like they were water at a marathon. Hopefully, the Supreme Court is once and for all going to assure that that stops. But it makes sense when you look at this as being an election year and the Democratic Governor of Virginia makes thousands of felons eligible to vote. All they need is to get out of prison, and then this President wants thousands and thousands more released from prison. The old saying is true here in Washington: No matter how cynical you get, it is never enough to catch up. We should do criminal justice reform. I have been pushing for it for the years I have been here, I guess for the last 8 years. But if it is only going to get signed into law if it is combined with scrapping the sentences that were arrived at by judges agonizing over an appropriate sentence, then I hope and pray it will not happen until January of next year, when a new President is in office, so that it does not get linked. I mean, the cynicism for an administration to say, ``Yeah. We will do the criminal justice reform that is necessary, but only if you will allow us to release thousands and thousands from prison,'' which there is no question that people will be murdered, people will be robbed, people will be assaulted, shot, burglarized in crimes that never would have happened if the President hadn't pushed the early release of so many criminals. I hope and pray that we will be the guardians here in the House of those American citizens that would be killed, robbed, burglarized, assaulted, if the President gets his way and releases people early. We can't allow that to happen if we are going to keep our oath to the American people. We have heard so often in this room and, goodness, we have heard right here across the street in front of the Supreme Court people that claim to be illegally in this country. The only reason I am saying claim to be illegally in this country is we have heard that all the people in this country are in the shadows and we need to bring them out of the shadows. These people that were claiming to be illegally here protesting in front of the Supreme Court recently were not in the shadows. They were in full sunlight out in front of the United States Supreme Court and, in fact, blocking traffic there right in front of the Supreme Court building. Ultimately, the police just shut off the streets because so many people were in the streets. This story from yesterday in the Washington Examiner is entitled ``Cashing in: Illegal Immigrants get $1,261 more welfare than American families.'' The story says: ``Illegal immigrant households receive an average of $5,692 in Federal welfare benefits every year, far more than the average `native' American household, at $4,431, according to a new report on the cost of immigration released Monday. ``The Center for Immigration Studies, in an analysis of federal cost figures, found that all immigrant-headed households--legal and illegal--receive an average of $6,241 in welfare''-- I will point out parenthetically here that that is an average. Obviously, not everybody gets welfare that is here legally and illegally. Obviously, there are lots of households that don't get welfare. But this is an average. And the article says: --``41 percent more than native households. As with Americans receiving benefits such as food stamps and cash, much of the welfare to immigrants supplements their low wage jobs. ``The total cost is over $103 billion in welfare benefits to households headed by immigrants. A majority, 51 percent, of immigrant households receive some type of welfare compared to 30 percent of native households, said the analysis of Census data.'' I would like to insert, Mr. Speaker, when Steve King and I visited in London, England, with the Social Security office equivalent there, they pointed out that, in order to receive Social Security-type benefits in England, the law requires proof that you have been in the country for 5 years before you are eligible. We were told--I didn't see them, but we were told that, in applying to come to the country or being in the country, you had to agree not to apply for benefits for 5 years, the idea being, if they are just an immigrant magnet for people who want to come get welfare, they would go broke. That was their reasoning. And, actually, it is quite good reasoning. As one of the leaders there in the office made clear, she said: ``Look, we want to make sure that people coming into England are going to be contributors to our society and not just takers from our society.'' I don't know if she has been successful. Apparently there are people who come in who are just takers there; but this idea is interesting. It puts to the test whether someone is just coming in to get welfare benefits one has never participated in, has helped pay for, or if one is coming in to help make America a better country. Of course, some think: If I come to America and if they are paying me benefits, obviously, America is a better country because my getting welfare makes it a better country. But most of us would not necessarily agree with that. At least, I hope most would not. But in seeing this figure that the total cost is over $103 billion for welfare benefits to households that are headed by immigrants, possibly as much as anything else, it ought to indicate that our immigration policies and certainly this administration need dramatic changes. Perhaps it would be good to put a pause on immigration until we get this worked out because we are doing great damage to our country and we are doing great damage to other countries. Anyway, this goes on to read: ``Immigrants receiving the most, in the study of 2012 figures, come from Mexico and Central America. Their average annual taxpayer-funded welfare collection is $8,251, 86 percent higher than the benefits received by native households, said the report.'' Mr. Speaker, that is pretty staggering. These are, apparently, 2012 figures? Mexico and Central America? Immigrants from Mexico and Central America are receiving, on average, $8,251 per year. It is pretty clear. You don't have to be that great of a mathematician. I was good at math in junior high and in high school. In college, I only had to study for 15 minutes for the final to make an A in algebra. But you don't have to be good at math to know that no nation can sustain itself when it is giving people who are rushing into the country over $8,000 without their ever contributing a dime to the ongoing of the country. In any event, the article reads: ``The new report follows another that found President Obama seeking $17,613 for every new illegal minor, more than Social Security retirees get.'' That is just mind-boggling. In the words of Bo Pilgrim, that is mind- boggling. It is $17,613 that President Obama sought to provide to every illegal immigrant minor--a person under 18. They have come into the country, breaking our law to get here. Yes, I have been there at all hours of the day and night on the border. No one comes across that border unaccompanied. You can't get across the Rio Grande, in the areas they were coming across, unaccompanied--4-year-old, 6-year-old, 8-year- old children as they stand there. I have seen them come up from the bank, and they are being helped. You see a woman helping this child, and the child is looking to her for answers, looking to her for instructions, looking to her for help. Then she gets up there, and she asks: Oh, is this your child? Oh, no. I don't know her at all. She is not accompanied. Nobody is with her. Yes, you are with her, and all of these other people are with her, but we call it unaccompanied. Then, of course, the President wants $17,613 for every new illegal immigrant who is under 18, which, as the article points out, is more than he would seek for Social Security retirees. Again, from The Washington Examiner, it is talking about author Jason Richwine, who noted that illegal immigrants are barred from directly receiving welfare, but, instead, they get it via their legal children. `` `Illegal immigrants are barred from directly accessing most, though not all, welfare programs, but they can receive welfare through their U.S.-born children. Legal immigrant households, which have greater eligibility for welfare, cost $6,378, on average,' he wrote. ``The average household''--again, this is just an average household-- ``headed by an immigrant, legal or illegal, costs taxpayers $6,234 in Federal welfare benefits. ``The average immigrant household consumes 33 percent more cash welfare, 57 percent more food assistance, and 44 percent more Medicaid dollars than the average native household. ``At $8,251, households headed by immigrants from Central America and Mexico have the highest welfare costs of any sending region. ``The greater consumption of welfare dollars of immigrants can be explained in large part by their lower level of education and larger number of children compared to natives. Over 24 percent of immigrant households are headed by a high school dropout compared to just 8 percent of native households. In addition, 13 percent of immigrant households have three or more children versus just 6 percent of native households.'' So when you do the math, as some people actually have, our Nation is not long for the world unless we get on a lawful track. I have seen and had signs shoved in front of my face over in front of the Supreme Court that Jesus was an immigrant and that Jesus was a refugee. This thing I know from everything we have been taught, from everything that is in the Bible, is that Jesus was never an illegal immigrant. Jesus made clear you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. You follow the law. He never broke the law nor advocated breaking the civilian law; though, those who crucified him clearly violated the law. An article here from The Washington Free Beacon today, by Adam Kredo, reads: ``Report: Homegrown violent extremists planting roots across U.S.; foiled ISIS attacks, plots, and terror funding grows across Nation.'' ``At least 75 homegrown violent extremists were found to be operating across the United States in 2015, with the largest portion of these individuals pledging allegiance to the ISIS terror group, according to recent figures published by New Jersey's Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. ``The largest number of homegrown extremists were caught providing material support to various terror organizations, while at least 21 percent of the terrorists were found to be planning attacks in the United States, according to the figures. ``Another 10 percent successfully carried out terror attacks in California, New York, Tennessee, and Massachusetts, according to the data, which shows that the New York City area was home to the largest number of violent extremists.'' That term ``violent extremists'' is so beloved by this administration so they don't have to use the term ``radical Islamists'' or ``Islamic jihadists.'' Yet, here is an article from Craig Bannister today: ``Administration's Censorship of State Department Video Mirrors Deletion of Hollande's 'Islamist' Remark.'' The article reads: ``The State Department's censorship of an on- camera confession made by spokeswoman Jen Psaki appears identical to the recent censorship by the White House of video of French President Hollande speaking the words 'Islamist terrorism,' exposed by MRCTV. ``FOX News' James Rosen reported on Monday that the State Department edited out an on-camera admission by Psaki in 2013 that it is Obama administration's policy to lie to the American people, and that the Iran nuclear deal was 'a good example' of a time it did. ``The administration used the same censorship tactics earlier this year when it edited out audio of President Hollande calling 'Islamist terrorism' the root of terrorism today . . .' The White House Web site has censored a video of French President Francois Hollande saying that ``Islamist terrorism'' is at the ``roots of terrorism.'' The White House briefly pulled video of a press event on terrorism with President Obama, and when it reappeared on the whitehouse.gov Web site and YouTube, the audio of Hollande's translator goes silent, beginning with the words ``Islamist terrorism,'' then begins again at the end of his sentence.' ``The two censorships by the Obama administration follow the same pattern: ``A comment objectionable to the administration was edited out of the official video posted on a government Web site, ``The censorship was discovered and documented because the official government transcript had not been edited, ``The missing video was, somehow, found and restored to the version on the government Web site--after the censorship had been exposed, and ``The administration pleaded ignorance of the editing once it had been made public. ``Rosen's revelation begs a question posed to MRCTV multiple times since it broke the Hollande story: ``Is this an isolated incident, or are there other times the administration has edited out comments it doesn't want the American people to hear?'' Consistent with actions like preventing people from hearing the French President point out the truth that Islamic terrorism is at the root of all terrorism--most terrorism it certainly is--here is a front page magazine story: ``Obama Frees USS Cole Bombing Terrorist. American lives don't matter,'' from Daniel Greenfield. ``On Thursday morning, sailors on board the USS Cole were lining up for an early lunch. Seventeen of them died as an al Qaeda bomb on board a fishing boat tore through the hull outside the gallery. The dead included 15 men and two women, one of whom had a young child. For 3 weeks, the crew of the USS Cole struggled to keep their ship from sinking while working waste deep in water with bucket brigades, sleeping on the deck, and living surrounded by the terrible aftermath of the terrorist attack. ``The survivors, wounded and whole, received the words `Glory is the Reward of Valor,' written on the bent steel removed from the site of the explosion that tore through their ship and their lives. ``The President of the United States promised that justice would be done: ``'To those who attacked them, we say: You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you and justice will prevail.''' As the article says: ``Despite Clinton's words, justice did not prevail.'' The article goes on to point out all the injustice of what President Obama has done in freeing this bomber involved in the USS Cole bombing. He is a murderer of 17, wounder of three dozen or so in an attack on a United States military ship. The United States cannot long exist when this is the way we treat those who are trying to destroy us. In a May 5 account in The Weekly Standard's story, ``Obama's Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal,'' it says: ``It's hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a 'mind meld' with his boss, the President. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the Web site, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of 'the American foreign-policy establishment.' What Obama calls the 'Washington playbook' dictating the sorts of responses available to American policymakers, Rhodes calls the 'Blob.''' This article points out what is in the news right now, that the Obama administration--and I am being careful--that the Obama administration was responsible for a lie perpetrated against the American people. They claim they were dealing with moderates in Iran. They knew they were dealing with radicals, and Ben Rhodes is lying. He brags about all the lying they did to keep the Senate from standing up and having the courage to say this is a treaty. It is being done with radical Islamists in Iran. It hurts all our friends, helps our enemies. We will not allow that to happen. We are taking a vote on the Iran treaty as a treaty. And then when they did, if the Democrats tried to block it, then this, more than anything else they have ever taken up, would be something they should say, as Harry Reid did, we may not have 60, but this is critical. We vote on the Iran treaty and vote it down. So 51 votes sets aside cloture, and they drive forward. It doesn't get the two-thirds vote, and we stop the radicals in Iran from getting the hundreds of billions that will flow not just in 1 year, but over a period of time. I met with Baloch people, Baloch leaders today. The southern part of Iran, southern southwest part of Pakistan, those are indigenous Baloch areas. The most productive oilfields of Iran are Baloch areas. They have been so unfairly terrorized and mistreated. They know what terrorists the leaders of Iran are. We have friends in those areas of Iran and Pakistan, and this administration chose to lie to the American people to get the Senate to do nothing to stop them. And people around the world will die as a result of the lies that Ben Rhodes has now admitted to. God help us all. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting time. Sometimes you think about the literary quote ``These are the times that try men's souls,'' but there have been trying times before and there will be again. But our Congress continues to be urged to do things that sound like a great solution, sound like a good, compassionate thing to do, but when you get to the bottom of them, sometimes they are the most uncompassionate things we could do. For example, there are reports of sexual abuse victims who are female being deeply troubled. There are FBI statistics that indicate that perhaps 18, maybe 20, percent of women in America have been sexually assaulted. Other types of crimes on females raise the percentage even higher. There are statistics that indicate transgender may be three-tenths of 1 percent. Who knows what the right numbers are? But I think we should be far more compassionate with female sexual abuse victims that comprise such a large number in weighing whether you want to have men come walking in on women in restrooms, dressing rooms. Also, the talk has been this year that we are going to have sentencing reform because it is the compassionate thing to do. We are told that there are massive, massive numbers of people who have been incarcerated in Federal prison for simple possession cases, and we have moved on. We have evolved in this country where we don't look on those as critically. So it is time to start releasing some of those people. Having been a judge of a felony court, I can't say I did the right thing on sentencing in every case, but I can say I struggled. I got all the information that was available. I considered it before we ever undertook the sentencing hearing. I considered everything submitted at the sentencing hearing and wrestled and tried to get to a just and appropriate sentence. Judges do that all over the country. Some think they are being compassionate and quickly release criminals, not being quite as dedicated to reviewing backgrounds and the indications of repeat offenses to come. So they release people too quickly, sentence them too lightly, and they go back and commit other offenses. We know from the recidivism rate that is going to happen, but you try your best, as a judge, to do the right thing. Then the thought of someone in Washington that never ever reviewed all of the facts of the case, never heard all of the evidence that you or the jury heard in assessing sentence, who have just got some big picture that they think they may be able to apply and generalize sufficiently--the thought is repugnant that they would come in and say: We are going to have this blanket set aside, a reduction in the sentence that was achieved through a very deliberative process. There are also a lot of fallacies and a lot of fiction that has been thrown out regarding sentences, some vast many that have been sentenced to and sitting in Federal prison for just having a little bit of marijuana; we have got to let those go. Anybody that has prosecuted knows, whether you have prosecuted as a State prosecutor or a Federal prosecutor, Federal prosecutors have traditionally not been interested in small possession cases. They are not interested. They weren't in east Texas. When I was in court, when I have been a prosecutor and a judge, the State prosecutors in east Texas and the Federal prosecutors actually worked very well together. Every now and then there might be a rare case where the State prosecutors would realize that there was a very heinous offense that was committed, but the Federal Court may have a higher range of punishment, and because this person is such a threat to society, might ask the Federal prosecutors to take a look to see if this is something you would be interested in pursuing. More often than not it was not. But most of those cases are handled in State court. I don't have any doubt that we should be reviewing drug offenses when it comes to the new opium-related cases. There have been so many developments. We have got development of synthetics now that were not known, so they are not listed as items that would generate a prison sentence, that do enough damage to individuals that they should be considered to be listed in a crime to possess. So those are things we need to be constantly looking at. There is an article from Adam Kredo of the Free Beacon from yesterday. The headline is: ``Obama Administration Freed 19,723 Criminal Illegal Immigrants in 2015.'' It says: ``The Obama administration released nearly 20,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes from custody in 2015, according to new figures published by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau. The 19,723 illegals freed from custody during the last year had a total of 64,197 convictions between them, according to the data. This included 8,324 violent convictions and 208 homicide convictions.'' Those are people who came into the country illegally who not only broke our immigration laws to come into the country, but some of them are coming in more than once illegally, some after they have been deported and come back in to commit more crimes, but nearly 20,000 released in 2015, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to ICE, and it doesn't appear that they are all being deported. Certainly if they were, there is no bar to them turning right around and coming back. One man who had, I think it was, nine DWI cases that came before me in a felony court, and the Federal authorities had never been interested in deporting him until he had a violent accident. He came before me, and I sent him, appropriately, to prison. Within 6 months he is back in my court. So I had to ask, through the interpreter, that since I sent him to prison, how is he back in my court for a new crime of violence on other people? It turned out that very shortly after I sent him to prison, finally, the Federal authorities acted--just much too late for victims that were involved--and they deported him. According to what he said through his interpreter, they took him down to the border and watched him go across the border. Then as soon as the people that deported him left, that same day, that same hour, he came right back across the border. What about all the victims? Do we want to talk about compassion? What about all the victims of the people who have been harmed, hurt, and obviously cases of people being killed because we don't secure our border, and instead of letting people serve out the sentences that a court very deliberately sentenced, they let them go? As if we are some ubiquitous group here in Washington, somehow once you come into the District of Columbia, we are so much wiser than any judge sitting on any court anywhere in the Federal system that we know better than they did. I can tell you I have heard from judges from around the country that: If I had known that some jerk in Washington was going to come around and reduce my sentence that I agonized to arrive at, I would have sentenced much more harshly so that the appropriate sentence would have been what was arrived at by the brilliant, wise, ubiquitous jerk in Washington that set it aside too early. This article from April 12 is: ``Sentencing Reform Legislation Would Disproportionately Favor Noncitizens.'' It says: ``U.S. prisoner data clearly shows two things. One, the majority of low-level drug offenders are serving their sentences in State, not Federal prisons. Two, most of those incarcerated in Federal prison for drug charges are noncitizens. While it may be worthwhile to pursue reform at the Federal level, it will do very little to address the problems identified by proponents of sentencing reform, and it would do almost nothing to reduce sentences for U.S. citizen drug offenders.'' In fact, on further down it says: ``As of April 7, 2016, there were 196,285 prisoners in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, with 46.5 percent of these prisoners-- 91,270--sentenced for drug offenses. The percentage of prisoners incarcerated for drugs is just over 2\1/2\ times greater than the State prison population. However, overall, there are fewer prisoners serving time in Federal prison for drug charges than in State prisons,'' which have 212,000. ``The Federal Government collects data differently for State and Federal prisoners. In order to get the breakdown of offenses for Federal drug prisoners, data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission is available. Looking at the sentencing statistics from FY 2007 to FY 2015, a clear distinction between Federal and State prison populations is that the proportion of Federal prisoners serving time for drug possession is much higher than that for State prisoners, and Hispanics are disproportionately represented among Federal drug inmates . . . There is a higher ratio of Hispanics serving drug sentences for both trafficking and possession convictions in Federal prisons. As Daniel Horowitz points out, this is because many of the drug offenders in Federal prison are serving sentences for drug convictions related to the illicit drug trade on the U.S.-Mexico border. ``In response to a congressional request regarding sentencing data for Federal drug offenses, the U.S. Sentencing Commission sent data showing that 95 percent of the 305 individuals serving time in Federal prison for simple drug offenses are noncitizen . . . only 13 simple possession cases were tried in nonborder districts in FY 2014 . . . In a letter sent to Senator Jeff Sessions last fall, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that 77 percent of individuals convicted of Federal drug possession charges and more than 25 percent of individuals convicted of Federal drug trafficking charges in FY 2015 were noncitizen.'' Sometimes graphs give us a good look and give us a better picture of what we are talking about than a word picture does. So here is what the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported last fall, that of all the people in prison, in Federal prison, U.S. Federal prison for drug possession charges and convictions, 77 percent are noncitizens of the United States. That is right. We are using our United States prisons when it comes to Federal possession of drugs. Seventy-seven percent of them housed are noncitizens. Twenty-three percent of those in Federal prison for drug possession charges and convictions are citizens of the United States. ``The profile for Federal drug prisoners is different than at the State level, and this is why Congress needs to recognize and address these differences when crafting legislation that will effect this population. Federal drug and immigration enforcement are for now inextricably tied together, and Mexican drug cartels are a serious threat to public safety. A serious debate over how to best address the War on Drugs and its effects on American communities can not ignore the immigration component. ``Sentencing reform bills reducing penalties for some Federal prisoners . . . are being portrayed by their supporters as a long overdue corrective to harsh sentencing laws for individuals who violate Federal drug laws, which they argue create racial disparities in the Nation's prison population. ``Reforming drug sentencing laws is one thing. Releasing criminal aliens back into U.S. interior is quite another. The Obama administration has already shown its willingness to do the latter, including those who were deemed to be criminal threats to the public. Without a bill with strong, clear language and, most importantly, a Congress willing to extend oversight over the executive branch, it is plain that the sentencing reform legislation likely to soon come before Congress will accomplish little more than to provide an early release for dangerous criminal aliens, while still failing to hold President Obama to account for his failure to enforce U.S. immigration law.'' This article from Daniel Horowitz from this month's Conservative Review said: ``Yes, it was all an April Fool's joke. The entire rationale and premise on which the top legislative priority of the D.C. people was built is an illusion. On a Federal level, there is no widespread epidemic of people being locked up for nonviolent drug offenses. ``The entire debate over the prison population on a Federal level is absurd. Proponents of jailbreak legislation speak about the issue in the abstract and concoct all sorts of myths as to who is sentenced for Federal crimes. ``This is, in fact, a finite and verifiable population. Why don't we stop talking past each other and actually take a look at what is the 800-pound gorilla behind the Federal criminal justice system?'' From there he goes on to talk about illegal immigration and the effect on our prisons. He said: ``What is clear when you juxtapose the total convictions to the large number of immigration-related sentences and the drug trafficking convictions, the 800-pound gorilla in the room when dealing with Federal crimes, is--illegal immigration. Both directly, by clogging up the system with immigration cases, and indirectly, through the open border and drug cartels and proliferation of drugs, more than half of all Federal sentences are a byproduct of immigration and the drugs that are brought in as a result of the porous border . . . Hence, the entire premise of Federal jailbreak legislation--that there are infinite numbers of individuals serving time in Federal prison for `nonviolent drug offenses'--is complete bunk. ``If we would deal with the immigration problem and keep out much of the drug infestation by building the fence''--it doesn't have to be a wall--``and implementing visa tracking, both the direct effects of immigration and the drug problem, which is a byproduct of immigration, would reach a manageable level. We would save a lot of money on incarceration costs and dramatically reduce the prison population, all without risking the safety and security of Americans by indiscriminately and retroactively releasing violent criminals into our communities.'' And people should understand, what