Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman is exactly right. It seems like the big push is to resolve the issue of what is owed to the bondholders who invested money; and, apparently, they are the ones running commercials in some people's districts about, oh, don't do a bailout, because they want to get their full money on what they invested. I sure understand that. But as my friend has pointed out, we can't be sure that there will be any reforms. I know some of our friends, we think, well, there is such massive unemployment. Well, one cure in some places to help with massive unemployment is to lower the minimum wage and get more people to work, and that is being suggested; but in Puerto Rico, I was reading that, for a typical family of three, if someone works a 40-hour-per- week minimum wage job, at the current minimum wage before it is lowered like some people are advocating, the take-home is under $1,200. However, the welfare payments they would be entitled to, typically, on average, would be about $1,800 a month; so sometimes lowering the minimum wage would be a solution. In Puerto Rico, where--and of course I think it is totally appropriate and fair, as the Founders said: If they don't elect one representative to the body that makes taxes, then they have no right to make taxes on us. So, in Puerto Rico, which is also true of Guam, Samoa, the Mariana Islands, any territory where they elect a delegate or they don't elect a full voting Representative, because those come from the several States, they don't pay any Federal income tax. So I had in my mind that, wow, Puerto Rico could be the American Hong Kong. They have all the Federal benefits. I read one estimate that 20 percent of all of the income made by people in Puerto Rico is actually welfare benefits, paid by people of the 50 States. But some of the towns--I saw a chart--I think the highest was right at 46 percent of the local community work for government. And, you know, you have got communities, 28,000, 35,000, where 40 percent of the whole population works for the government. Something has to be done about that. Our friend, fellow Republican Luis Fortuno, got elected Governor, and he could see the handwriting on the wall. We have got to get our government down and under control because, if we are going to expect anybody to help us at all, we have got to show we are able to take care of our own problems. He was promptly fired at the next election for trying to get the massive government bureaucracy under control. That hasn't been dealt with. There is no indication it will actually be dealt with. President Obama will make all the appointments of the board we are talking about that will have oversight, but those will come from recommendations from Minority Leader Pelosi, Speaker Ryan, Majority Leader McConnell, and Minority Leader Reid; and the President will make what will be the deciding vote on close calls. So there are no assurances that there is going to be reform in these areas. As my friend, Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma, has pointed out, Puerto Rico had the only area, he was telling me, in the world where all of our military branches could come together and do tactical exercises, you know, storm the beach type of things. And that was taken away; and that land, 17,000 or so acres, is owned by the Department of the Interior. Puerto Rico, apparently, is part of this deal. They don't want to sell any Puerto Rican land, but they are willing to let the Department of the Interior sell their land and give that money to Puerto Rico. So we are not giving them direct payments, but the Department of the Interior, part of this deal is going to be selling things.

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.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to follow up on the comments of my dear friends' Special Order earlier by Congressman Ron DeSantis. I know there were a number of people who spoke, but the ones I actually saw and heard--Congressman DeSantis, a dear friend, dear friend Ted Yoho, and my dear friend Jim Jordan--did an extraordinary job of laying out why we simply have to show that this House has standards, that Congress has rules, and you can only thumb your nose so far. You can only lie and defraud and, in some ways, be incompetent before there has to be an impeachment. And with regard to the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the case has been made very effectively in the prior Special Order. So I want to add on to that by reference to this article from the Washington Examiner entitled, ``IRS Chief:''--basically, the IRS chief is saying this; this is the headline--``Agency Encourages Illegal Immigrant Theft of Social Security Numbers to File Tax Returns.'' It is by Rudy Takala, dated April 12. It says, ``The IRS is struggling to ensure that illegal immigrants are able to illegally use Social Security numbers for legitimate purposes, the agency's head told senators on Tuesday, without allowing the numbers to be used for `bad' reasons.'' Now, that is the IRS director's reasoning. It is okay for someone illegally in the United States to be engaged in identity theft. This is the IRS director that has presided over the massive manipulation of the Internal Revenue Service as a tool of this administration and the Democratic political party back in 2012 to prevent conservative groups, groups whose one foundational basis was the Constitution as written, groups who believed that people should follow the law. This director's IRS targeted such people and, in some cases, kept them from getting a tax ID number and a verification that they could raise money. They kept them from participating in the 2012 election because President Obama was up for reelection, of course. And now he has the gall to go before a Senate committee and testify that it is okay for someone illegally in this country that is involved in identity theft to use fraudulently someone else's Social Security number as long as it is not for a bad purpose. If there has ever been a good reason to remove a department head, it certainly exists with the IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The article goes on and says that he made the statement in response to a question from Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana, during a session of the Senate Finance Committee about why the IRS appears to be collaborating with taxpayers who file tax returns using fraudulent information. Senator Coats said that his staff had discovered the practice after looking into agency procedures. This is Senator Coats being quoted: ``What we learned is that . . . the IRS continues to process tax returns with false W-2 information and issue refunds as if they were routine tax returns, and say that's not really our job. We also learned the IRS ignores notifications from the Social Security Administration that a name does not match a Social Security number, and you use your own system to determine whether a number is valid.'' He is talking about the IRS. So if we are just talking about strictly the issue of competence and not even getting into lies, fraud, deception, violating court orders, violating congressional orders, violating his own department directives--if we are just talking about an issue of competence and the Internal Revenue Service utilizes Social Security numbers in order to determine whose tax return is being filed and processed and he has the unmitigated gall to say: Now, when the Social Security Administration that issues these numbers tells us that person is filing a tax return and the information that they have given the IRS is false, it is fraudulent, it is not their number, it is not their tax return, it is not their tax information, the head of the IRS, Mr. Koskinen, says: We don't trust the Social Security number--that is basically what he is saying--we don't trust the Social Security Administration on whether or not it is a valid Social Security number when they tell us it is clearly not a number that belongs to the person that is filing that return. We go by our own information. Now, how in the world could the Internal Revenue Service have more valid information about a taxpayer's Social Security number than the Social Security Administration that issued the number, maintains the number, and updates their records regarding who is using that number? Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe it is not incompetence. Maybe it is just so much unbridled arrogance that he honestly believes that nobody can be right except his department because he is the head of it. The article goes on: ``Asked to explain those practices, Koskinen replied, `What happens in these situations is someone is using a Social Security number to get a job, but they're filing their tax return with their [taxpayer identification number].' `What that means,' he said, `is that they are undocumented aliens . . . They're paying taxes. It is in everybody's interest to have them pay the taxes they owe.' `` `As long as the information is being used only to fraudulently obtain jobs,' Koskinen said, `rather than to claim false tax returns, the agency has an interest in helping them. The question is whether the Social Security number they're using to get the job has been stolen. It's not the normal identity theft situation,' he said. ``The comments came in the broader context of a hearing on cybersecurity in the agency. About 464,000 illegally obtained Social Security numbers were targeted by hackers in a February cyber breach of the agency, while information on 330,000 taxpayers was stolen in an unrelated breach last year.'' Koskinen ``added that the agency wanted to differentiate that `bad' misuse of personal data from other uses. `There are questions about whether there's a way we could simply advise people . . . A lot of the time those Social Security numbers are borrowed from friends and acquaintances and they know they've been used, other times they don't.' '' So, apparently, people at the IRS, like Lois Lerner, don't mind violating the law, don't mind violating their oath, don't mind violating the very instructions for doing their jobs, and don't mind people--apparently, Koskinen doesn't--mind people that have violated the law to come into this country and have violated the law by possessing and using a stolen Social Security number without regard to whether they actually stole it themselves. No problem there as long as they are using it, apparently, to pay taxes. What he doesn't say is that what these returns normally do--from what I can glean, they are not using fraudulent Social Security numbers to say: IRS, we want to pay more taxes into the U.S. Treasury. So just look the other way while we use a fraudulent or a stolen identity, a stolen Social Security number. Just look the other way because we are going to send you some more money. Isn't that wonderful? What gratuity. What a wonderful spirit that someone would break our laws to come into this country, then steal somebody's Social Security number, and then be so gracious as to say: Now, I am filing my tax return because I want you to know I want to pay more taxes fraudulently in somebody else's name. That is normally not why somebody would file a tax return at the end of the year using a stolen Social Security number. No. Normally, you would file that to get money back from the government. You violated all kinds of laws. So why not violate one more to get a nice check back from the government? Is it too much of a stretch to think that perhaps, if somebody will violate the laws of the United States to come into the United States, they will refuse to comply--like millions of American immigrants have that, thank God, have wanted to come into America, have made America better, have come in and followed the law--no. These want to come in illegally and use stolen Social Security numbers. Again, is it too much to think, perhaps, if they are willing to perjure themselves using a stolen Social Security number, willing to file a fraudulent tax return that is not really theirs or the name or number on it is not theirs so that they are guilty of perjury, they are guilty of Internal Revenue fraud--is it too much to think they might just be willing to claim some exemptions and to claim some tax credits that they are not really owed so that they get a big old check back from the Federal Government? I mean, why not ask for a big tax return, tax refund from your return after you have already violated so many laws of the United States? Yet the man whose oath of office should have had him rooting out stolen Social Security numbers and making sure taxpayers are not defrauding the U.S. Government, that they are not getting refunds back they are not owed, couldn't he go ahead and do that and protect Americans from identity theft? No, apparently not. So Americans aren't protected. Their information clearly has not been adequately protected with the Internal Revenue Service under Koskinen's control. So Americans are at risk, especially if they are law-abiding and want to keep their information protected, because we have a head of the IRS that thinks it is okay if you are illegally in the country and filing fraudulent tax returns and using stolen identities, it is okay if you are simply trying to file your tax return. But, of course, how many of them really are getting refunds? That is why they are filing the fraudulent return using a stolen Social Security number. Well, I know, having handled thousands of felony cases in Texas that came through my court and having noticed over the years that juries feel the same way, if you will lie repeatedly or break laws of moral turpitude repeatedly, isn't it just kind of fundamental that you might be willing to lie in order to get some money back? Juries thought so, repeatedly. I thought so in numerous cases. As we know from the rules of evidence--it should also apply to life, and it should apply to government investigations--that rule is credibility is always an issue. If somebody would use a stolen Social Security number or commit perjury in filing a tax return, provide fraudulent information, they might just be willing to put in a number, too, that is also fraudulent in order