most prosecutors will tell you is, especially in the Federal system--they don't have plea agreements like normally you find in most States--they agree on what charges they will allow a defendant to plea to and which ones they will drop. So, if there is violence in an offense, if there is a gun used in a drug offense or violence in a drug offense and a Federal prosecutor is trying to get someone involved for carrying out that violent drug offense, but they know they want to get the guy that is over this one, they want to get the bigger fish and the even bigger fish, they are going to have to have some kind of negotiation at that level. And what they negotiate is: ``All right. We will leave off the violent part of this offense and let you plead to that,'' or, ``We will leave out the burglary,'' or, ``We will leave out this other. We will leave out something else and we will let you plea to this, and the State has agreed they won't pursue that burglary.'' They work out an agreement so that part of the offense that would have gotten them a much more severe sentence is left out in return for their cooperation to go after the bigger fish. So when somebody in Washington that has not analyzed the facts of each case and the reason for the recommended charge to be accepted by the court goes about and just releases somebody, they are normally going to do an injustice to the victims. Some say drugs are a victimless crime. Some are tempted to think that until they look at the involvement of drugs and violent crime in burglaries. It is phenomenal. With a porous border the way we have, we see the drugs pouring in. And I literally say ``we see.'' We had a hearing yesterday with a lady who lived down near the border. Actually, she pointed out that our Federal law enforcement immigration officials are about 25 miles north of the border. We are not enforcing the border there in Arizona where she was pointing out. She and her husband put up video cameras and displayed it in the hearing. Clearly, these were guys carrying big amounts of something, apparently drugs, passing by back and forth, just bringing drugs into America because we were not enforcing and securing our border and our country. If we want to have true sentencing reform, it should not be undertaken until the border is secure so that we know we are not releasing more criminals to the interior of the United States to commit more crimes and to be back involved in the drug trade. I know some years back, after I got here, Congress decided to make it more difficult for people to get Sudafed because it was used in the process of producing methamphetamine. In east Texas, cooking methamphetamine was a problem. But most of the cooks stunk, so when people would smell something violent and they called in, immediately law enforcement would think, oh, maybe some meth is being cooked. They would go, and often that was the case. So we made it hard for law- abiding people to get Sudafed that works a whole lot better than Sudafed with any initials after it that is not true Sudafed. Some in the DEA and law enforcement back in Texas tell me what has happened: Yeah, we were able to shut down a lot of methamphetamine cooking in Texas, but since our border is so porous, the drug cartels in Mexico right across our border are pouring through synthetics and far more potent drugs. They are hooking our young people, our Americans, on drugs that are harder to get off of and induce more unpleasantness and crime. We really didn't solve anything because we didn't deal with what was called the 800-pound gorilla in the room. It is illegal immigration. It is an unsecured border. And, of course, some can't help but raise questions about political motivation. Because when you are trying desperately to win, say, a Presidential election or a local election, say, in Virginia, and you know from surveys that have been done, if you can restore the voting rights to people that have been in prison, a big majority of those will vote Democrat, and then when you think about the potential--wow. So if we just cut loose a massive number of illegal immigrants that are in prison, and then you have a Governor like you have in Virginia who then says, hey, we are going to let felons have voting rights, never mind you are not supposed to vote unless you are a U.S. citizen, we are finding that there is fraud in elections despite what some say. My friend John Fund had a good book on the fraud involved in elections and the voting process around the country. Look, if we are going to stop from disenfranchising real voters and real American citizens, then we have got to make sure that we have legitimate voters. That means voter ID. Why not? I mean, you have got to have an ID to do much of anything in this country. Why not have one and make sure that the disenfranchising process is not happening because we make sure that every voter is a legitimate voter? Those who were worried about it preventing minorities from voting, go look at places like Georgia. It has been established that, when photo ID requirements were added, there were actually more minorities that voted after that. It didn't just disfranchise the minority. What it disenfranchised were people that wanted to vote as illegal aliens or illegally. But parenthetically, Mr. Speaker, I can't help but wonder if you were the head of a political party, hypothetically, if you were the head of a political party and your party believed their hope for winning the next election was to get people who were felons to vote, whether they reformed or not, maybe it is time to take a look at what your party stands for. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I want to turn to one other subject that has been very controversial--North Carolina has gotten a bad rap--and this article from ABC News, ``North Carolina's Controversial `Anti-LGBT' Bill Explained.'' The article says: ``Several civil rights groups and LGBTQ advocates are organizing a rally tonight in Raleigh''--this is from March 24 of this year--``North Carolina, to protest the State's controversial passage of its House Bill 2, which critics have called `the most anti- LGBT bill in the country.' '' The article says: ``Here's everything you need to know about the bill, also known as The Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which was signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory on Wednesday. ``What does it do? ``House Bill 2 declares that State law overrides all local ordinances concerning wages, employment, and public accommodations.'' ``Thus, the law now bars local municipalities from creating their own rules prohibiting discrimination in public places based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Though North Carolina does have a statewide nondiscrimination law, it does not include specific protections for LGBTQ people.'' We keep adding letters, you know. We kept adding letters until we got to LGBT, and now we have added Q. ``The law also directs all public schools, government agencies, and public college campuses to require that multiple-occupancy bathrooms and changing facilities, such as locker rooms, be designated for use only by people based on their `biological sex' stated on their birth certificate. Transgender people can use the bathrooms and changing facilities that correspond to their gender identity only if they get the biological sex on their birth certificate changed.'' ``Under the law, public institutions can still offer single-occupancy facilities.'' And nobody has a problem with that. If you have got a single bathroom facility that has just got one facility for going to the bathroom, that is fine. It can be for whoever needs to use it. But they are saying, as has been consistent with the history of the world for most of the world's existence, that if you, according to documentation, are a female, you use the female restroom when it is for multiple people's use at the same time; and if, by documentation, you are a male, you use the male facilities. It has really been shocking to see how many people, including singers and entertainers and different groups--I understand Target now wants to make sure that boys can use girls restrooms as they please. But it has been amazing that such people have been demanding that we have to let boys who want to go in little girls bathrooms go in there. If a man wants to go in a little girls bathroom, according to the big popular movement now, for heaven's sake, let's let the man go in the little girls bathroom. North Carolina has taken action consistent with the position of the world since the world began. If you are going to have a multiple-use restroom, normally, you have a female go to a female multiuse restroom, a male go to a male multiuse restroom. This article goes on. It says: ``Republican lawmakers, who make up the majority of North Carolina's General Assembly, publicly unveiled the language of the bill Wednesday morning.'' It goes on and talks about its passage: ``In less than 12 hours''--I am talking about after its passage--``the bill was approved by the house and senate''--or after it was brought forward, the bill was passed, signed by the Governor. Lawmakers in the House voted 83-25 to pass the bill. The Senate approved the bill, 32-0 after Democrats, who make up the minority, walked out of the Chamber in protest. Obviously, they want men to go to little girls restrooms, too. ``Republicans and allies supporting the bill argued that it was necessary to protect the safety of women and children from `radical' action by Charlotte.'' ``Critics of Charlotte's ordinance said it could have allowed men who may be sexual offenders to enter a woman's restroom or locker room by claiming a transgender identity.'' Well, critics of the Charlotte ordinance is what the article says, but actually, that is not just a claim; that is a fact. Under what North Carolina was objecting to, if someone who is a sexual offender has decided he wants to go in and meddle in a little girls restroom where he has no business, people like the entertainer that doesn't want to go to North Carolina, they are saying, by golly, you have got to let that man go in that little girls restroom. What has happened to the sense that used to be such a prominent part of this country? I mean, there was a very intelligent man on Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, who actually asked a lawyer on a panel with him on the show: So they passed this law. They don't want men going into the women's restroom, basically, was the crux of it, or boys going in where little girls go. He asked the question, actually: Who are they trying to protect? I couldn't believe that we have come to the point where an intelligent person would have to ask such a stupid question. Whether you agree or disagree with what North Carolina did, whom they were trying to protect, it is almost rhetorical. Clearly, whether you agree or disagree, they were trying to protect the little girls. It is shocking that anybody would have to ask such a question: Gee, whom are they trying to protect by saying men can't go into girls' restrooms? Incredible. The outrage aimed at North Carolina has just been incredible. I see an article today by Ryan Lovelace from the Washington Examiner: Trump slams North Carolina bathroom law, says state should ``leave it the way it is.'' The way, apparently, Charlotte was going to have it was that men could go in little girls' restrooms. Of course, sexual predators who are male, all they have to do is say they are transgender and they get to go in the little girls' restrooms and wreak the havoc that made them a sexual predator. Whom are they trying to protect in North Carolina? They are trying to protect innocent kids who cannot protect themselves. They count on adults to keep them from harm. It is incredible that people are outraged at North Carolina. Anyone who has children who are female, do you really want men to say: I am transgender and get to go in where your little girl is going to the bathroom, where you can't go because you are not transgender? You are the girl's father. This article says ``What Do Proponents of the Bill Argue?'' It says: ``Republicans and allies supporting the bill argued that it was necessary to protect the safety of women and children from `radical' action by Charlotte.'' ``John Rustin, president of the North Carolina Family Policy Council, testified before the Senate, saying that the Charlotte ordinance `means men could enter women restrooms and locker rooms--placing the privacy, safety, and dignity of women and the elderly at great risk.' '' Parenthetically, I noticed an article in recent days, last week, that indicated that one of the leading colleges in pushing for transgender restrooms has had a problem--and it has come up a couple of times-- where men would come in where women were showering, go into the restroom and use their cell phone, hold it up over the stall so they can film or take pictures of the female who was trying to have some privacy in a very personal act of showering or going to the bathroom. What is wrong with saying: Do you know what? When it comes to going to the restroom, females will go to female, males will go to male, and, look, if you want to have a single facility for one person at a time to use or families to use to change diapers or whatever, those are really handy? Those are very helpful. My wife and I have used them ourselves raising girls. It is a handy thing to have. But why condemn North Carolina when they are just trying to protect the privacy of girls? It has already been shown that, if you give guys a chance to say: I am transgender, and I can get to go in and film a girl in a shower, there will be people that do that. Why not let the transgender LGBTQRST--whatever the initials are--let them have their activities where they don't impose upon the privacy of someone who wants to go to the restroom or shower without someone from the opposite sex being there with them? Governor McCrory wrote this statement: ``The basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings, a restroom or locker room, for each gender was violated by government overreach and intrusion by the mayor and city council of Charlotte . . . As a result, I have signed legislation passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette which was to go into effect April 1.'' Mr. Speaker, I mentioned that I understand Target may now be changing their restrooms. I will have to double-check because, if they are going to be having women come to men's restrooms, I won't be going to Target to shop unless and until that changes. Usually, Target is great. They have the restroom right there where you go in the door to the store, normally. You don't have to go clear to the back of the store. It is a handy thing. If you have to go shopping, it is handy, but not anymore. Anybody that wants to go to the restroom and have privacy from the opposite sex may need to shop elsewhere. We will have to look at what they have actually done. Anyway, this article seems to make the point that it is not such a crazy thing that North Carolina has done, and that is why for 99.999 percent of human history, since civilization exists since we got past the caveman era, when there have been public restrooms, you recognize there is a difference between males and females. Some day it will be written in the ``Rise and Fall of the United States'' that the greatest, freest, and most powerful country in the history of the world showed symptoms of insanity when it reached the pinnacle of its greatness and success--and this will be one of the symptoms that was written about--that they thought they were so much smarter than civilization for most of our history of the world that a difference was recognized between men and women for purposes of facilities. It is a sad day for the country. Now, I see this article from yesterday that Curt Schilling, an ESPN analyst, was fired over what they deemed as an offensive social media post. Here is what Schilling said: The post showed an overweight man wearing a wig and women's clothing with parts of the T-shirt cut out to expose his chest. It says, ``Let him into the restroom with your daughter or else you are a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving racist bigot who needs to die.'' Apparently, this kind of thing offends ESPN. Although at one time their job was covering sports, now their job is being social managers, apparently, in making sure that, if men want to go to little girls' restrooms, then we let the men go to little girls' restrooms. This article from yesterday talking about Target stores says: ``Target says transgender customers may use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.'' How about that. Et tu, Target? So here we are at the place in our history where insanity in the name of political correctness rules the day, common sense is no longer common, and to the point that the current leader in the Republican campaign for President even says that North Carolina should not have taken action that, in essence, says men--which would include sexual predators--should not be allowed to go in women's restrooms. He wanted it left like it was. So if Charlotte wants to say that, if you are a man and you are a sexual predator and you say you are transgender and want to go into the restroom where little girls are, go ahead. That is the position of the leading Republican candidate? I don't know. Hopefully, that will be another one of the positions he will change. But, in the meantime, we need to get common sense back in charge in America while we are still the great country we have been. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I so much appreciate my colleague and friend talking about the Georgia election. We should be encouraging fair elections everywhere and, when they are not fair, calling those to account. Not that we are the policemen of the world, but it becomes so much more unfortunate when you have a nation like Egypt that gets pushed into elections before they are ready, the Muslim Brotherhood takes over the country, as in Egypt when Morsi became President. He began shredding the Constitution and taking more and more power as it happened in Venezuela with Chavez and other countries. He had taken a lesson: This is the way you do it. You get elected, and then you start seizing more and more power. To the credit of the Egyptian people, their story in recent years is the greatest peaceful uprising in the history of the world. It wasn't entirely peaceful because of the violence of the Muslim Brotherhood. They want a world caliphate, and they want to start with something resembling the old Ottoman Empire, that caliphate that came around North Africa and on around the Mediterranean, and they need Egypt in order to make the beginning of the caliphate work. And so they were quite happy when radical Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, took over Egypt through Morsi. But when the Egyptian people, a third of the population, basically--30 million or so of the 90 million there in the nation of Egypt--rose up together, yes, you had Muslims marching with Christians. The Coptic Christian Pope himself has told me more than once how moving it was to have Muslims and Christians and Jews and secularists walking together through the streets in Egypt demanding an end to radical Islamic control, demanding that the President, who was constantly violating the Constitution, be removed. The Coptic Pope told me that it was moving when Muslims, who just wanted peace in Egypt--they didn't want radical Islamic control--would come up to him and apologize for the way that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamists were acting. And, yes, among Muslims, they are able to recognize that there is a part of Islam--the radical Islamists--that they don't like, but it is a part of Islam. When the administration in this country tells the world that there is no such thing as radical Islam, then they are demeaning and degrading those courageous Muslims who stand up and say: We need to stop radical Islam within Muslims, within the Islamic movement. They actually do damage to the people who want to live in peace. So we are grateful to the people of Egypt for stopping the caliphate before it could be really set in concrete around North Africa and, of course, Syria, all the way around. They want to get back to the old Ottoman Empire and spread and cover the world under the caliphate. It is really most interesting. We have a President who went to elementary school in Muslim school and was trained in Islam in elementary school, and that is the main part of his training on Islam. Because, as we know, he sat under Jeremiah Wright's teaching in church for 20 years or so. So the basic teaching on Islam was in elementary school, whereas there is the ultimate world expert on what is or is not Islam that most of the world recognizes. They don't down the street here, down Pennsylvania Avenue. They don't at the State Department under Secretary Kerry. But most of the world recognizes that a man who got degrees, including his doctor of philosophy, his Ph.D., in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, is an expert on Islam. He says radical Islam is Islam. He didn't just get a little elementary school training on Islam. He studied Islam his whole life, has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, and has continued to pour himself into study of the Koran, and he happens to be the head of the Islamic State. It would seem that if somebody who spent his life studying--rather than just studying Islam in elementary school--says the Islamic State is truly Islam, perhaps the so-called experts in our State Department and our White House ought to listen to that and take notice as well that perhaps maybe it is not as they have been saying, that it is not Islam. It is Islam, but it is a part of Islam, the radical Islamists, and we should be standing against it. So, again, the Iran treaty clearly is a treaty. It needs to be called for what it is: a treaty. And we need to have people in the Senate with courage to step up and say we need a vote on the Iran treaty, because it is a treaty. The Corker bill doesn't apply because it is a treaty. Take the vote. Two-thirds will not vote for it. It will not be confirmed. Then we can call the Iran treaty at an end, because it never was properly agreed to. But in the meantime, since this administration put so much of what credibility it has on the table and at risk by backing the Iran deal, Iran--it may be the run-in leaders, their radical Islamic leaders, want to take over the world. They may be crazy in that regard, they may be power crazy in that regard, but they are very intelligent. You can be crazy and still be highly intelligent. That is how you can be crazy enough to fly a plane into a building and kill thousands of innocent people, but you are intelligent enough to have your engineers look at the plans and figure out what kind of load it would take to bring down a building like the World Trade Center. An article by Joel Pollak from last year--this is last year--and he says: ``In his State of the Union address'' last year, ``President Barack Obama claimed: `Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran; secures America and our allies, including Israel; while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict.' '' Mr. Pollak's article says: ``None of that is true. The chances of an agreement have dropped sharply, and even the most optimistic analysts do not expect a deal that `prevents a nuclear-armed Iran,' but only one that puts nuclear `breakout' out of reach for a while. Most important of all, we have not `halted the progress' of Iran's nuclear program. Earlier this month, the Tehran regime announced that it was building two new reactors, and is thought to be behind a suspected facility planned in Syria as well. ``In a lengthy essay in Commentary magazine, the invaluable Omri Ceren summarizes the history of President Obama's appeasement of the Iranian's, from the first failed `suckers deal,' as the French called it, through the new veto threats against congressional sanctions. ``The scale of the Obama administration's incompetence is simply daunting. Far from rallying international unity against Iran, President Obama has destroyed it by giving away global demands decades in the making. ``Suddenly, the reason for . . . invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Congress--without consultation from the White House--becomes clear . . . it is not the pro-Israel nature of Congress that drove the Bibi''--Netanyahu--``invitation. It is the fact that Obama''-- Well, it says he misrepresented things, but that is this article. But it goes on to point out that ``there at least five ways in which Iran has explicitly violated the interim agreement'' and spells those out. This is over a year old. They have never stopped violating the agreement--not the interim agreement--they were violating it, the executive agreement that this President entered with Iran. They so much sank their reputation into the Iran treaty that has not been ratified that these constant violations by Iran have the administration defending Iran, sending them money, covering for Iran, making excuses for Iran. This article was from less than a year ago by Cory Bennett from The Hill: ``A diplomatic deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program could inadvertently jumpstart the country's cyber warfare efforts. ``Experts say Tehran might use the economic sanctions relief from the nuclear pact to buttress its growing cyber program, which has already infiltrated critical networks in over a dozen countries, including the U.S.'' So the article goes on to point out: ``We are in a lose-lose situation.'' It is clear to most of us that the Iranian agreement was a huge mistake. They are the largest state supporters of terrorism in the world, and this administration is ongoing right now in giving billions and billions of dollars. And though the Iranian leaders have lied about so many things, when they say that the money that President Obama gives to them, which they don't currently have--the $100 billion to $150 billion in the first year, perhaps $100 billion or so each year after that; it remains to be seen--their Iranian leaders say: We are going to be able to fund more terrorist organizations. That is a statement we should take seriously. That is something that we should believe when they tell us these things. So the President is giving them the money. This article says this week that, of the $3 billion that was recently provided to Iran, this administration can't really tell if they have used it to support additional terrorism or not. But this article that was written in May of last year that the Iran deal could help fund Iran's cyber war, I bring that up now--it is from May 10 of last year from Mr. Bennett--because it was just in the last 4 or 5 months that John Hayward wrote the article: ``Iran Hacks State Department Social Media Accounts.'' We know they have hacked a New York dam Web site. They have explored defenses of the United States Government's Internet. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to look back and see that, wow, in May of last year, there were reporters that were warning that this deal with Iran may help them in their cyber warfare against us greater than we even know. Then we find out that this administration put a hold on charges against the Iranians that hacked into our government system until after the deal was made so that people didn't raise more of a fuss to try to stop the Iranian treaty. Well, it is still not too late. The Senate could go ahead and take a vote. We know that Harry Reid had said: Gee, there are some low-level confirmations that are so important to the country, we are going to set aside the cloture rule. It only takes 51 votes to do that. Mr. Speaker, I would submit that this Iranian treaty--I keep saying it because it is so critical to the world and to any chance at a semblance of world peace--has to be stopped because it is enriching the largest supporter of terrorism in the world. The Iranian leaders have made clear to the Iranian people that they have no intention of being bound by any agreement with President Obama, John Kerry, or the people here in the U.S. They are still going to do what they want to. So all the Senate has to do is take a vote--51 votes; there are plenty of Republicans to do that--and they might just get some Democrats that are too afraid to be seen as supportive of Iran and this nuclear deal that they may get some Democrat votes. Vote with 51 votes to set aside the cloture rule so you can bring treaty to the floor, have a vote on confirmation--it won't get the two-thirds--and then you would have all kinds of people that should have standing to go into Federal court and put a stop to the billions of dollars that this administration is releasing illegally to Iran. That is, funding--this administration says they know not what--it could be terrorism, they are not sure. I would submit they would--Iran would be supporting terrorism. But here are five things that the article pointed out that they were--even a year ago--breaking the interim agreement: ``Trying to buy equipment for plutonium reactor at Arak, breaking commitment to suspend work. The Obama administration actually complained about the purchases to the U.N. Security Council, even as it told the world that Iran had `lived up to its end of the bargain.' '' They are ``feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into a plant where it had agreed to suspend nuclear enrichment. The Institute for Science and International Security noted that Iran had begun enrichment at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz. It notified the Obama administration, which complained to the Iranians, which then claimed to have stop the enrichment activity.'' Three: ``Withholding camera footage of nuclear facilities, defying the International Atomic Energy Agency. A leading International Atomic Energy Agency official recently said the agency was `not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran' . . . The interim deal was to provide surveillance footage of Iranian nuclear facilities, but Iran has only provided would what it wants to reveal.'' And that is consistent with what Steve King and I and a couple of other Members were told by the IAEA inspectors who were in charge of inspecting Iran, that they can only go by what they are given. They are not given access to military facilities. They are not being given this footage. I am very proud to yield to my dear friend from Kentucky (Mr. Massie), a proud graduate of MIT on the floor.

Mr. GOHMERT. I thought perhaps he might be from Kentucky.