to get that big check from the United States taxpayers that actually worked and didn't steal anybody's Social Security number. Is it any wonder why the American people are so stirred up against what is perceived as an establishment involving both parties in Washington, D.C., when we have this kind of contempt for honesty and honor and following the law and for tax returns and tax refunds from a man that is head of the IRS that needs to be impeached and removed from office? I applaud my friends for making the case they did. They didn't touch on this particular area, but it really brings the gavel down. As litigants often said in front of me as a judge, ``I rest my case.'' Mr. Koskinen needs to go. Now, in talking about immigrants who have come in illegally, we have an article from CNS News, Terence Jeffrey, this month: ``Obama Claims Power to Make Illegal Immigrants Eligible for Social Security, Disability.'' The article asked the question: ``Does the President of the United States have the power to unilaterally tell millions of individuals who are violating Federal law that he will not enforce that law against them now, that they may continue to violate that law in the future, and that he will take action that makes them eligible for Federal benefit programs for which they are not currently eligible due to their unlawful status?'' I recall sitting right back there on the aisle, my friend Joe Wilson was sitting right over in the middle of this section over here, and the President was standing at this second level here, because that is where non-Members of the House have to stand to address this body if they are invited, as he was. He made statements about how his bill would not provide health insurance or healthcare provisions for people that were illegally here for abortion. My friend Joe Wilson just erupted--such a righteous man, he couldn't contain himself--and yelled out, ``You lie.'' Now, we have House rules--and I know every time I bring this up or talk about this House rule against my friends in the Parliamentarian's office, paying real close attention to make sure I don't violate the rule myself, well, they start listening very carefully. Well, they always listen carefully, but even more carefully. But in talking hypotheticals, if a President or someone speaking officially in this House to either the House or a joint session makes a statement--and I am talking hypothetically. I am not saying the President did because I know that would violate the rule. But hypothetically, if he made a statement that is a bald-faced lie and somebody points out that it is a lie and it turns out the person that said it is a lie is 100 percent right, it makes you wonder about the propriety of the rule if the rule says somebody is lying and somebody else points it out, and the one that points it out is at fault. We do get into some tricky issues when it comes to areas of impeachment because it is real hard to make a case for impeachment if you can't talk about somebody that is in a position of authority in the Federal Government having violated the law in order to justify the term of high crimes and misdemeanors. So it gets kind of delicate in here at times trying to figure these things out. But regardless of whether anybody thinks the President lied or told the truth, I am not getting into that because I don't want to violate the House rule while I am trying to make my point. But here in this room, the President said basically people who are illegally here, they are not going to get the health insurance and not going to pay for abortion. Well, we know not only is it paying for abortion, but this administration will actually go to court and come after the Little Sisters of the Poor, these precious nuns who committed their lives to helping people less fortunate, basically a vow of poverty. They don't live lavishly. Their lives, like Mother Teresa's, are intended to better other people's lives. And this administration decides it is not the people that are violating our laws of immigration that they are going to come after, it is not people that steal Social Security numbers to use them to get refunds fraudulently from the American taxpayers, they want to litigate with the Little Sisters of the Poor. They want to litigate with Christians devoted to helping others but who believe with deeply held religious beliefs like so many of our Founders had, like the Founders of Harvard and Yale had when they required students basically to take a pledge of allegiance that the most important aspect of life is living for Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. And you go back and look at those oaths. But not this administration. To them, it is more important to go after some precious, sacred, caring nuns who say: We will do anything, we will lay down our lives for others, but you can't ask us to take actions that will provide for abortions because we deeply religiously believe that violates our Biblically-based beliefs, so please. No. This administration will meet them at the Supreme Court and demand these nuns give up their religious convictions, give up what they have dedicated their lives to stand for. Why? Because to them an abortion is more important. As I am running out of time, I want to also call attention today to something that became very important to me, having visited Nigeria to visit with a couple of dozen or so moms of daughters who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, basically shedding my State Department protection so I could go 2 or 3 hours to meet with them because they wouldn't initially come into the city to do that, having prayed with them and their pastor, wept with them and a few girls that were able to escape. It was 2 years ago tonight that 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by radical Islamists not because they were girls on this occasion. They do believe girls are inferior. They can't bring themselves to accept what we here know: we are equal in God's eyes. In some ways, ladies are superior, but not to Boko Haram, not to radical Islamists. They are basically property. The school was not attacked because they were girls. I asked that. No, they can't stand girls. They see them as property, something to be raped and traded into sex slavery. But the reason they attacked the school is because it is a Christian school. Having talked to leaders there, religious leaders, and learning that our administration not only has done nothing significant to help them get their girls back other than launch a campaign based on #bringbackourgirls, but we haven't given them the information they need to get the girls released. We don't have to send troops, put boots on the ground. There are things we could do to help them; but according to the information we have gotten, this administration says: Well, if you want our help in getting these precious girls released, you are going to have to start to change your law and allow for gay marriage. Also, you are going to have to start paying for abortions. As a Catholic bishop in Nigeria said: Our religious beliefs are not for sale to President Obama or to anybody else. God bless him. God strengthen him. Our tribute goes to those families. We need to do more to help them. Two years ago today, that horrible thing occurred. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 34, 114th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from California (Mr. LaMalfa). I did not realize I should have been joining in that tribute with the gentleman. Her being born in Wharton, Texas, and going to college in Texas, we share her as a real gem that the Lord provided to both of us. I thank the gentleman for sharing that with us. Mr. Speaker, I had the honor of being allowed to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court, and I appreciate their staff and their accomodation. Not everybody over there recognizes that there are three independent, coequal branches of government the way the Founders intended, but I am extremely grateful for those who do, and we afford the mutual respect between us. That is a good thing. So, to the clerk of the Court and to Perry and others, I thank you for your accomodation. I am a member of the Supreme Court Bar, which allows attorneys, as far as seating, to come sit in front of the bar, on the side of the bar with the litigants, and to get a real ringside seat--actually, inside the ring. The case today was, actually, a consolidation of a number of cases. Probably most well-known--probably that should be most well-known--was the Little Sisters of the Poor. We had representatives from East Texas Baptist University in my district in Marshall, Texas. It is just a super school. They are a religious school, and they are not ashamed, because they are East Texas Baptist University, to teach what religious convictions inform them are the right things to do. They follow the law. The problem is when the law does not follow the Constitution, and that is what has gotten us into the problem that was faced today and is being faced at the Supreme Court. It is amazing. I was telling a group here just recently that, in east Texas, we call it ``common sense,'' but when I get to Washington, we usually just have to call it ``sense'' because it is not common at all. I found that to be the case at the Supreme Court during oral arguments. I do have great sympathy for all of the eight remaining Justices in this regard. Once the Supreme Court issues a ruling that clearly violates the Constitution, for all who truly have eyes and truly have ears to hear not clouded by secular humanism, but informed by the Constitution's words itself, then they see that, when a court rules against the Constitution, violating the Constitution by its very ruling, it creates a terribly difficult situation for itself. Because once the bold, visible lines that are spelled out in the Constitution are violated and erased, the Court is charged with an ongoing impossible task of trying to find a place to redraw those lines. Now, it is unfortunate that some of the Justices--in fact, four of them--kept trying to draw a line in a manner that was not before the Court. They showed themselves to be not necessarily very able jurists who loved justice, but, in fact, very experienced politicians. Because politicians know, if you are wrong on an issue and somebody brings up the issue about which you are wrong, the thing to do is change the subject and make it about something that you are not wrong about. You point to something that is a very difficult question and say that that is a very difficult question and, as good magicians do, divert the attention away from the wrong that you have already done and that you are about to complicate. Mr. Speaker, the wrong about which I speak was the violation by Congress coupled with the violation by the Supreme Court itself. For the first time in our Nation's history, having the United States Federal Government with all its powers, its guns, its ability to take people's homes--well, that is the IRS. Most folks can't take homes. But to just wreak havoc on the well-being of a family, of a business, the Federal Government says for the first time: You have to purchase a product. It is required. There is nothing in the Constitution that either allows or encourages the United States Government to order all American citizens to buy a product. As we went through discussion on ObamaCare back during 2009 until it passed in 2010, at first, the President and his minions were saying that, well, clearly this is not a tax. It was a mandate. It says: You must buy a product and, if you don't comply with our Federal order to buy this product, this health insurance--and it has to be what we say health insurance is, not some idea you have--we will dictate what the health insurance is, and you have to provide it. If you don't, it is not a tax. There is a penalty for violating the law, the mandatory obligation that we have imposed on every American. Well, nothing allows that and many things prohibit it. Over the years, Members of Congress and even the Supreme Court and Presidents have used the Commerce Clause, that we have the right to control interstate commerce, as the basis for which to get involved in matters of commerce that lie within a State. In this case, Chief Justice Roberts in this part of the opinion very correctly states that, if you allow the Federal Government to say we have jurisdiction to mandate people buy health insurance and not just any health insurance. It has to have the things in it that we dictate, then there is no place you could ever draw a line and say the Commerce Clause does not allow for this and ultimately decided that, under the Commerce Clause, ObamaCare was unconstitutional. Simply citing the fact that everybody, at some point, seeks health care--and most people have some form of health insurance at some point--that does not give the Federal Government the right to come in and take over and even dictate the purchase of a product. We had some in this room and at the other end of this building in the Senate who furthered the argument that this is old news, that the Government has been able to do this for many years. It is called car insurance or automobile insurance. Governments have been requiring insurance and penalizing if you didn't buy insurance for years. This is not a new concept. The trouble is that was not an appropriate comparison at all. For one thing, that is activity within the State. It was not the Federal Government that required an insurance policy. And there was no mandate that everyone within a State had to have that car insurance. Courts have long held that driving on a highway built by the State or Federal Government or county is a privilege. You do not have a constitutional right to drive a car on a government road. But if you choose to drive a car, a vehicle, on a government road, in that case, then you must have insurance. The difference is driving on a road is a privilege. In the case of ObamaCare, the Federal Government said just breathing, walking around living or even lying prostrate in your bed, even if you are confined to your bed--it doesn't matter--just being a living person we will say under our Constitution is a privilege that the government giveth and the government taketh away. Therefore, we are saying that, if you are going to exist, breathe, live, you must have health insurance, and not just any health insurance. It has to have the provisions we say and those will not necessarily include the things you need in your life. We, as the omniscient, ubiquitous government--of course, it may be more ubiquitous than we know--we have a right to tell you what is good for you and what isn't. Once the government can tell you what you have to have or have not in the way of health care, they have the right to control your life. So it was interesting, for one thing, that, in this case, the government had conceded that these were sincerely, deeply held religious beliefs of all the plaintiffs. So that was not an issue. It was not an issue like some people who were trying to dodge the draft, except for religious purposes when sometimes it was and sometimes it was not. It was conceded in this case all of the deeply held religious beliefs were very sincere by the litigants. I heard something I don't know that I have heard before in a Supreme Court argument when Justice Sotomayor made a statement of fact about the case. One of the litigants who may not have been politically astute, but, apparently, accurate, said that, factually, Justice Sotomayor, that is just not the case. That is just not true here. Where four of the Justices showed incredible aptitude for being politicians and not Justices, they diverted attention--as I said, good magicians do this. Good politicians do this. They diverted attention away from the real problem and diverted away from the actual question before the Court and kept digging and pointing to a question that was not before the Court. That point was that the four Justices kept wanting to talk about objections to objecting on the basis of religious beliefs. They kept wanting to talk about the difficulty in drawing lines, that: ``Gee, what do we do if the plaintiffs or the defendants''--the litigants in the particular case--subjects would probably be more accurate under ObamaCare--the subjects of the United States--it used to be U.S. citizens--``are not objecting to objecting on the basis of religious beliefs?'' That has come up in cases before where someone would say: ``I believe my religious belief is so personal. You should not make me object on the basis of religious beliefs because then I would have to reveal what my religious beliefs are and that is none of your business. So we object to objecting.'' So the four most liberal Justices kept wanting to talk about: ``But where do we draw the line in this issue if there is an objection to objecting on the basis of religious grounds?'' The able attorneys for the American subjects to the fast-growing monarchy here in the United States kept trying to bring them back to what was before the Court: ``Justices, none of these clients, none of the litigants, object to objecting on religious grounds. They have no problem with objecting on religious grounds. They have objected on religious grounds. They filed objections both administratively and in court when they filed for injunction. They have had no problem objecting to objecting on the basis of religious beliefs. So that is not really an issue.'' Once again, when Justices are in the wrong, they don't want to talk about the issue before the Court. They want to talk about the issue that is not before the Court. Let's talk about how many angels you might could get on the head of a needle. Let's talk about anything but the elephant in the room. The real elephant in the room and the reason for which I have sympathy for all eight Justices is that, once they violated the Constitution by saying ObamaCare was constitutional, they created so many scenarios that are going to be nightmares for the Court to try to figure out where we stop the flood as it overwhelms the rights of Americans. It is just a massive--like that 1950s movie or maybe it was early '60s--``The Blob.'' You just couldn't stop it. It would go out one place and come out another. And that is the problem when the Supreme Court violates the Constitution in the case of ObamaCare, saying: You can dictate to American citizens. You can make them American subjects to this all- powerful, dictatorial Federal Government. You can tell them what to buy. You can punish them for not buying it. And, of course, we know that--although Chief Justice Roberts was exactly right and on point when he said: Gee, if you try to use the Commerce Clause, jurisdiction over interstate commerce, to justify the takeover of health care and a mandate to buy something the Federal Government says you have to buy, then there is no limit ever that can be drawn on the Commerce Clause. So it is not constitutional under the Commerce Clause. It certainly appeared accurate when Chief Justice Roberts went through an explanation of the initial issue that they had to take up on ObamaCare, and that was the anti-injunction statute, which basically requires that, before a litigant in Federal court can have standing to be before the court and if it involves a tax, then the litigant must be someone against whom the tax has already been levied and the tax has already been paid. Only if the tax has been levied against the litigant and the tax has been paid do the courts recognize standing by that litigant to be before the court to make argument over any complaint. So they had to deal with that issue because not only does a litigant not have standing to even stay in court if they are arguing about a tax and the tax has not been levied and the tax has not been paid, but the Federal court itself has no jurisdiction to even hear the controversy until the tax is levied and the tax is paid. So Chief Justice Roberts had the difficult problem of investigating and ruling on whether or not the mandate and the penalty that comes if you don't purchase what is required by the Federal Government--is that a penalty or is that a tax? Because if it is a tax, the law is very clear. We will have to rule that the plaintiffs do not have standing and their case be thrown out. And, similarly, we will rule that the Court does not have jurisdiction. The case, as it is said in court, is not ripe for litigation. So it will have to be thrown out. If the court found that the penalty imposed by the Federal Government for not being a loyal American subject and buying a product that the monarchy or the growing dictatorship here says you have to buy--if it is a penalty, then you can come to court. We do have jurisdiction, and you do have standing. So Chief Justice Roberts went through and ably explained how Congress called it a penalty. At that time, of course, the Democrats were in the majority here in the House as well as the Senate. The Democratic leadership, the Democratic supporters in favor of ObamaCare, had made it clear this is a penalty. Chief Justice Roberts cited that, that Congress should know better than anyone else whether this is a penalty or it is a tax. Because if it is a penalty, again, the litigant can be here and have standing. We have got jurisdiction. But if it is a tax, we have to throw it out. We can't hear the case, not now. He said Congress should know better than anyone. They decided it was a penalty. Not only that, but it really does appear to be a penalty because ObamaCare says: You have to buy insurance and you have to buy a product we say is okay. You can't buy what you want. You have to buy what we say you must buy. And if you don't do that, we will impose a financial penalty on you. I am hearing more and more young people who are really perplexed: Yes. The government is giving me a subsidy to help me pay for my insurance, but my insurance has 5-, 6-, 7-, $8,000 of a threshold that I have to meet before it ever helps me with a dime of insurance help. So am I better off getting the government subsidy, paying all this money that is really making my life miserable, or should I go ahead and pay the new income tax that I have added on to me for not having insurance as is dictated? I think Chief Justice Roberts came to a proper conclusion. This truly is a penalty. It is not a tax because it is only paid if you violate the mandate that the Federal Government dictated. So, clearly, it is a penalty. So there at page 1415 of the opinion, Chief Justice Roberts concludes: Okay. Congress says it is a penalty. It obviously is a penalty. If you don't want to pay the penalty, then buy the insurance. You won't have the penalty. It is clearly a penalty. Since it is a penalty, the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply. Therefore, the plaintiffs do have standing, and not only do they have standing, but this court has jurisdiction. Now, because it is a penalty and not a tax, we have jurisdiction. So now we will proceed to consider the primary cause before us, whether or not the Federal Government can mandate for the first time in history that all of the American people buy a product that it dictates. Then he went through and determined, if you say the Commerce Clause justifies Federal jurisdiction here, then the Commerce Clause has no limits, has no meaning. And we choose to find that the Commerce Clause has meaning. Therefore, this is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. But, then again, about 40 pages after he says it is not a tax, it is a penalty, Chief Justice Roberts plays the mental gymnastics of arriving at saying: You know what. It turns out this really is not a penalty. It is a tax. And since it is a tax, a majority of us will find that it is constitutional. And so the Federal Government can impose a mandate requiring that all American citizens be loyal subjects, subject to the dictatorship here in Washington, buy whatever product we tell them to buy. And all of that is because the Supreme Court rewrote the law and called it a tax. That is why the Supreme Court is struggling the way it is today. Because when you create an abomination, you violate the Constitution to the extent, you violate your conscience the way it was before it got so clouded with politics. You violate the Constitution and then you create the kind of mess that is before the Supreme Court today. It is incredible to sit and listen to the Supreme Court struggling over this issue of just how far we can go to violate someone's religious beliefs. I didn't hear any one of the Justices refer to the First Amendment, that the government will establish no religion and not violate--or not prohibit the free exercise thereof. My friend, Keith Rothfus, a fellow Member of Congress, was sitting beside me. He got sworn in as a member of the Supreme Court bar today. Keith Rothfus was pointing out that, in one of the prior Supreme Court decisions back in the 1960s, they actually had a footnote where they listed a lot of the religions that they found currently in the United States. It was a fairly full list. But one of the religions in the United States recognized by the Supreme Court in the early 1960s was secular humanism. As Keith Rothfus and I agreed, we have now come to the point where we are violating the First Amendment of the Constitution. And not only are we violating the restraint against the Federal Government prohibiting the free exercise of religion, as it is doing for East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Little Sisters of the Poor, so many organizations that are religious in nature, but they have violated the part that said we will have no establishment of religion. The Founders were thinking specifically about the Church of England and how the King didn't like the way the Vatican was ruling. And so he just created his own church, the Church of England. He said: Everybody has got to participate in my church now. They didn't want that to ever happen where the government of the land could dictate the religion that people had to practice. Yet, that is what the Supreme Court has now done because it has now recognized secular humanism--not just recognized, but established secular humanism--as the State-sponsored religion in America. With the ruling last summer, the Supreme Court, in effect, said: Since the 1960s, we have been limiting people's ability to use the word God, to pray to God, to read God's word, the Bible. We have been prohibiting that for 40 or so years, 50 years maybe, and we have been protecting what Moses said was the Word of God and what Jesus said was the Word of God for far too long. They basically established secular humanism as the official religion of the United States. By their pronouncement, they were saying to forget what Moses said God said, forget what Jesus said. When Jesus actually was asked about marriage and divorce, he quoted Moses verbatim: A man shall leave his father and mother, a woman leave her home. The two will become one flesh. Then Jesus added, not just quoting Moses as to what Moses said God said about marriage: And what God has joined together, let nobody take apart. The Supreme Court last summer said: The effect of the ruling is not only can you not talk about God publicly or pray or read the Bible, thank God we have speech and debate clause privileges here on this floor where I am actually free to even mention the word God. We pray every day to start our official day here in session. But the Supreme Court ruled, in effect: We are your God. The five of us in the majority of the Supreme Court are now your God. Forget what we said in our prior decisions about marriage. It was not mentioned in the Constitution. Therefore, under the 10th Amendment, it is reserved to the States and the people. Forget the fact that we have talked before about the States will decide what marriage is. Forget our ruling on DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress, where we made very clear that the States only have the right to decide what marriage is. Forget all that. Now we five majority Justices are your God. And forget the fact that we--at least two of us have violated the Federal law in order to reach this decision. Because the Federal law is very clear. If a judge--a Federal judge, magistrate, Justice might have their impartiality--his or her impartiality questioned, then they should disqualify--they shall