Mr. GOHMERT. That is wonderful. He looks quite comfortable here on the floor, looks like he would be a good fit some day. I thank my friend for making that point. The vote that we took last year pointed out that the Iranians had not complied; the administration had not complied, as I recall, with the requirements to provide proper information. But the gentleman from Kentucky is exactly right. The real issue was a vote in the Senate on it being a treaty. The Senate has not yet voted on the Iranian treaty as a treaty, and if they would do that, when it didn't get the two-thirds votes, then we could stop the outrage of sending billions of dollars to a country that has a massive amount of American, precious American blood on its hands because of the way in which they have funded terrorism. They were the largest provider of IEDs when Americans were fighting for Muslim freedom in Iraq, and yet Iran continued to build and furnish IEDs. It needs to be dealt with. People are suffering in the world. Mr. Speaker, I mentioned Egypt, and what a great day for world history when a third of the population rose up, 30 million people that had never risen up in the history of the world, in peaceful demonstration, despite the Muslim Brotherhood's violence to try to make it appear otherwise. They had never risen up like those people did in Egypt. They are to be commended. I would humbly submit that if this administration would help Egypt and be the friend to Egypt that it is being in helping Iran and providing money to Iran, then the world would be a far better place than it is with all the help that this administration is providing to Iran. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the ultimate result of the Clinton, Wendy Sherman deal with North Korea, in which, in essence, the Clinton administration says: Hey, we will give you nuclear--we will let you have nuclear power. We will give you what you need to have if you will just sign and say you won't ever use it to develop nukes. And then, big shocker for some in the Democratic administration--it wasn't to most of us that were watching from afar in different places in the United States--North Korea lied. They did use what we provided to create nuclear weapons, and now the world is a much less safe place. So I have no doubt that someday, maybe, some Iranian will kill me; but somebody will be here on the floor, if the Capitol still exists, and will point out that this deal that Obama and Kerry and Wendy Sherman did with Iran, in allowing them to move forward with nuclear activity, providing them with $100 billion or so to start off, hundreds of billions in the future, that they ended up lying when they said they agreed, initially, to the agreement--even though they have said publicly: We are not going to abide by it--that they ended up using results from the Obama administration's treaty to develop nuclear weapons, and that, just like the Clinton-Albright-Sherman deal with North Korea, the Obama-Kerry-Sherman deal with Iran has resulted in Iran having nukes sooner than they would have otherwise, despite the promises previously by the Obama administration to prevent Iran from having nukes. Actually, they helped them get the nukes. North Carolina's Passage of House Bill 2

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman would hang on for a moment, I voted for the bill, but I did not feel like it adequately dealt with the issue that my friend from Kentucky raised, but I completely respect that position. Since the gentleman from Kentucky and I have had a lot of discussions about Iran and the Iranian treaty and his feelings, I have always felt that his vote, ``present,'' made eminent sense, was consistent with our position. Really, the vote on what we took didn't really matter so much as the point that the gentleman has just made. This is a treaty. The Senate needs to vote on it. Our vote, though nice, was not particularly relevant to the fact that it is a treaty. I would like to ask, if the gentleman would yield for a question, because I saw that there was a handsome young man in a blue shirt that came in with him, and wondered if he might identify who has accompanied him onto the floor.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I am so grateful to my friends across the aisle for bringing up a subject that has bothered me for years. Having been a State district judge, I was bothered when people would be nominated for a Federal bench and they wouldn't get their hearing. Or perhaps like a gentleman named Bork, a gentleman named Clarence Thomas, they got a hearing, but as Justice Thomas properly stated back at the time, it wasn't so much a hearing as it was a high-tech lynching. I am sure all of us have our own personal stories that we are personally aware of. I just happen to be one of 435 who have personal knowledge of personal friends--people who were imminently qualified and were eventually confirmed. One of them was my law school colleague, and we served in the same firm together for a few years, Leonard E. Davis. He was nominated in 1992 and, yes, as my friends across the aisle point out, it was the last of 4 years of the George H.W. Bush term, but there was no reason not to give him a hearing. The guy had been editor of the Baylor Law Review, a brilliant guy, engineer by undergraduate training. And, Madam Speaker, it is really unfortunate, but not only did he not get a hearing in 1992, not only did the Senate Democrats drag their feet and refuse to give him a hearing in 1992, he had to wait 10 years for a hearing to become a Federal judge because the Senate Democrats refused to give him the hearing he deserved and the vote that he deserved. So he was nominated in 1992, and, in 2002--actually, May 9 of 2002--he was finally confirmed as a Federal judge. Now, another law school classmate, colleague, was with one of the best firms in Houston. He and I entered law school at the same time. In fact, there is another justice now that we were all part of the same entering class at Baylor Law School, and that was Andrew Hanen. Andrew Hanen was nominated to the Federal bench in 1992 by George H.W. Bush as President. I didn't hear any of my colleagues that are now here that were here in 1992 rushing here to the floor and saying: You know what? That Leonard Davis and that Andrew Hanen, they were at the top of their class. They are brilliant. They are obviously well qualified, got the highest bar ratings anybody could get. Everybody likes them. They ought to get their hearing and they ought to be confirmed. 1992, Andrew Hanen was nominated to the Federal bench, and he finally got his hearing as a Federal judge in 2002, 10 years later, and he was finally confirmed on May 9, 2002. So I am so pleased to hear my friends here in the House complaining about highly qualified, preeminent legal scholars not getting a hearing, because I wasn't even a judge in 1992. But I was running for judge in 1992, in Texas, and I knew how grossly unfair it was to have the Democrats in charge of the Senate sit on those nominations and sit and sit. Now, in the case of brilliant Baylor lawyer Priscilla Owen, she made the top grade on the State bar exam when it was taken. I recall, I was sitting across the table from, now, Justice Owen, and when I got my grade, I was thrilled. I made a great grade on the bar exam. And then people said: You were sitting right across the table from Priscilla. She made the high grade on the bar. Do you not even cheat at all? Well, the answer is no, I don't cheat. And I was thrilled with the grade I got. But Priscilla made the top grade in the entire State on the bar exam. She had been a member of the Texas Supreme Court, eminently qualified, obviously brilliant, and she was nominated to be a Federal judge by George W. Bush, the first time, May 9 of 2001. After her hearing, a wait. She was nominated May 9 of 2001, and she never got a hearing on that nomination. She was nominated again September 4 of 2001. She finally got a hearing July of 2002. She was eminently qualified, absolutely brilliant. According to the Texas bar exam, she was the smartest lawyer taking the bar exam in Texas that month of that year we took the bar. It was only given three times a year. I think it may just be given twice now. It was given three times a year. On our bar exam, she was the smartest lawyer in the room. I would have to tip my hat; as well as I did, she was a little smarter than I was--smart, able lawyer and justice. So, over a year after she was first nominated, July of 2002, she gets a hearing. Three years later, she was never given a vote. Now, I was thrilled to hear from my colleague across the aisle that 67 days is the average wait, from the nomination to confirmation, since the 1970s. So how is it, when a brilliant man or women is nominated by George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush, they run into this kind of wall from the Democrats? Even when the Republicans had the majority in the Senate, they didn't have 60, and the Democrats were able to hold up and prevent a vote on someone as eminently qualified as Priscilla Owen. So, nominated 2001, her 67 days were up, and she didn't have a hearing, and didn't have a hearing for over a year, and then years go by. January of 2005 comes and goes, and she had gone an entire almost 4 years without the Senate Democrats giving her a chance to have a vote-- nearly 4 years, and they wouldn't give her a vote. So, February 14, right after George W. Bush took the oath of office again for a second term, 4 years, nearly 4 years after her first nomination, she was nominated again, and she had already had a hearing. She finally got a vote in 2005. It took 4 years and getting elected to a second term before they would even give Priscilla Owen the decency, just give her a vote, for heaven's sake. Leonard Davis, it took not only the year of 1992, it took a son of that President that nominated Leonard Davis to renominate Leonard Davis before he finally ever got a hearing and a confirmation vote. What a lot of people don't understand, if you are in a major law firm and you are nominated to the Federal bench, it wreaks absolute havoc on the life of the nominee because not only do they fill out massive pages of application forms, but they also undergo an FBI, thorough scrutiny that the Senate gets. Then something that is not reported, but I know from having talked to these attorneys who were nominated for the Federal bench and then were put on hold for years and years: When you are nominated for a Federal bench and you are in a major firm, you have got tons of clients. They are coming to you with their business. You are bringing in lots of money for the firm, and you are bringing home a great deal of money because you are very successful because, with your experience, people trust your experience. But the minute you get nominated to the Federal bench, you life goes into chaos because the people at your firm are not going to send you over any cases that they need help on. Clients are no longer going to come to you because they know you have been nominated for the Federal bench, and so you are not getting the work anymore. Your production falls off dramatically. Who suffers then? You do; your family does. So when someone like Andy Hanen, Andrew Hanen, was nominated to the bench and it took so long to get a hearing, it cost him a lot of money. It cost his firm a lot of money. When Priscilla Owen, sitting on the Texas Supreme Court, is nominated to the Federal bench and the Senate Democrats prevent her from getting a vote that she deserves for over 4 years--whether they are Democrats or Republicans on the Texas Supreme Court, they are smart people, generally. Every now and then a ringer gets on there, but most of them are very smart. They know if you have been nominated to the Federal bench that you could go to the Federal bench any day. You could go to the Federal bench in 67 days, according to my Democratic colleagues, after you are nominated. So why would they have you write any major opinions when you could be at appellate level, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, before you will have time to really dig into the appellate case? So you go month after month, year after year, without being allowed to preside and write a majority opinion on a specific case. They may get you one here or there that they think won't be a major effort to write. But it affects your life; it affects your State; it affects those you care about. So nobody is more thrilled than I am to have heard, for nearly an hour, my colleagues across the aisle say, if somebody is nominated, they need to get a hearing, and they need to get a vote. Now, that brings us up to current time, with President Obama having been in office over 7 years now. And it has been rather interesting, but this administration has set a record. My staff cannot find any administration that tops this. There have been 11 decisions in a 4-year period by the United States Supreme Court where all nine Judges unanimously said the Obama administration has vastly overreached what they were doing, and they struck down the action unanimously. This Court, four very liberal judges, and they, 11 times in about 4 years, struck down, unanimously, effort after effort by this administration. In fact, it is apparently a record that, in 4 years, this administration was struck down 23 times. They weren't all unanimous. They were before Justice Scalia's death. But to have your work as President, along with those under you that you were ordering to do as you tell them and to follow your policies and your guidelines, to be struck down 23 times in 4 years--and that is like 2010 or 2011 through 2014, is my understanding. So cases since then I am sure will add to the record of the Obama administration. Perhaps now that Justice Scalia has passed, it may enable the Obama administration to get through these last months without racking up too many more overrulings by the Supreme Court. But it tells you the mindset of this administration: We are going to violate the Constitution. Even the tremendously liberal judges on the Supreme Court, those four, come back and say: Eleven times, really, you have gone so far beyond what the Constitution allows. Even for us liberals you have gone way too far. We have got to reel you in. You just can't keep pushing that far. So would it be a surprise when an administration makes a nomination in the last months, especially since the head of that administration as a Senator basically supported the idea that you can't even make a nomination in the last year of your Presidency? His Vice President, when he was Senator Joe Biden--they were all for stopping any nomination the last year of a President. So maybe when they were Senators they weren't always wrong. Perhaps when they were saying that it was a terrible idea for a President to make a nomination in the last year shouldn't even be given any consideration. Maybe like a broken clock is right twice a day--maybe that is one of those times--well, they were right on that one. I would not submit that that should always be the rule. I would not argue that, as President Obama and Vice President Biden were pushing, they shouldn't give a hearing to George W. Bush's nominations in the last year. I wouldn't push that far. But I would submit that, when an administration is setting records for being the most unconstitutional administration in history, then perhaps in their case it merits slowing down a little bit before you allow them to contribute anymore to unconstitutional actions. Because those who studied modern history, going back to World War II and pre-World War II, we know that President Franklin Roosevelt didn't like the way the Supreme Court was ruling; so, he was threatening to get the number added from 9 to 15. He would appoint 6 and then he could get them to do what he wanted. It had the desired effect upon the Supreme Court. They started ruling the things he wanted were not unconstitutional. This is also the Democratic administration that ordered the interment of people just because of what they looked like and where they were from. No Republican has ever done that, but Franklin Roosevelt did. With this administration 23 times having their actions struck down, 11 times unanimous, that record, perhaps it is an indication that we should hold up. Our friend Andrew McCarthy, today with pjmedia.com, has an article. I want to read from part of that article. His title is: As Primary Campaigns Roll on, Obama Shreds Constitutional Governance. He says: ``Two cases in point: President Obama's pressure on the states to drop sanctions against Iran, and his continuing scheme to dictate immigration law unilaterally.'' Mr. McCarthy, who was the prosecutor that did a fabulous job in prosecuting the bombers of the first World Trade Center bombing from back in 1993, says this in his article: ``The invaluable Omri Ceren (citing a Bloomberg View report) alerts us that the State Department has sent monitory letters to the governors of all fifty states `suggesting' that they review any sanctions imposed against Iran. Over half the states have such sanctions, targeting not only Iran's nuclear work but the regime's other weapons work, (e.g., ballistic missiles), terror promotion, human rights abuses, detention of Americans, etc. ``Explains Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies: `[These sanctions] are an essential part of the non- nuclear sanctions architecture designed to both deter Iranian illicit behavior and to safeguard pension funds from the risk associated with entering Iran's economy.' ``Alas, any counter-Iranian measure with real teeth is certain to fly in the face of President Obama's Iran deal--the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.'' Mr. McCarthy points out the text of the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. That is the Iran treaty. It really was a treaty because you cannot amend a treaty the way this one amended prior treaties unless it is a treaty. The difference is the Senate leadership couldn't work up the courage to bring it to the floor as the treaty it was so that a two-thirds vote would not be able to be reached, it would not be confirmed, and it could have been stopped dead in its tracks if it had been brought to the floor. This is such a powerful, important issue, unlike some that Majority Leader Reid set aside the cloture rule to bring to the floor without a cloture vote. This is something that will affect and could bring about the end of millions of lives, and that is the largest supporter of terrorism in the world getting their hands on $100 to $150 billion. That is just the first year. They could get $100 billion a year after that, but also getting the green light to go ahead and move forward with the nuclear work that they are doing. And the administration may allow them or help them to move along, as the Clinton administration did for the North Koreans. You may recall, Mr. Speaker, the North Koreans struck a deal with Wendy Sherman, who helped out on the Iranian deal, and President Clinton--I know this is a shorthand rendition--basically, in effect, said: Hey, North Korea, if you will just sign saying you won't use what we give you to develop nuclear weapons, we will build you a nuclear power plant. We will give you everything you need for nuclear weapons if you will just sign saying you won't develop nuclear weapons. Of course, thinking people knew what would happen, and it did happen just as thinking people knew it would. You couldn't trust the leader of North Korea. They took the materials that were provided for power plants. They developed nuclear weapons. And now this administration has to be constantly concerned about what North Korea is doing because they have nuclear weapons. They wanted to help Iran all because of the deal that Wendy Sherman helped do back during the Clinton administration and now she helped make happen with Iran. So they were able to keep working as they thought. Then we found out more recently, in just recent weeks, that, actually, the Department of Justice and this President's administration--surely had to include the White House--knew that Iranians had hacked into our system here. They were charged with hacking into the system, but, according to recent reports, the Justice Department was talked into holding up on the charges until after the Iranian deal could be made--it wasn't confirmed. It is not a legitimate treaty--but at least squeak through without the two-thirds of the Senate being opposed, which is not the treatment treaties are supposed to get, according to the Constitution. But that doesn't keep some folks from acting unconstitutionally. So, anyway, it turns out the Obama administration encouraged the Justice Department to sit on those charges. They knew Iran had people hacking into our system. It had to be government sanctioned. You don't do that in Iran without government permission. This administration knew about ballistic missile testing that violated all kinds of things; yet, this administration we knew. And some of us said right here on this floor that there will be violations and this administration will have to turn their head and act like they don't really see the violations because they twisted so many arms and did so many deals to try to get the Iran treaty treated as if it is a treaty without the confirmation that they could not afford for people to know how blatantly Iran leaders were violating their agreements. This article from Mr. McCarthy goes on: ``. . . the text of the JCPOA expressly indulges Iran's position that it will `cease performing [its] commitments' under the deal if it deems the sanctions to have been `reinstated in whole of part.' That threat should only relate to sanctions on Iran's nuclear program, but--as the Obama administration well knew--many of the sanctions against significant Iranian entities (e.g., the National Iranian Oil Company and Bank Melli) are based on activities in addition to support for the nuclear program. ``Moreover, Iran has publicly announced that it interprets the JCPOA''--the Iran treaty we will call it--``as a sweeping eradication of sanctions related both to various non-nuclear activities (e.g., other weapons and ballistic missiles) and to sectors of its economy sanctioned due to activities beyond support for the nuclear program. ``Against that backdrop, the JCPOA also purports to oblige the Federal Government to use `all available authorities' [to eliminate any] law at the State or local level [that] is preventing the implementation of sanctions lifting as specified in this JCPOA.' '' That is amazing. The administration makes a deal that they are willing to sign a deal with Iran that violates our own Constitution. They have no right to dictate laws to State and local authorities, but they apparently signed a deal with Iran that they would dictate State and local law. ``This is a foreign relations matter. So why does the Iran deal commit Washington merely to `encourage' and otherwise try to persuade state and local officials to honor the deal's terms? Because, for all its bluster about domestic and international law, the administration knows this deal has no legal standing. ``Plainly, the President is trying to muscle his way through the inconvenience that the JCPOA is merely an executive agreement. It is not a legally enforceable treaty, nor is it supported by any legislation that would bind the states. ``Obama is willing it to work through sheer extra-legal executive power.'' The article goes on. It is a good article. But, then again, when we look at the record-setting slaps at this Administration's overreach in violation of the Constitution, 11 unanimous decisions in 4 years or so and 23 reversals by the Supreme Court in such a short period of time--4 or 5 years--these are records--have that many reversals in such a short time that it bears great scrutiny when an administration setting records for violating the Constitution says: Right before we go out, we want to get this person onto the Supreme Court because we have some other stuff that is still going to be ruled on by the Supreme Court after we are gone and we want some of that stuff that may be unconstitutional, like the 23 times the Supreme Court said they were, struck down things--they want those upheld in the future. It seems like these are good reasons for the Senate to be very careful, much more so than they were about the Iran treaty. There is an article from Paul Bedard: ``Obama's Open-Door Immigration Policy Blamed for Surge in Rural Gang Crime.'' ``A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed''--and this is Maryland. This isn't Texas. It is not Arizona. ``A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed President Obama's open- door immigration policy for a surge in gangland crime that included a retaliation murder and assault on an officer doing paperwork in his cruiser. `` `Case-by-case amnesty, backdoor amnesty, DACA programs, and the DREAM Act were pushed through by executive order,' said Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins. `` `Policy shifts by President Obama weakened and ruined secure communities, and did not allow action by ICE when sheriffs and police departments ignored detainers, allowing criminals to be released back on the streets. In effect, criminal aliens that should have been deported have been allowed to remain and commit more serious crimes, becoming violent offenders,' he told the House Judiciary Committee probing the criminal impact of illegals in the United States. ``He was joined by family members of victims of illegal immigrant crime, a surging issue around the Nation as Obama's policies allow more unauthorized aliens to leave jail and remain in the country. ``Frederick is north of Washington, D.C., but has become a haven for criminal `transnational' gangs, especially in high schools. Members of MS-13 and 18th Street gangs have become influential in the schools and county. `Transnational alien gangs are structured criminal enterprises involved in drug and human trafficking, crimes of violence over turf, retaliation, money laundering, and other serious crime. As these gangs are recruiting locally and increasing in number, so does the associated crime within communities,' said Jenkins. ``He gave details on the crimes by immigrant gangs in his county: ``There are over 75 active known validated transnational criminal gang members in Frederick County, many more suspected of gang affiliation. We also believe that MS-13 and 18th Street alien gangs are recruiting, locally, in our schools, in the region, and out of the country. ``Of the 52 validated criminal alien gang members identified since 2008, 25 of the 52, 48 percent, were identified since late 2014. ``Eighteen of the 25, 72 percent, gang members encountered since 2014 have been charged with felonies. ``Seven of 11, 64 percent, of the criminal alien gang members encountered in 2015 were unaccompanied juveniles when they entered the U.S. and eventually located to Frederick County, Maryland. Now they are adults committing serious felonies. ``Crimes committed include five occurrences of attempted first and second degree murder, armed robbery, first degree assault, home invasion, armed carjacking, kidnapping, use of a firearm in the commission of a violent felony, carrying concealed deadly weapons. ``In 2014, eight criminal aliens charged with rape and sexual assault of children ages 5 to 14, with two of the girls impregnated. ``One of my deputies was the victim of an unprovoked physical attack/ assault with an MS-13 gang member while sitting in his cruiser doing paperwork. ``The U.S. District Court recently indicted a known alien gang member for involvement in a 2013 MS-13 hired killing in Frederick. The victim in the killing fled El Salvador to live in Frederick because of an MS- 13 hit for him there, but the hit order carried to a local MS-13 clique. The victim was lured to a wooded area where he was shot in the head and stabbed to death. ``The growing alien gang problem has spread into one high school where fights and violence between MS-13 And 18th Street are routine.'' That goes back to this important point about this administration's urging and luring people into the United States illegally by talking about the amnesty, talking about legal status. And as has been made clear by Border Patrol, when anyone in Washington, whatever party, either House or Senate, talk about legal status or amnesty, it creates a surge across our southern border. Having been there in the last few weeks, spending nights and days down there on the border, on the river, aside the river--and I do mean all hours of the day and night--you see these things firsthand. You see little bitty children. The Border Patrol are told they came unaccompanied. There is no way these little children came unaccompanied across a river flowing that fast and that deep. Some of them alleged to have come from Central America. Over a thousand miles they journeyed unaccompanied? That is garbage. It is like border patrolmen have told me--one in particular, he said: I am Hispanic. I speak better Spanish than most of them. Ninety percent of the time when they tell me they came to escape gang violence, I will hit them up: You may convince some gringo of that, but you and I both know you paid a gang to bring you in to the United States. And he said--90 percent of the time the response is--Well, that is true, but we were told to say we were fleeing gang violence. As other border patrolmen have told me down there, there is not one inch of our southern border that isn't considered the jurisdiction of some drug cartel, some drug lord. And if you cross within that sector without getting permission or properly paying, making sure the drug lord or the drug cartel is satisfied with your payment, then you will be sought and found and either killed or be forced to provide services until your debt is paid. That is why it is staggering when people down on the border, having come across illegally, are asked about how much they paid. It is not part of the required questions, but some of our Border Patrol are really wanting to know what is the going rate here for this sector: For people like you from the country you came from, what are they charging you? And you get different answers: $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, maybe $10,000 for a group. The response comes back: How in the world could you have come up with that much money? The resulting answer is: Well, they said I could work it off when I get to the U.S. city where I am going. You know they have agreed to work for a drug cartel, for a gang, for MS-13, for 18th Street. And it is not just along the Texas border, as we have seen from Frederick, Maryland, it is all over the country. People have agreed to provide the services. As I have pointed out here before, Border Patrol says: The drug cartels, the gangs in Mexico, call us their logistics because they know under this administration, if they just get somebody across the border, across the Rio Grande, get them across illegally, then we become their logistics and we ship them wherever they want to go. They tell us: We have got an address, or I have got a family member here, a family member there, or somebody that I have agreed to take care of me. They don't say it, but it sounds like it could also mean: The drug cartel gave me this address and they told me this is where I am supposed to go. They don't say: This is where the drug cartel told me to go. What does anyone expect when they have said: The drug cartel is going to let me work it off? Is it any wonder that so many of the crimes in America are being committed by people who have come into the country illegally? We know that most people coming in illegally are not violent criminals. I got that. We have that. We understand that, but when people come into the country illegally--and, by the way, for those that have not noticed, they are not in the shadows. I know there were a few in the shadows under the trees because it got hot out there in front of the Supreme Court, but most were out in front of the Supreme Court. They are not in the shadows. People keep saying we have got to bring them out of the shadows. Well, start looking. They are not in the shadows. In fact, we had a group come to some offices here in the Capitol. They are not in the shadows. They are coming right in the office and demanding that we legalize those of them who have come in illegally. The problem is--and this is the biggest problem--when the brightest hope in the world as a Nation, which once was the freest Nation in the world, once was the freest Nation in the history of the world, now international polls say we are not, but we have been the freest Nation, but when the freest Nation stops trying to apply the law equally across the board, then we become like the countries these poor, unfortunate individuals fled because their country did not apply the rule of law equally. It depended on who you were, how much you could pay, or what you could do for them. We become like the countries they had to flee, and there is nowhere left for people holding out hope for one place in the world where they can come and be free. It is gone. I have had people even in Congress say: Louie, if it gets too bad, we will just pack up and go to Australia. When I told that to some Australians in January, none of them smiled. They said: If something happens to United States' freedom, China will take us over instantly; you won't have us to come to. If something happens to the United States and we continue to damage ourselves the way Europe has damaged itself, there isn't going to be any place else left to go. That is what the west Africans told me 3 or 4 years ago. They said: You have got to tell people in Washington--you know, as thrilled as we were when you elected your first Black President, we have seen you getting weaker and weaker, you're not standing up like you used to. We are Christians. We are going to heaven when we die, but our only hope of a life of peace in this world is if America is strong. When we weaken the rule of law, when we have a President make millions and millions of exceptions to the law, we are on our way to becoming like the countries people that came here illegally had to leave. For those who say we need to follow the Bible, I certainly believe that. And for individuals, there is no better place to start than within the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But when you are acting as part of the government and you refuse to do what the Bible says, and that is show no partiality to those because they are rich, show no partiality because someone is poor or unfortunate, you apply justice across the board. That is the ultimate good government. You provide justice. You see that the rule of law is equally enforced across the board. Again, as this administration is trying to stack the Supreme Court while on its way out, after setting a record for being found to be the most unconstitutional in the shortest time, this article from today is entitled: ``Obama Administration Unsure if Iran Spent $3 Billion in New Cash on Terrorism.'' It is an article about the Obama administration, with the complicity of Secretary of State Kerry, making sure Iran gets $100 billion to $150 billion. The article reads: ``Obama administration officials disclosed Tuesday that Iran has been granted access to about $3 billion in unfrozen assets in the months since the nuclear agreement was implemented, but it remains unclear to the administration if the Islamic Republic has spent any of this money to fund its global terrorism enterprise.'' We know, Mr. Speaker, in having listened to the Iranian leaders-- while this administration was saying: Oh, yes, we have got to abide by this Iranian deal--the Iranian leaders were assuring their people: We are not abiding by anything that the United States tells us to do. We are still doing everything we intend to do. We are not going to be restrained by any agreement with the United States. They announced in Iran: We are going to be able to provide more financial support once we get the $100 billion to $150 billion more support for terrorist groups--Hamas and Hezbollah. They told us. Now the administration, this week, is saying: Gee, we can't be sure they didn't use some or all of this money--who knows?--on terrorism. They quote State Department spokesman John Kirby as saying: ``We don't know. We don't have a way.'' When an administration, like the leaders of Iran, lie and lie and are responsible for providing more terrorism and more death and destruction in the world than any other country--the largest supporter of terrorism in the world--and when they tell you they are going to take money you give them and spend it on terrorism, that may be the one thing you can count on their being honest about. In going back to November 2015, to the story by John Hayward, it talks about the State Department's social media accounts that were hacked by Iran: `` `The surge has led American officials to a stark conclusion: For Iran, cyberespionage--with the power it gives the Iranians to jab at the United States and its neighbors without provoking a military response--is becoming a tool to seek the kind of influence that some hard-liners in Iran may have hoped its nuclear program would eventually provide,' The New York Times reports.'' We have this report from December of 2015--4 short months ago: ``Iranian hackers infiltrated a small New York dam in 2013 in a previously undisclosed incident, according to The Wall Street Journal.'' This is an article by Katie Bo Williams from The Hill, and this was December 21: ``Investigators said that the hackers didn't take control of the system but were probing its defenses.'' The White House knew about it. They knew about the intrusion into New York's system. So people are wondering: How could people support Donald Trump? New York got hacked by Iran, and this administration has done nothing about it but try to defend Iran from having the money cut that they have said they will use for terrorism. So is it any wonder New Yorkers are thinking: Well, here is a guy who says he is going to completely stop this kind of activity with radical Islamic groups? Sure. Of course, people will vote for a person who will say that. Here is an article from January 25, 2015: ``Five Ways Iran is Cheating on the Interim Nuclear `Deal.' '' That was the interim deal. It goes on and sets out how they have been cheating. Here is an article from December 16, 2015: ``Iran's October Missile Test Violated U.N. Ban.'' That was the conclusion of an expert panel, according to this reuters.com story by Louis Charbonneau. It reads: ``Iran violated a U.N. Security Council resolution in October by test- firing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.'' Yet this administration did not see that as any reason to slow down rushing the $100 billion to $150 billion that they had coming to Iran. This article from Katie Pavlich reads: ``White House: Likely Iran Violated U.N. Sanctions with Missile Test, but They'll Uphold Nuclear Agreement.'' She quotes from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: ``Despite the likely violation, Earnest stressed that the White House believes the Iranian regime will uphold its obligations to the recently made nuclear agreement.'' Amazing, because it turned out they already knew that Iran had been hacking our government Web sites and our government Internet. They had charges held up so that it wouldn't stop what we now know is an executive agreement acting like a treaty. They are still doing it. Some of us said they would have to. They have bent over so far backwards to get an agreement with the largest state supporter of terrorism in the world that, once Iran continued to violate even to the point of taking our sailors prisoner, violating the Geneva Convention rules on prisoners--humiliating the prisoners--not only did this administration not send more Navy forces to take back the Navy sailors who were imprisoned, but it gushed about how wonderful Iran was to take charge of our sailors as the videos emerged--mocking America as they treated our Navy sailors as just trash. Then we get this story by Bradley Klapper: ``U.S. Considers Easing Ban on Dollars to Help Iran.'' This administration wants to turn around and give Iran--the largest state supporter of terrorism--access to our dollars. Apparently, that would mean access to Internet sites, to bank sites when they know they have been hacking us. They are trying to figure out ways to bring down the United States, and now this administration wants to help them to show how good of friends we can be? That is like trying to convince a bully on the playground that you will keep giving him money because you are his dear friend. He will keep taking your money, but he will never see you as a friend. Not only does he not see you as a friend, but the more you give him, the more contempt he has for you as a coward. This article today from Caroline May reads: ``Mother of Daughter Killed by Illegal: His Bail was `Less Than it Cost to Bury My Baby.' '' ``The mother of a recent college graduate, who was killed by an illegal immigrant who later absconded after posting bail and remains at large, offered emotional testimony Tuesday before a House panel. ``Michelle Root, the mother of 21-year-old Sarah Root, spoke about the devastation of losing her daughter at the hands of Eswin Mejia, an illegal immigrant who killed Root while street racing drunk.'' This is different from the story we talked about yesterday. ``Mejia was able to flee when Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to detain him, and he was able to post bail. `` `Eswin spent 4 days in jail and is believed to have fled the country,' Michelle Root said. `He posted $5,000 bond, which was less than the cost it was to bury my daughter Sarah. Because of the lack of controls, the police, immigration, U.S. Marshals, and law enforcement have little or no information on his whereabouts.' `` `Eswin was not a stranger to law enforcement and failed to honor his legal obligations for minor traffic infractions prior to killing my daughter. Now a failed local judicial system that set his bail too low, coupled with flawed Obama administration policies, have rewarded the illegal and punished my family and hampered law enforcement in their investigations.' '' There are plenty of good reasons to wait for a different nominee for the Supreme Court. We won't even make them wait 10 years like the Democrats in the Senate made my friends. We won't make them wait 4 or 5 years as Senate Democrats did my friends before they would give them a confirmation. In setting records for unconstitutionality in such a short time, it bears our being diligent when the administration is not. People's lives are at stake. They have already been lost. More are at stake. We have got to stand up. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friends, as led by our friend, Congressman Ted Yoho from Florida, and our friend from Georgia, Brother Hice. We heard great comments from Dr. Gosar and our friend, Steve King, from Iowa. These are deeply troubling times, and the Supreme Court taking up United States v. Texas really accentuates that issue. Sometimes it is nice to just pause and pay tribute to folks, for example, a beautiful couple here. It is a pastor. His name is Pastor Jesse Estrada Sabillon and his wife, Maria Sabillon. They are with their granddaughter in this picture. They are a beautiful couple. You can feel the love emanating from the picture. Pastor Jesse Estrada Sabillon was a Baptist minister at Nuevo Amanecer Baptist Church of Houston in the Cloverleaf area. He was an excellent carpenter. He owned a home remodeling business, J J & Sons Remodeling. His wife, Maria,--you can tell she loves her granddaughter--was a retired home caregiver for children with special needs. They were a beautiful couple. Mr. Sabillon never accepted a salary from the church and instead relied upon his job as a carpenter to feed his family. So it appears that Pastor Sabillon was working and acting in the vein of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Particularly Paul didn't want to be a burden to others. So he made tents, sewed, and did whatever he needed to so that he wasn't a burden to others. Instead of being a burden to others, Pastor Sabillon and his wife, Maria, were a blessing to Texas. They were a blessing to the Houston area and to so many whom they helped, the special needs kids that Maria helped with. It appears that Jesse, Pastor Sabillon, was doing what Jesus said to do, to be a light to others, to be salt to the world, to administer to others' needs, or as Jesus told Peter, ``If you love me, you will tend my flock.'' Well, Pastor Sabillon did that and, apparently, did that very well. This story, April 15: ``Alexis De Larosa Sosa, 21, is a Mexican national who entered the United States illegally, HCSO''--apparently Harris County Sheriff's Office--``public information officer Ryan Sullivan confirmed in a phone interview with Breitbart Texas. ``His intake''--by this he means, Alexis De Larosa Sosa--``form says: U.S. citizen, no; alien status, illegal . . . De Larosa Sosa was wanted in connection with a street racing crash where Pastor Jesse Estrada Sabillon, and his wife, Maria Sabillon, were killed. The couple was driving home Tuesday night after visiting their niece who had just given birth to a baby when they were struck by the truck. ``The suspect is reported to have fled the scene following the crash and did not turn himself in until Friday morning about 10 a.m. local time. ``He was allegedly driving a 2006 Chevy pickup truck and was said to be racing with a dark-colored Dodge Challenger or Charger, the Houston Chronicle reported on Wednesday. The two vehicles were said to be racing along the Sam Houston Tollway feeder road when De Larosa Sosa is reported to have run a red light, striking the 2004 BMW 330 driven by Sabillon. The couple were both pronounced dead at the scene of the crash. De Larosa Sosa is said to have fled the scene on foot. The driver of the Dodge fled the scene in his vehicle. ``Officials with the Harris County Sheriff's Office quickly notified the family of the pastor who