disqualify themselves from sitting on the case. So we had two Justices. Not only was their opinion and their impartiality in question, there was actually no question that they were not impartial because they had both participated in same-sex wedding ceremonies. And Justice Ginsburg, who is a very nice lady, actually said--as Maureen Dowd pointed out in her article, she emphasized as she pronounced them married by virtue of the laws of the--and she said she really hammered the words--by the Constitution of the United States. So, clearly, we had Justice Kagan and Justice Ginsburg perform same- sex marriages before they were not impartial. The law required them to disqualify themselves. I have had some people say: Well, wouldn't it have disqualified any of the other judges if they had ever participated in a marriage between a man and a woman? The answer is very easily and clearly no, because that was the law. The question is: Can a government prohibit same-sex marriage? It was same-sex marriage that was before the court, not can a government prohibit marriage between a man and a woman. If the question had been: Can a government prohibit marriage between a man and a woman, then that might be a different story. But that was not the issue before the court. Two Justices were disqualified. They had made their opinion clearly known in advance. There were other judges who had been asked, as I understand it, to do weddings, but they said: No, that might create a question of my impartiality and would require me to disqualify myself. Well, their participation did certainly disqualify them. They refused to disqualify themselves. So two Justices, as a minimum, were disqualified as they participated in the majority of five. So when you have an unconstitutional ruling by the United States Supreme Court, when the Chief Justice has to commit to the mental gymnastics, the loop-the-loops that he has to try to do to get around saying the mandate to purchase a policy that carries a penalty, is a penalty, and then over here we know he said it is a penalty over there, but now we are saying it is a tax, not a penalty, they created a nightmare for any legitimate judge with a conscience in trying to decide: Now that we have blown apart any constitutional lines, where do we draw the lines now? It is rather tragic. Justice Kennedy was questioning one of the religious litigant's attorneys and made the statement, basically, that the court would find it very hard to write an opinion saying that if we give an exemption to a church, we then have to give it to all other religious institutions. Well, that statement deeply troubled me as well because it means that Justice Kennedy does not understand the constitutional prohibition in the First Amendment. You are not on the Supreme Court or in Congress or in the Presidency to ever establish a religion. And it has been established. It is called secular humanism, which the Supreme Court has recognized as a religion. That is what is being established now. You are also not to prohibit the free exercise of religion. When the Supreme Court gets to the point, as Justice Kennedy is, that we on this court--at least a majority--will find it very hard to say that if you are not a part of a church and acting as that church, then you have no right to practice any of your religious beliefs that five of us don't like, that is tragic. I keep coming back to that prophetic statement by Benjamin Franklin when he was asked after the Constitutional Convention by a dear lady: What did you give us? ``A republic, madam, if you can keep it.'' Why would he say ``if you can keep it?'' The reason he said that is--as he knew--the nature of government is to take more and more power and authority over individual rights and individual liberties. And in order to keep a republic, as Ben Franklin called it, you have to teach generation after generation that there are responsibilities that come with citizenship. Because if you don't live up to those responsibilities, you will lose the republic, madam. You can't keep it. We have done a miserable job of teaching the next generation about how you would keep a republic. Instead of being taught, as I was, in school the dangers of socialism, the dangers of communism, and that it always has to result in a dictatorship or a totalitarian government, that it requires people's rights be taken away, our Founders say that we have to recognize these rights are a gift from our Creator, from God, because if we say they are a gift of the government, then what the government giveth, the government can taketh away. We have legislators and judges who have not been properly educated on the manner in which you keep a republic, madam. It really has been heartbreaking when very smart young people ask sincerely: I understand socialism is supposed to be wrong, communism is supposed to be wrong, but it really sounds nice. Can you explain why it would be wrong? Because I don't get it. It sounds nice. As the New Testament Church started out, as the Pilgrims' Compact started out, you bring into the common storehouse, and then you share and share alike. You share from those according to their ability to those according to their need. Of course, more than one parent has explained socialism to their children by saying: Look, you got an A. I know how hard you were working every night doing your homework, but your friend over here got a C. I saw her out partying a lot of times when you were here studying. And she is not maybe quite as smart as you are, so she got a C, you got an A. The socialist notion is that we have to give everybody a B. So we will make this A a B, we will make this C a B, and everybody will feel better for it. Mr. Speaker, I have shared this before, but it was such a lesson to me as an exchange student to the Soviet Union being out at a collective farm. The farmers were sitting in the shade in midmorning, when anybody back home in east Texas knows that--especially in July, like it was-- you start early and you try to finish early before the sun gets too hot. It is midmorning. This is prime time to be working before it gets too hot. And here are all the farmers sitting in the shade in the middle of their village. Trying to use the best Russian I could--I had 2 years, which meant I could converse ably with a 4-year-old--I asked: When do you work out in the field? I couldn't tell what they cultivated and didn't. It all looked brown. None of it looked very good. I would have expected in Texas that those fields would have been green, looking good, and the weeds out. You couldn't tell what was weeds and what wasn't. I said: When do you work out in the field? They laughed, and I thought I must not have translated that right. Then one of them said in Russian, basically: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the field in the sun or if I am here in the shade. So I am here in the shade. I have carried that with me all these years. That is why socialism can't work. It is why socialism or communism--again, bringing all into the common storehouse, share and sharing alike--can never work on this Earth, in this world. Because the only way you will ever have share and share alike, as they found out in the New Testament Church, the only way you can make it work is if you have a totalitarian government that says: you will do what we say. And then there goes your freedoms. So the only way to have the maximum amount of freedom is to have a self-governing republic so people can govern themselves by electing people that they have interviewed, they have read all about, done plenty of research on, and then they come forward on hiring day-- otherwise known as election day--and they vote to hire the person that they want for their public servant. That is the way it is supposed to work. People have not obliged themselves of the need that in order to keep a republic, you have to do the research on the candidates that have applied for your job. You have a requirement, a need, for you to actually come out and vote. Look, I get it. There are so many I have heard from that are disenfranchised voters. They say: We hear about all these people. John Fund has a great book out on the fraud that has been in so many of our modern elections that is not being dealt with, despite what the government says. It is a great book. People find out there is fraud. Since they didn't have to have a photo ID like you have to have to buy cigarettes or alcohol or get on a plane or anything else, you can manipulate the system, you can vote more than one time. My friend from south Texas told me about some of the people who were illegally in the country being approached with voter registration forms, saying: Fill these out. If you don't want to use your own address here, just use one central address. You can all use the same address. Some of them were worried about showing an ID. They will figure out we are illegally in this country and we are not supposed to vote. They were assured: No, no. President Obama's lawyer--Eric Holder at that time--has gotten a judge to rule that they can't require an ID and, therefore, all you have to do is fill this out. But if you don't fill this out, then Republicans are going to take away your welfare, they are going to take away your health care, and they are going to try to make you leave the country. So you have got to fill this out. And even though it is illegal, there is nothing wrong with doing it. You will get the voter registration card in the mail to the address you give them, and then you just go vote and that is all you have to show them. Thankfully, we have voter ID now in Texas. But there are so many people who have been disenfranchised, because they say: There is so much voter fraud going on. Why should I even bother? My vote doesn't count like somebody that votes more than once. We are in grave danger of losing this republic. We are not going to keep it much longer the way we are going. We haven't educated future generations to how you go about keeping a self-governing republic. Some have been miseducated to think socialism, which has failed every single time it has ever been tried--it will always fail. We haven't educated them about the truth of freedom and what is required to keep it. Justice Scalia told a group from my hometown that was here that the reason we are the most free Nation in history is not because we had the best Bill of Rights, but because the Founders didn't trust government. They wanted gridlock. They wanted it as difficult as possible to pass laws, because with the passage of every law is the risk that some freedom will be taken away by the Big Government. The Founders knew that, and they made it hard to pass laws. That is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. But when he mentioned that the Soviet Union had a better bill of rights than we had, I remembered, I did a paper back in college when I was at Texas A&M. After I had visited the Soviet Union as an exchange student, I wrote a paper on their system. But I had done a paper on their bill of rights, their Constitution. I was shocked at the extent of the rights that were guaranteed to the Soviet Union citizens. I was also surprised to find that, in the early sixties, the Premier, Khrushchev, in the Soviet Union, had set up a commission, because those that had truly been educated on the different forms of government and governing know that, actually, true communism is only when there is no government, that it is like reaching for nirvana. You eventually reach the point where everybody is so sharing and so giving--taking from their ability, giving to the need--they are so giving that you don't even need a government anymore. So Khrushchev set up a commission basically charged with coming up with a plan to reach that ultimate goal where someday there will be no government and we will have true communism in its purest form, no government, everyone giving, sharing, lovingly. And I read that, after a couple of years of that commission trying to figure out, ``How are we ever going to come up with a plan that eventuates in having no government and everybody always sharing equally? How are we going to ever pull that off?'' they couldn't come up with a way to reach that in this world, in this life, and so Khrushchev disbanded the commission. There was no way to get there. They were right. If you are going to have communism or socialism, you are going to have to have a totalitarian government, whether it is an individual dictator or a political group like they have or used to have at the Kremlin. You have got to have ruling autocrats, an oligarch, monarch, in order to force everybody to take from those who have worked hard, according to their ability, and giving to those who either can't work or choose not to work. The only way you can maximize freedoms is when people in the country understand what Franklin understood: you have got a republic if you can keep it. We are not being vigilant to keep our Republic, and that is why so many are desperate now as they vote for a Presidential candidate. And even Christian friends have said, you know, I understand there is a time and place for a David with a slingshot, complete faith in God, and a clear great ability with a slingshot. I know there is a time for that. But right now, our freedoms have been so badly eroded, we are losing the government. We are having people come in and start voting without understanding how you preserve a republic. We are losing the country. We are losing the melting pot that we once were, welcoming people from all over and coming together and being molded into one thing, not a hyphenated American, but an American. We are losing that. You see many voters standing in lines now. They didn't used to ever do this, stand in line for hours. You found people do that in Africa when they are finally afforded an opportunity to vote for the first time in their lives. But now, in America, some people are waiting hours to vote because they see that we have not been vigilant in protecting our Republic, and just as Franklin worried, we are about to lose it. We are already losing it when the government can dictate that individuals buy a product, when the government can say you can only practice your religious beliefs if you are within the confines of a church, but if you are an individual, like the Founders were, who held tightly to their religious beliefs--they talked about it as they passed legislation; they talked about it as they created our Constitution--the Supreme Court is now saying: Secular humanism is what we must have; it is what we demand. And since we are in charge and we are moving toward being socialistic, you have got to have an oligarchy, and we are it. Obviously, they don't say it in those words, but that is what their actions say, and that is why, when a Justice says: Well, this Court would find it very hard to write an opinion saying that we were moving the line from beyond a church and extending that line out to other religious institutions--like the Little Sisters of the Poor, these wonderful, superb Christian women who have given their lives doing what Jesus said, ministering to others, feeding His sheep, ministering to their physical needs, their healthcare needs--and the Supreme Court says: We have a lot of trouble. See, they are not actually a church. They are a religious institution, and we are going to have a hard time writing an opinion that moves the line to protect religious opinions. My word, shouldn't have any trouble drawing a line at individuals. Any individual in the United States of America who has a deeply held, sincerely held religious belief, it was meant to be protected, unless it is completely anathema to our Constitution. Sharia law is anathema; and to the extent that some believe they should replace our Constitution with their sharia law, then that is treason if they are here in this country. But otherwise, their religious belief should be recognized, and God help us if the Court doesn't do it right. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa). The Life and Legacy of Isaac Lowe

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, Congressman Blum and the future Senator DeSantis, for great words and great insights. Mr. Speaker, I first want to answer a couple of questions that people have had about a couple of votes that my friends, Justin Amash and Thomas Massie, and I had. One is on H.R. 4742. It is described to authorize the National Science Foundation to support entrepreneurial programs for women. Since my wife and I have been blessed with three beautiful daughters, inside and out, all three of them absolutely brilliant--these type of things are important to me--but I note that it says, ``studies have shown that technology and commercialization ventures are successful when women are in top management positions.'' It also puts into law that the requirement that, under the Science and Engineering Equal Opportunities Act, it is required that the National Science Foundation encourage its entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the commercial world. Now, it just seems like--and I know these are incredibly well intended. Both H.R. 4742 and H.R. 4745 are very, very well intended. Wonderful people put them forward. I understand that. But just from my experience and from the common sense I hear as I get all over east Texas, it just seems like Washington is always a step behind or--an old saying--a day late and a dollar short. Now we are $19 trillion short. But we want to take time from our $19 trillion in debt to demand that the National Science Foundation discriminate based on gender. There may be some young boy who needs encouragement from a tough family situation, but this program is designed to discriminate against that young, poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the boy. Encourage the girl. It just seems that, if we are ever going to get to the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., that he spoke just down the Mall, he wanted people to be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. I know after race has been an issue that needed attention, then gender appropriately got attention, because the whole Constitution of the United States, when it is properly read verbatim, means men, women, race, creed, color, national origin, and gender. Those things are not supposed to matter. It just seems like, when we come in and we say that it is important that for a while we discriminate, we end up getting behind. And then probably 25 years from now boys are going to have fallen behind in numbers, and then we are going to need to come in and say: Actually, when we passed that bill forcing encouragement of girls and not encouraging of little boys, we were getting behind the eight ball. We didn't see that we were going to be leaving little boys in the ditch, and now we need to start doing programs to encourage little boys. We are always going to be behind until we get around to saying from this House floor that we don't care where you are from, we don't care what your gender is, and we don't care what you like look. You may be as homely as Abraham Lincoln. We don't care what you look like. We don't care about the color of your hair or the lack of hair. We don't care. We want you not to have an equal outcome, but to have an equal opportunity to excel, and then let the best person do the best job and excel. That is what has made free market systems work so well. I was reminded to check out a lady that is known as Madame Curie, Marie Sklowdowska Curie, Madame Curie. It says she was born in Warsaw, then the Kingdom of Poland. Her achievements included the development of the theory of radioactive isotopes and the discovery of two elements: polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes; she founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw; and she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in radiation. So as I think about it, it has got to be millions and millions of lives that this brilliant woman, Madame Curie, has saved because of her work. She died early at 66 because of her work in the laboratory--she had aplastic anemia, apparently from her work with radioactive isotopes--but the lives that woman saved by her work in the laboratory. However, if our bill, H.R. 4742, had been in law back in Poland or France as she tried to move forward, the Science Foundation there would have been required to tell Madame Curie: Do you know what? You are pretty good in the laboratory, but under this law from the wisdom of Congress, we are supposed to tell you to go into commercial enterprise and make a whole bunch more money because you are better off not being in the laboratory but being out in the commercial world because you will be a better businessperson than men. You need to get out there. I thank God that there wasn't a program like this that distracted her. This brilliant, caring woman basically gave her life to save many, many millions by the phenomenal work she did in the laboratory. But according to the bill that we passed today, we are requiring the Science Foundation to encourage entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the commercial world. Thank God that is not what Madame Curie did. We did have another bill. Part of the program is good for boys and girls, but then there is a part, Aspire to Inspire, that engages young girls to present science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career opportunities, et cetera. And on the next one, provide an opportunity for female middle school students. We don't want to provide an opportunity under this bill for boys. Let the boys fight, let them get into gangs; but the women, the young girls, that is who we want to encourage. In section 3, NASA shall--not just may, but shall--encourage women and girls to study science, technology, and engineering. I was inspired in a little town in Mount Pleasant, Texas, growing up by people who encouraged boys and girls equally. We had some very, very smart girls and we had some smart guys. Our teachers really didn't care whether we were boys or girls. They wanted us to work hard and they wanted us to excel. They were incredibly good teachers, and I learned so much. I learned so much in math that in college algebra at Texas A&M, I didn't have to open my book but for 15 minutes for the final. That is all I had to do for the whole semester because of the incredible bases I got in math from my seventh grade teacher, Ms. Edwards, and my high school math teachers were terrific. But, anyway, I hope that we can get beyond pandering and try to get to the point where we, as a Congress, will say: We don't care what you look like. The things you can't help, how you look, your gender, we don't care about those. We want you to have an equal opportunity with everybody else. I hope and pray that is the direction we go. I also hope and pray that those who are suffering in Europe, in Brussels, after the horrendous attacks by radical Islamists, will be comforted by friends and by God himself. For those who have lost loved ones, we need to reach out to the families and be for them, with them, and encourage them. But the best legacy we could provide would be to stop the insane efforts to win over radical Islamists by trying to be this phenomenal friend to them. An article today by Greg Botelho from CNN says, and these are the highlights: ``A U.S. official speculates ISIS is `trying to make an international statement' by attacking the home of NATO, the EU.'' He also points out: ``Two explosions rock the Brussels airport, another rips through a subway station in the Belgian capital.'' This article from CNN, unfortunately, says: ``While jarring, the carnage wasn't altogether surprising. Belgium has been going after terrorist threats for months, as illustrated by last week's capture of Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, in a bloody raid in Brussels.'' Apparently if you stand up against radical Islam to stop these people who would take us back to the Dark Ages of despotism, book burning, and horrors of basic slavery if you don't believe as you are told, we will be better off if we can be nice to them. We have an administration that said Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world, so we think maybe if we cut a deal where we release to them $100 billion to $150 billion, that they will surely start being nice to us. And those Castros, Fidel and Raul Castro, down in Cuba, they have been dictators. They have tortured, they have been horrendous in the harm that they have brought to the people of Cuba. How do we know, even though people like Sean Penn and others have told us how wonderful it is, they have the best health care in the world? Well, it turns out, actually, they are really wanting to get to the United States. It turns out they are wanting to come in droves to the United States because it is not so good living under a dictator like the Castros. What the President has done, unknowingly, is put his stamp of approval on a dictatorship that has been incredibly brutal, just as this administration did to the terrorists in charge in Iran. People will further suffer, just as they have in the last few days while the President visited Cuba. The administration in charge in Cuba, the dictators, were brutalizing people who had the gall to come out and want to act as if they had freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. One poor woman was beaten, stripped naked, and dragged off to jail. Apparently that is okay under the new approach of the U.S. administration if we are trying to outreach to them and they are wanting our outreach to go better. The fact is it is one thing to have relations commercially with another country, but when we, as the United States, the freest country that has ever existed until we began to lose our freedoms here more recently, when we yield to dictators, to terrorist leaders like in Iran, the world suffers. We have been given a massive responsibility by being the freest and, up until recently, possibly the most powerful country in the world. China has come on strong. Others have nuclear weapons that will use them and want to use them. Our position is in jeopardy. To whom much is given of them, much will be required. We should be more faithful so that when a country like Nigeria begs help to deal with radical Islam and Boko Haram, we should not have to hear from a Catholic bishop in Nigeria that the Obama administration is demanding that they change their laws to embrace same-sex marriage against their religious beliefs, appropriate for abortion even when it violates their religious beliefs, chide the leader of Kenya or other countries to give up their religious beliefs, and follow the amoral teaching of whoever happens to be in charge in America. There are consequences for using the power of the United States to bully other countries and to allow them to suffer immeasurably while we act haute as if, because of their Christian beliefs, they are not as worthy as those in the United States that do not follow Christian beliefs. More Christians are suffering and being persecuted, but Jesus said: You will suffer for my sake. As we see also in Israel in the latest attack there, people are suffering and being killed. FOX News had this article regarding the Peninsula Group based in Tel Aviv. There is massive suffering at the hands of radical Islam. As Europe suffers dreadfully at the hands of radical Islam and at the hands of people who have poured into their countries illegally due to their naive but permissive policies, the last thing they need to hear is from the United States President that they need to be careful, not to be biased or prejudiced against the radical Islamists that want to kill them and have killed their family members, because according to this administration, the far bigger danger is bias against those who want to kill us and eliminate our civilized way of life. God help us all. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus), my friend. I mean, just within days of Mr. Rothfus arriving here at the Capitol as a United States Congressman, we were together, abiding together, standing together, and it has been my great honor to do so. I have come to know his heart. He is a man of intellect, a man of character.