expressed relief at the news,'' talking about the apprehension of the suspect. ``De Larosa Sosa is currently processing into the Harris County jail and has not yet made a court appearance. He is expected to be charged in connection with the two homicides and fleeing the scene of the fatal accident.'' We know there are some wonderful people who have come into this country illegally. There have been. But there is no question that criminals have taken advantage of the situation to cross our border, since it has been porous, and to inflict crime on people of the United States. There should be little doubt about that. And then we have this story from the Washington Free Beacon: ``Number of Children Illegally Crossing Border Up 1,200 Percent Between 2011 and 2014.'' Ironically, it just happens to be, as people were finding out south of our border and in other parts of the world, that if you make it into the United States illegally, then you are probably going to stay. Odds are 97 percent you will stay. As border patrolmen have told me, drug cartels across our southern border call our Border Patrol, our Homeland Security, the logistics, and they laughingly say if they get people illegally into the country, then Homeland Security is the logistics that ships them wherever they want them to go in the country. As I have seen a number of times in the middle of the night as people are being processed, and like, for example, the one older lady who was asked how much she paid, some would say $6,000, some would say $7,000, $5,000, or $8,000. On a number of occasions, a border patrolman has challenged them: Where did you get that kind of money? You don't have that kind of money. It normally took repeated questioning to elicit an answer: Well, I paid $1,800 from family in this place, some people sent $2,000 from the United States, and I am going to pay the rest by working it off in the United States. They tell them where they want to go. Amazingly, Homeland Security has shipped people that have come into the country illegally all over the country. We have reports about Mexican drug distribution in all of our major cities. When you know that Homeland Security is shipping people that still owe the drug cartels money into different cities, it is not hard to figure out how they are getting some of their less than happy workers helping them with their drug distribution. This article from Adam Kredo says in this Washington Free Beacon: ``The number of children apprehended on the U.S. border attempting to immigrate illegally has surged more than 1,200 percent since 2011, and the number of these children crossing the border during 2016 could be another record, according to a newly released government report. ``The number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) illegally crossing the U.S. border `has increased sharply' since 2011, with a surge of more than 1,200 percent just between 2011 and 2014, according to the Congressional Research Service. The agency also disclosed that the flow is increasing significantly in the first 5 months of fiscal 2016. ``The illegal immigration of these children hit record-breaking numbers in 2014, with U.S. officials apprehending more than 52,000 alien children. Nearly 20,000 have been apprehended within the first 5 months of 2016, setting the stage for another potentially record- breaking year. `` `This unexpected surge of children strained U.S. Government resources and created a complex crisis of humanitarian implications,' the report said. `They increased in the first 5 months of FY 2016, however, and experts warn that significant migration flows will continue until policymakers in the countries of origin and the international community address the poor socioeconomic and security conditions driving Central Americans to leave their homes.' '' That is interesting, but I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that actually they will continue to surge as long as they are led to believe by the administration, and the evidence continues to indicate, that they will be allowed to stay in America, we will send them where they may claim to have relatives or where the drug cartels tell them to request to be sent. Just in the last few weeks, spending some days and nights on our border, our southern border, it is heartbreaking what you see because there are people that clearly want a better way of life. They are leaving the country of origin because their countries do not enforce the rule of law. There is graft, there is corruption, and the rule of law, the law is not evenly and fairly supported and enforced across the board. Therefore, the jobs aren't there. There are more opportunities here in the United States. Although we have breakdowns, we do try to enforce the law more evenly than, I would submit, anywhere in the world, at least until more recently when this administration makes exceptions of millions of people who are assured that they can violate the law with impunity and will be awarded for it. People come from countries where there is no equality under the law and they come to this country, as soon as they get here, for those of us that were out in front of the Supreme Court today, being shouted down by people who are angry, many of them shouting in Spanish--fine-- but we were told that people in their positions were all in the shadows. Now, I did see some people lounging around under a few trees, but most of them were not in the shadows. They were, in fact, on the steps of the Supreme Court right there in front yelling and screaming and showing disrespect for the U.S. national anthem and yelling, trying to prevent freedom of speech. It is just really interesting, seeing posters like ``Jesus was an immigrant.'' Well, sort of, but he never violated the law. He never encouraged anyone else to violate the law. In fact, he urged people to go forth and do wrong no more, but that is not the case. The great and really tragic irony of what is taking place is people coming to America illegally demanding that the laws not be properly enforced, not be fairly enforced. Sure, there have been millions and millions and millions and millions of Americans who have come through our system legally, but we are the millions that did not come legally and we demand to have the same treatment as if we did come legally. If we do that, it will not be long before we will be in the same shape as the countries these people fled from because there is not adequate opportunities. Since there is not adequate room for the billion or so that we have been told may want to come to America around the world, it would be far better to encourage their nations to end graft and corruption, to treat people fairly across the board. Here is an article from the Center for Immigration Studies. It says: ``The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years, who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes, are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 aliens charged with 135 new homicides. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times.'' These are people that not only came into the country illegally, but have committed crimes multiple times, many of them, while they are here. At least they have certainly been charged with them. ``A total of 121 criminal aliens who were freed by ICE over the 5- year period between 2010 and 2014 were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes within that time frame. Three more were charged in 2015. These 121 accused murderers were associated with 250 different communities in the United States, with the most clustered in California, New York, and Texas. ``These aliens were charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes after release. Two of them had homicide-related convictions even before they were released. These aliens had 464 criminal convictions prior to release by ICE. ``Another three aliens who were released by ICE during that time were charged with homicides during the first 10 months of FY 2015 . . . this tally does not include aliens who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions, nor those aliens that were released by local law enforcement agencies after ICE declined to take them into custody due to Obama administration prioritization policies. This list includes only those aliens that ICE arrested and then released.'' ``The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015, Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes. ``ICE has previously disclosed that 75 percent of the homicidal criminal aliens were released due to court orders, including the so- called Zadvydas cases in which the aliens' home countries would not take them back. The rest were released by ICE's choice.'' The article also points out: ``In 2014, ICE released a total of 30,558 criminal aliens from its custody. These aliens had already been convicted of 92,347 crimes before they were released by ICE. ``As of July 25, 2015, a total of 1,895 aliens have been charged with a crime after being freed by ICE. ``In a separate communication, ICE provided a list of countries that currently are uncooperative in accepting their deported citizens: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe.'' We have the power to force these countries to either take back their citizens who have come illegally into this country or who are illegally in this country--particularly if they have committed crimes in this country--or have consequences. Instead, this administration chooses to provide benefits to countries like Iran and Afghanistan. For goodness sake. Make sure they are running Christians and Jews out of Afghanistan, but shouldn't they at least take back their own people? I was told by one of the leaders in Afghanistan--this is a few years ago--that their budget was around $12 billion a year. They only provided about $1.5 billion. All the rest came from other countries, and most of that was from the United States. If they won't take their people back, then shut the government down. They will take their people back. This is ridiculous. Also, an important point was made in this article. ``As of July 25, 2015, only about 3 percent of the 30,558 criminal aliens freed by ICE in 2014 have been removed . . . ICE reports that 28,017 still had a pending immigration case as of July 25, 2015,'' but some of them don't show up for their hearings. Many don't. The largest percentage do not. They are just given notices to appear. ``Recent National Gang Unit-led operations include--'' and this is from a different article, from the article: ``ICE Arrests More Than 1,100 in Operation Targeting Gangs.'' It talks about all of the efforts to capture gangs. Let's see. ``Of the 1,133 arrests, 915 were gang members and associates; 1,001 were charged with criminal offenses; and 132 were arrested . . .'' It is just more and more numbers of drugs, firearms, currency. Again, about 3 percent, apparently, is all they are removing of those who are committing crimes in the country. Jessica Vaughan, from a year ago, had an article from May 28: ``The Non-Deported: ICE Still Releasing Criminal Aliens at a Rapid Pace.'' She documents, according to this article: ``The majority of convicted criminal releases occurred because of Obama administration policies that require ICE officers to let the offenders go. In some cases, judges will allow aliens to be released after a bond hearing, but the conditions are usually set by ICE, and ICE attorneys say that they have been instructed not to vigorously contest an alien's request for release,'' which brings us back to the Sabillons. My Christian brother and my Christian sister are gone; and we don't enforce our immigration laws as the oath taken by those in this administration require. I want to finish up by mentioning again about my being on the border. I was so struck. Texas has utilized and provided massive amounts of money to try to help us defend our border. The number one area through which people are coming into the United States moved some years back from Arizona to the McAllen corridor into Texas. I had occasion to be on a DPS boat with fantastic DPS officers. They had fantastic equipment that they were able to utilize to spot people who were clearly getting ready--behind bushes and whatnot--to cross the Rio Grande, from the Mexico side, into the U.S. It appeared, clearly, that some of them were just people who were going to be brought across, and some were carrying things. Maybe they were drugs. We don't really know. After we had spotted these folks when we were cruising down the river on the DPS boat--and there were a couple of Border Patrol boats that were much smaller, and there were other assets that allowed them to focus once we identified where these people were so that the Federal Border Patrol would know--and after we stayed silent for a while, we finally got a radio message from the Border Patrol that asked us to go ahead and return back to the dock way on down the river so that they could try to intercept these folks. Fine, because I know, if the Department of Public Safety sees a raft coming across, they will stop them. They do destroy the raft, which, as I understand, gets the coyote in trouble with the drug lord who sent him with the raft with people who had paid money to get them across. So the DPS would do that. They said: Why don't you go ahead. They are waiting for you to leave the area. Then we can interdict. We can catch them red-handed. It turns out that is exactly what they did. We spent massive amounts of money and effort in spotting people before they came across the river illegally. Whether it was bringing drugs, whether it was people coming across, we knew where they were. We spotted them, and we directed the Border Patrol to them. I say ``we.'' It is our Department of Public Safety people in Texas. We got word: That is exactly what they were waiting for. They came across after you left the area, and now we are in-processing them into the United States. We have the power to secure our border, but this administration has no will, and that is why unaccompanied children are up 1,200 percent. I have seen tiny, little girls, who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4, just in the last trip down, in the days I spent down there. Girls like them say: Oh, I am unaccompanied. I guarantee you they did not cross that river unaccompanied. They did not come 1,000 miles unaccompanied across Mexico. They were accompanied. Thank God they were not sold into sex trafficking as so many have been. When we in the United States, as I have been told by African friends--some of whom I have seen in the last month--say we are the hope of the world and when we don't follow the law, when we don't enforce the law, when we don't enforce our own laws, the world suffers. As Christians in Africa have told me: We know where we go when we die, but our only hope of having a peaceful life is if America stays strong. We haven't done that. Christians are now being persecuted in greater numbers than ever in history. Jews are being persecuted again as if we are headed toward a new holocaust. It is time for American leaders who have taken an oath to the United States Constitution and to this country to realize: to whom much is given, from them much will be required. There is going to be a day of judgment on America if we don't rise to the occasion and use what we have been blessed with. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.