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, to hear my friend Mr. Rothfus talk about the Little Sisters of the Poor--I have not met them personally as he has. I don't know them personally as he does, but it is rather clear they bear a great deal of resemblance in the way they carry themselves, in the way they help others, in the way they are incredibly selfless, that they are living their lives truly committed to doing what Jesus said when he said: If you love me, you will tend my sheep. These Little Sisters of the Poor, these Catholic nuns, since I haven't met them personally and dealt with them personally, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus), my friend, has, I take it from his description and from what I have seen of them on television and heard them speak on radio and television and in the written media, these are precious, extraordinary women, the kind of people about which Jesus spoke when he said: They will inherit the Earth. Unfortunately, between that time when they inherit all things, they have to endure the slings and arrows of people who ridicule and persecute Christians for their beliefs. It is so remarkable that we are supposed to have this incredibly educated judiciary, this incredibly educated group of people in the United States, when, as I have heard repeatedly in my district over the last few months, you know, there is sense, s-e-n-s-e, in Washington and at the Capitol, but it's not common sense there. It is common sense where the Little Sisters of the Poor are located. It is common sense where I live in Texas, common sense among the 12 counties that I travel constantly. There are places around the country it is common sense, but not here, because the people around the country can read the First Amendment to our Constitution. It says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This is a Nation, according to our Founders, who had a tremendous amount to say about our foundation. I know that we have had people educated to the level of Ph.D.--perhaps even beyond, whatever that is-- and yet they have not gotten a complete education of the basis on which this Nation was founded. They have been convinced by people who have taken tiny little parts of our founding and seen little trees and shrubs and ignored the forest. If people on the Supreme Court and in our Federal court system would dare to look at a full history of this Nation, they might actually read what the Pilgrims themselves said in their own writing, their own agreement, because in 1620, November 11, 1620--I am quoting from the Pilgrims: ``In the name of God, Amen . . . having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick.'' Or how about September 26, 1642, some educational institution called Harvard that has also been educating people out of common sense. Thank God there are people who have graduated from Harvard and have been able to maintain some level of common sense. But Harvard said: ``Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of Him (Proverbs 2:3).'' Or how about this entry in George Washington's prayer book. Perhaps some of our courts' liberal judges, some of them have probably heard of George Washington, and I know in some of our schools we have had to drop the study of real history because they are teaching to the ridiculous test that some bureaucrats think should be appropriate because the Federal Government has gotten too involved and gone beyond what the Constitution allows them to require and do. But George Washington's prayer book included this prayer: ``O, most glorious God and Jesus Christ, I acknowledge and confess my faults in the weak and imperfect performance of the duties of this day. I called on Thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins, but so coldly and carelessly that my prayers are come my sin and stand in need of pardon. I have heard Thy holy word, but with such deadness of spirit that I have been an unprofitable and forgetful hearer . . . Let me live according to those holy rules which Thou hast this day prescribed in Thy holy word. Direct me to the true object, Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and life. Bless, O Lord, all the people of this land.'' Wow. That was the father of our country, in his prayer book that is. So I think about the wisdom. Proverbs says fear the Lord's beginning of wisdom, and I think about the wisdom of a lady who is not that well formally educated, Ms. Milam in Mount Pleasant, Texas, one of my mother's best friends. My late mother had some awesome friends, and I loved to hear them talk. Ms. Milam's daughter, Emma Lou, was talking to her mother, Ms. Milam, and it was my great honor when I was able to drive as a 14-year-old and Ms. Milam would call over and tell my mother: Tell Louie I have got some homemade rolls. And I would head over to Ms. Milam's house because they were incredible. She had real butter. She didn't have a very advanced education. I don't know if she got to seventh or eighth grade. I know she didn't go too far at all in school, but she was a very, very smart woman. And having discussions, sometimes eating rolls and real butter, and hearing the wisdom of this lady--I think she was 90, maybe, when she said this, but her daughter was talking about someone there in our hometown where I was growing up, Mount Pleasant, and she mentioned a guy there. Ms. Milam said: He is a fool. Emma Lou, her daughter, said: Mother, he has his Ph.D. Ms. Milam said: I don't care. He will always be a p-h-u-l, fool. There are people in this country, they may have their Ph.D.s, but they will always be, as dear Ms. Milam, Emma Lou Leftwhich's mother, you say he will still be a p-h-u-l, fool. She may not have been the most accurate speller, but she knew a fool when she saw and heard one. So we have people who have not been properly educated about our history, and so they go about miseducating others by telling people like me when we were students: By the way, Benjamin Franklin was a deist, someone who believes if there was something that created the universe and it didn't just all amazingly happen from a big bang or whatever--some of us believe there could be a big bang and still have been intelligent design to what happened. But we were told Ben Franklin, no, he didn't believe that there was a God that intervened in the ways of man, that if there was a deity or something of force that set things in motion, that that thing, force, deity, whatever it is, if it still exists, it never interferes with the laws of nature, the ways of man. It just lets everything play out, so we are on our own. But if you look at the words Ben Franklin wrote and spoke himself, we know what he said in 1787, June, at the Constitutional Convention, because he was asked for a copy. He wrote it down. Madison took notes, but Franklin wrote it down. In part, he says--and, of course, he was 80 years old, a couple years away from meeting his Judge, his Maker. This brilliant man said: ``I have lived, sir, a long time, 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''-- God's--``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 the house, they labor in vain that build it.' '' He said: ``I firmly believe this; and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial local interests . . . and we ourselves shall beome a reproach and a byword down to future ages.'' This is a man who is one of the greatest Founders of this country, who made clear, standing before all of these brilliant people in Philadelphia and the little Independence Hall and told them unashamedly that if we do not invoke God's help here in our effort to put together a Constitution that this country will work and live under, then we will succeed no better than the builders of Babel. It will all come crashing down, as the Tower of Babel did. Yet we get far enough from that amazing speech in 1787--and yes, it is true that because they didn't have a treasury; they didn't have money; they weren't getting paid; they weren't able to hire a chaplain, as they had throughout the Revolution. The Continental Congress had a chaplain that led in prayer every day before they started. They didn't have money. They didn't have a treasury. They couldn't hire a chaplain. There were denominations of Christians there that didn't trust other members to do a prayer that was satisfactory for all, so they all had to hire a chaplain during the Continental Congress days to do the prayer for everyone, that they could all be assured was a fair prayer to each of the Christian sects. Even the Quakers would not get upset if they picked the right Christian chaplain. So that is what they did. But it is true, after Franklin made this speech, that it was pointed out they have got no money. They can't hire a chaplain. So they will get to that later--and later, they did. Because since that first day that Congress was sworn in, in 1789, in Federal Hall there in New York, right after George Washington put his hand on his own Bible and added the words to the end of his oath of office ``so help me God,'' he goes in, he makes a brief speech--back in those days, they did that, a brief speech--to Congress. Then they all went down to St. Paul's Chapel, which is still there, that was protected from the concrete and debris and steel--all those things that came flying--totally protected by a sycamore tree that fell there in the cemetery. It was totally protected--even the fragile stained glass windows--from any harm. The chapel where George Washington and the first Congress, after they were sworn in, came down Wall Street and actually had a prayer service together in St. Paul's Chapel. Is it any wonder that, after 9/11, the only building that was not harmed in what was considered part of Ground Zero was St. Paul's Chapel, where that first prayer session came together? Jonathan Cahn has written eloquently about that. When I was there a few months after 9/11, that is where everybody was bringing their wreaths and their messages that just broke your heart: Has anyone seen this person? It is St. Paul's Chapel. It is not just me that says it. But let's go to another of our Founders. A lot of people don't know that he was a Founder, Noah Webster. In 1783, Noah Webster wrote and published the first book on proper spelling for words, which eventually morphed into our dictionary. Generation after generation has learned at the hands of Noah Webster, and a lot of people don't realize what an important role Noah Webster had as a thinker, as a brilliant man, as a confidant to George Washington, as a confidant to Alexander Hamilton, another of our Founders. But that brilliant man, Noah Webster, said this: ``The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all of our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.'' Wow. Of course, Jedidiah Morse, the father of American geography, as he is called, and the father of Samuel B. Morse, stated: ``Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.'' Of course, this is what the Supreme Court has been doing, the very thing that our Founders, including this direct statement of Jedidiah Morse made: when the pillars of Christianity fall, then self-government is going to fall with it. And that is why John Adams had made the point that he did, that this form of government is intended only for a religious and moral people. It is totally ineffective to govern any other kind. Yes, they had some things wrong. No one should have been enslaved when a Constitution and a Bill of Rights were adopted, as it was. No one should have been. People should have been treated equally--not by behavior or conduct, because there have to be laws governing behavior and conduct and choices--but regarding things that you have no control over: race, creed, color, gender, national origin. And it took a little while to get that right. People talk about Jefferson. People say he didn't even believe in God. Are you kidding me? Jefferson, whose memorial is not far from this very Capitol--a beautiful dome overlooking the Tidal Basin--has inscribed on the walls: ``Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?'' John Quincy Adams, our youngest diplomat in the history of the United States, appointed by George Washington. Became President in the election of 1824. He was the only person to have been President and, after he was President--defeated in 1828 by Andrew Jackson--runs for Congress in 1830. Nobody ever did that before or since. Why would anybody run for Congress after they had been President? Well, in the case of John Quincy Adams, it was because he believed God had called him to do what William Wilberforce was doing and had almost completed doing in the British Empire, and that is, eliminating slavery because of his beliefs of the teachings in the Bible. By the way, John Quincy Adams overlapped with Lincoln for about a year just down the hall here. We now call it Statuary Hall. It has got a brass plate where his desk was. There is a brass plate where a skinny, not that handsome guy sat in the very back for 2 years, overlapped with Adams. I asked the historian Steve Mansfield about this. He said, there is no question about it that Abraham Lincoln, sitting at the back of Statuary Hall--the back of the House Chamber down the hall, listening to the speeches of John Quincy Adams over and over about the evils of slavery and how in the world could we expect God to continue blessing America when we are putting brothers and sisters in chains? He said, there is no question; those speeches materially affected Lincoln more than anything else in his 2 brief years in the House of Representatives, so much so that after the compromise of 1850 and slavery appeared to be perpetuated, that eventually he had to get back involved in politics to try to get rid of slavery. Why? Because Lincoln, who started as an infidel, as Mansfield's book ``Lincoln's Battle With God'' points out, he bragged about being an infidel in the early 1820s. But by the time he became President, he had no question whatsoever: There is a God Almighty who has control of the universe. He does let us make free choices. And Lincoln felt like he may have made some wrong choices that contributed to trouble in the country that broke his heart, caused him depression. But he believed. He was materially affected by the man who believed that God had called him to bring an end to slavery. And in obedient response to what he believed was God's calling, he materially affected that young freshman sitting at the back of Statuary Hall to the point that he ended up being the leader that brought about the end of slavery. My friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus) was quoting from and relating to Martin Luther King, Jr. What was he? He was an ordained Christian minister who believed in God, who believed in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, just like the little Sisters of the Poor, who have dedicated their lives to helping others who don't have the ability to care for themselves. They have spent so much of their lives that would equate to millions and millions of dollars providing health care and help to people in need. And what happens? We have, as Thomas Jefferson related, gotten so far from remembering where our rights come from that this Nation is in peril of continuing to stay free. You have other statements. John Quincy Adams says: ``The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: It connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.'' From the day of the Declaration, they--the American people--were bound by the laws of God and by the laws of the gospel which they nearly all acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. Well, certainly. Under the freedom of religion in our First Amendment that was adopted June 15, 1790, nobody can be forced to become a Christian. God gives us free choice. And that is part of the foundation of this Nation and the freedoms. And the minute that a majority of this country think our freedoms come from a government, those freedoms are gone. The Nation--at least a majority--must accept that our freedoms are a gift from God that should be protected by the government, and the minute a majority believes otherwise, then it is--as defendants used to say, after they were sentenced in my court, sometimes they would say: It is all over but the slow talking and the low walking. And so it will be over for this Nation when a majority believes that freedom is something this government in Washington gives benevolently to us. Because once that belief is a majority belief, then the government giveth and the government taketh away. What that government will find, as every government that has ever been instituted, whether king, dictator, emperor, Parliament, Congress, it ultimately will always find that when you do not know the basis, the foundation of the world, then your government will not last just a whole lot longer. That is why the Founders kept trying to make sure we understood this. Alexis de Tocqueville, that my friend, Mr. Rothfus, referenced, who came over here to do a study of what was making America so special and great. This one is not often quoted, but it is a quote from 1835: There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the Earth. There are so many quotes that are part of our history. Franklin Roosevelt, 1935, says: We cannot read the history of our rising development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity. It was the Ambassador to the U.N. from Lebanon, and later President of the U.N. of the General Assembly said this in 1958, ``Whoever tries to conceive the American word without taking full account of the suffering and love of salvation of Christ is only dreaming. ``I know how embarrassing this matter is to politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and cynics, but whatever these honored men think, the irrefutable truth is that the soul of America is at its best and highest Christian.'' But you don't have to be a Christian. You can be an atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever you want to be, as long as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is foremost in your guiding principle here in this country. But this administration has done what really would be unthinkable in any other administration. It basically has an undeclared--publicly undeclared war against Christianity. And it has sown seeds around the world so that when I have met and wept with people, victims in Nigeria and around the world, they don't understand why America doesn't stand up against Christian genocide around the world and their suffering. Because when you look, the United States Government will litigate against the Little Sisters of the Poor, Mother Teresa, basically, and say: You have got to believe what we tell you to believe. You have got to practice the religious beliefs we tell you to believe. We don't care how moral and Christian and wonderful and humble and helpful you have been. We don't care. You are going to do what the new God of this country says, the five majority on the Supreme Court. That is the new God. It is about marriage. It is about everything else. Until the five majority in the Supreme Court wake up and allow freedom of religion not to be prohibited, consistent with the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, then we have not a whole lot of time left as a free people. As an Australian group told me, if something happens to the United States, forget trying to come to Australia. We are gone as soon as you are. It is time we stand up and make sure religious freedom lives again completely free in America. 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 move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be able to speak on this hallowed floor. A report was made earlier today entitled, ``House Poised to Declare ISIS Committing Genocide Against Christians, Other Minorities.'' And, in fact, this report says: ``The House is poised Monday to approve a resolution that declares the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East-- putting even more pressure on the Obama administration to do the same ahead of a deadline later this week. ``The resolution passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee with unanimous support and is expected to pass the House with bipartisan backing. ``The resolution comes to a vote Monday evening, just days after the release of a graphic new report by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians on ISIS atrocities. The report made the case that the terror campaign against Christians and other minorities in Syria, Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East is, in fact, genocide. `` `When ISIS systematically targets Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities for extermination, this is not only a grave injustice--it is a threat to civilization itself,' Representative Jeff Fortenberry, Republican, Nebraska, said in a statement. `We must call the violence by its proper name: genocide.' ``The resolution will be voted on ahead of the congressionally mandated March 17 deadline for the Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House to make a decision on whether to make such a declaration. The measure is an effort to force the administration's hand on the issue, as the administration has so far declined to take an official position. `` `Christians, Yazidis, and other beleaguered minority groups can find new hope in this transpartisan, ecumenical alliance against ISIS' barbaric onslaught,' Fortenberry, who is co-chairman of the Religious Minorities of the Middle East Caucus and represents America's largest Yazidi community, said in the statement.'' So the measure received the backing of the House Republican leadership, Paul Ryan, calling on the Obama administration to take action like recent attacks against Christians. The article goes on, from foxnews.com, indicating: ``It is rare for Congress to make a genocide determination. ``In addition to the genocide resolution, the House is expected to vote on a measure to create an international tribunal to try ISIS members accused of atrocities.'' Mr. Speaker, it is pleasing to report that H. Con. Res. 75, expressing the sense of Congress that the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL--that is, the Islamic State; and it has used different names, ISIS, ISIL--against religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria include war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, that passed by 393 yeas and zero nays. It is deeply troubling that although this House, in a bipartisan way, could vote 393 for this resolution and zero against, that Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama are having trouble deciding what they should do. Gee, is it possible they might just notice that in the House of Representatives we came together unanimously and said what ISIS has been doing is genocide? For heaven's sake, for the sake of the Christians, the Yazidis, the Jews in the area, is it too much to ask that this United States administration take notice that there is a genocide going on? And though the administration is not doing much of anything about it, is it too much to ask that this administration at least call it what it is; that this House, on both sides of the aisle, unanimously said the same thing? Is it too much to ask, even if you are not going to fight the genocide, at least call it what it is, then that will embolden others with courage to stand up and fight more fearlessly? Is that too much to ask? I hope and pray not, Mr. Speaker. In the meantime, what we find here at home, while we are still having the administration struggle over whether to call genocide genocide, we have a report from ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, it is revealed that 124 illegal immigrant criminals released from jail by the Obama administration since 2010 have been subsequently charged with murder. The Center for Immigration Studies report on the data from ICE to the Senate Judiciary Committee added that the committee is not releasing the names of these masses of murder suspects. `` `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 new homicides after the thousands of crimes they have already committed before ICE released them. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times,' said the report written by CIS' respected Director of Policy Studies, Jessica M. Vaughan. ``She added that 75 percent were released due to court orders or because their countries wouldn't take them back. ``What's more, her report said that in 2014, ICE released 30,558 criminal aliens''--that is illegal immigrants in the United States who committed criminal atrocities--``who had been convicted already when they were released of 92,347 crimes.'' Wow. As the world suffers, as this administration cannot determine whether or not to call the genocide of Christians and other minority groups genocide; at the same time, it has been hard at work, out of those thousands, tens of thousands of aliens who have committed over 92,000 criminal acts against Americans here in this country, the administration has been hard at work and deported 3 percent of the tens of thousands of aliens illegally here who have committed over 92,000 crimes, and this administration has deported 3 percent. So much for protecting Americans against all enemies foreign and domestic. This article from Paul Bedard says: ``Her analysis is the latest shocking review of Obama's open-border immigration policy. And despite the high number of illegal immigrants charged with murder, the list doesn't include those released by over 300 so-called 'sanctuary cities' and those ICE declined to even take into custody. ``She said that 124 criminal aliens released by ICE between 2010 and 2015 were charged with murder during that period and 'associated with 250 different communities in the United States, with the most clustered in California, New York, and Texas.''' I would assert parenthetically, Mr. Speaker, for those that are not California, New York, and Texas, you cannot think for a minute that this is not already in your State. If you haven't heard about, it is coming. This says: ``In a memo about the subsequent crimes of released illegals to Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley, ICE said, 'The aliens were charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes subsequent'''--for my liberal friends, that means after--``'to release from ICE custody. As of July 25, 2015, a total of 39 convictions have resulted from these homicide-related charges. Of the 121 total aliens, 2 had homicide-related convictions prior to release from ICE custody.''' ICE released them knowing that they already had homicide-related convictions, and they were released to kill again upon the American public. Though they violated our laws to get here and they violate our laws to stay here, this administration has seen to their release upon the American public further. ``Vaughan added that 'ICE reported that there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least twice by ICE since 2013. Between them, these criminals had 1,776 convictions'''--that kind of sounds patriotic. Since 2013, ICE has released 1,776 criminals with 1,776 convictions before they are released in 2013, including burglary, larceny, you know, those things that hurt America. This article from cis.org also says: ``Only a tiny percentage of the released criminals have been removed--most receive the most generous forms of due process available and are allowed to remain at large, without supervision, while they await drawn-out immigration hearings. They are permitted to take advantage of this inefficient processing even though they are more likely to re-offend than they are to be granted legal status.'' Further down it says: ``Some aliens had multiple ZIP Codes associated with them in ICE's system, so the records include more ZIP Codes than the 121 individual criminal aliens charged''--with murder--``through 2014. Three more were charged in 2015; ICE did not provide their ZIP Codes...ICE reported there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least twice by ICE since 2013.'' That, of course, was in the other article. It goes on to say: ``ICE has previously disclosed that 75 percent of the homicidal criminal aliens were released due to court orders.'' Most of those would be immigration judges who sit at the discretion of the Attorney General of the United States. So perhaps people can let our Attorney General know that they would like our Attorney General to pick some immigration judges who might actually enforce our law instead of forgo the law so criminal aliens can commit more crimes against Americans. I know, I understand there is so much going on, it is difficult to deal with all these issues at the same time, and that is why the administration is struggling so whether or not to officially say that the genocide going on in the Middle East of Christians and other minorities is actually genocide. It is just taking so much brain power. Even though in here it was 393-0, the administration right down on Pennsylvania Avenue here just can't decide if it really might be genocide or not. ``In a separate communication, ICE provided a list of the 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.'' Gee, Cuba? It is a real shame that as this administration negotiated all the things that it was going to give to and do for Cuba that they didn't apparently bring this issue up: Oh, by the way, the criminal aliens that you have had come into our country are coming back to your country because they are your citizens illegally in our country. They are coming back to you, like it or not. Apparently, I guess maybe with all the concentration on whether genocide is genocide, they weren't able to remember to bring that up to Cuba or to China. In Afghanistan, one of my Muslim friends who is a great leader there in Afghanistan pointed out a few years ago when he was talking about the leverage that the United States has and should use to get Afghanistan to do the right thing by its people and by the United States, I said: Well, why do you think--this was in a visit in Afghanistan. I said: Why do you think we have much leverage? This is a few years ago. He said: Do you know what our annual budget is for the government in Afghanistan? No. I didn't know. He said: Around 12 billion American dollars. Do you know how much of that the United States provides? He said: We provide about 1\1/2\ billion of our 12. You provide most of the rest of it. He said: Yes, you have got plenty of leverage. But, apparently, this administration, maybe again they are so flustered in trying to decide if ISIS, who has expressly indicated they want to wipe out all Christians and they want to wipe Israel off the map, they are trying to decide if that means that is really a genocide, so they haven't had time to notice that we have massive leverage over the Afghan Government to get them to do the right thing and take back their criminal aliens that are in this country illegally and send them back and take them; otherwise, the 10, 12 of your budget that we provide may not get provided anymore. But again, I know this administration doesn't want to offend people that are killing American citizens. I get that. It is special being that sensitive. Algeria, China, India, Iran, Mr. Speaker, I just can't help but wonder if, before the President authorized $100 billion to $150 billion going to Iran, if maybe it occurred in someone's mind: Do you know what? I am going to save some American lives by forcing Iran to take back the criminal aliens from Iran that are not lawfully here in the United States. I wonder if anybody in this administration maybe thought about that. Did they think about it and send the President the message and it just didn't get to the President? Or it didn't get to John Kerry, and they didn't think about it on their own: Gee, do you know what? We know Iran has already said they are going to spend some of that $100 billion, $150 billion on weapons systems on more terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Yeah, they have said that we are going to spend more money on all these things. We knew that. Did it occur that that is bad enough that you are giving money that is going to be used to kill Americans, Christians, Jews, Yazidis, it is going to be used to terrorize the world? Maybe you could have helped American citizens out by saying: And, by the way, before we release it, you are going--and never mind that they violated the agreement over and over--but you, Iran, are going to need to accept back the criminal aliens from your country that are killing and terrorizing Americans in our country illegally. Did nobody think of that? It is incredible, just incredible. Americans are suffering. Then we get this report from cis.org that 61 million immigrants and their children, young children, now live in the United States. Now, most of those, I think 43 million or so, are here legally. But it is worth noting that the number of immigrants and their children grew six times faster than our Nation's population between 1970 and 2015. From 1970 to 2015, our United States population has grown by 59 percent. That is a good, healthy growth. In the meantime, the percentage of immigration growth, or the number of immigrants in the United States--first generation, that is. Most all, everybody here, even Native Americans weren't native probably at one time. They have come across somewhere. But first-generation immigrants who actually immigrated in with children, that number has grown by 353 percent over that same period. In many States, the increase in the number of immigrants and their minor children from 1970 to 2015 has been nothing short of astonishing. In Georgia, the population grew 3,058 percent; whereas, before that, it grew from 55,000 immigrants to 1.75 million immigrants. That is just in Georgia. So the immigrant level grew 20 times faster, 25 times faster, than the overall State population. So thank God for immigration. Thank God for legal immigration, that is. But when we abandon the rule of law and don't give ourselves time to welcome legal immigrants into this country and educate them--there is a reason that they have to be educated and are supposed to learn our language and supposed to learn some history, because there is a tremendous amount of responsibility that comes with the right to vote. You need to understand how you say what Ben Franklin said was ``a republic, Madam, if you can keep it.'' You cannot keep a republic if you don't educate people that are coming in and who are foreign to the idea of the responsibilities of maintaining a republic. You don't keep it. You can't keep it. On the wave of that came this editorial from Dan Hannan, a member of the European Parliament, dated today. Apparently, he spent part of last summer volunteering in a hostel for underage migrants in the south of Italy. He talks about the migrants that came in. He says: ``I have seen refugee columns before, and they tend to be made up disproportionately of women and children. Of the boat people landed by the coast guard while I was in Italy, more than 80 percent were young men. Young men who, I noticed, took out smartphones when they disembarked and looked for Wi-Fi so as to tell their relatives'' how good it was. He says: ``Official policy in Europe is based on a misdiagnosis. The migrants are treated as refugees, and there is an implicit assumption that their displacement is somehow our fault. In the weirdly narcissistic tradition of the Left, the West is simultaneously blamed for having intervened in Libya and for not having intervened in Syria. But the lads I was working with in Italy were from countries that we never bombed--except with aid money.'' Mr. Speaker, it is time we look seriously at the oath every Member of Congress, the Senate, the President, the Vice President, everybody in elected Federal office takes. We are supposed to defend this Constitution. That means we are to provide for the common defense against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is high time we took that more seriously. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank Mr. Rothfus, my friend from Pennsylvania. He is exactly right. We have so many people across this Nation who understand the tragedy of taking a child's life before it is fully born. Mr. Speaker, I know there are some people, like our friend Donald Trump, who say Planned Parenthood has done a lot more good; but the trouble is, so often, Planned Parenthood takes money from the Federal Government and then just refers the women out. Of course, that has been perpetuated by this administration in its making it sound like Planned Parenthood does mammograms and other things that they don't do. They refer people to other people. Why not have that money not get held up at Planned Parenthood? Why not have that money go directly to the thousands of healthcare providers that actually provide the care that the women are seeking and not have it go to Planned Parenthood so that they can get money from the government and then keep their abortion business going? That also leads right into this article today from the National Review, Jim Geraghty, regarding ObamaCare. Headline: ``Deductibles Increased in 41 States under ObamaCare.'' It reads: Freedom Partners unveils a new `Deductibles Tracker' showing how much deductibles have increased, on average, in each State. I know this will shock you, but most people are finding their deductibles are going up and, in some cases, way up. Their analysis shows deductibles have increased in 41 States under ObamaCare--in some States, like Mississippi, by over $1,000. Seventeen States, representing over half of total exchange enrollment, are seeing double-digit spikes. The largest increases were in Mississippi, which went up 39 percent; Washington State went up 31 percent; South Carolina went up 26 percent; Louisiana went up 24 percent; Florida went up 23 percent; Minnesota and Vermont went up 22 percent; Arizona went up 21 percent; North Carolina went up 20 percent. Mr. Speaker, what makes it so incredibly difficult is knowing there are Federal dollars that are being used for abortion and being used for purposes that are against the religious beliefs of so many Americans. When we think that the whole object we were told for having ObamaCare and passing it against the will of the majority of the American people was so that we could make sure everybody had insurance, now it appears that there has not been much change in the net number of people covered under insurance. Oh, yes, it is true. There are some people who were paying for their insurance who no longer have it--they can't afford it anymore. It is true that we have some people who were not paying for it who are having it provided now, but it really appears to have been more a transfer of working people's money to people who were not working. It appears that we have been moving into a socialist agenda for some time, and that goes back to what President Obama said when he first ran, telling ``Joe the Plumber'' that he wanted it to be about spreading the wealth around. The pilgrims found out that, at least in this world, if you try to share and share alike--the Early New Testament tried it, and it didn't work--and if you start allowing people who are not working to have the same benefits as those who work, you will have more and more people who are not working. I hear from so many of my constituents--I know I hear from others of my friends here in Congress--that constituents are hurting. Their insurance is costing more, and like this article points out, the deductibles have gone higher. Ask one of my staff, who is not making very much. If you make $30,000 and if you have a deductible of $6,000 as a healthy young person, what that basically means is that every dime you are paying into health care is not going to help your health care whatsoever. You are paying for the new IRS agents, the new navigators, and the new government union workers who will never spray Bactine on anybody's cut, who will never put a Band-Aid on. They will just keep adding forms, adding requirements, taking more time away from the true healthcare providers and more money away from the true healthcare providers for bureaucrats. I know, back when I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union and when I went and toured some of the most up-to-date facilities in what was the Soviet Union at the time, I thanked God that I lived in America. I thanked God that we had such incredible health care and that I didn't have to rely on what appeared to have been 30- or 40-year-old antiquated healthcare methods and equipment for my health care. Even living in the small town of Mount Pleasant, as I did, I knew we had a lot better healthcare facilities in my hometown where I was growing up than they did in one of the largest cities--well, the largest city in Ukraine--Kiev, where I toured facilities. I toured a medical school and I couldn't believe how far behind our medical schools that they were. It is what happens when you continue moving towards socialized health care. I know Mr. Trump, initially, wanted the government to provide everybody's health care, but apparently in his being informed that conservatives don't like that, he is now saying no, that that is not where he is going. We know that President Obama, back before he was President, was caught on video saying that we want to go to single payer--in other words, socialized medicine--where the government is in charge of everybody's health care. I know I have got conservative friends who say, Louie, we don't have to worry. We don't have to fight ObamaCare, because socialized medicine always fails. They are wrong. Socialism always fails. As Margaret Thatcher said, eventually, you run out of other people's money. You incentivize not working and penalize working, and that is what we are doing here in America now. We are moving in that direction, toward socialism. The only time true capitalism, true free liberty, entrepreneurism in the marketplace fails is when it starts moving into socialist tendencies and adopting socialist ways. Then that can spell doom for capitalism, those who want to have a dictatorial Federal national government. That is where they want to see things go. But it is ironic that when a free market society struggles, it is when they start incorporating socialist tendencies and rewarding improper conduct or nonworking. Then you have a lot more people not working. You incentivize people not to hire. You penalize people for hiring. You penalize people for hiring more than 50 people, like ObamaCare does. I have talked to people that still say that they could hire more, but they are not going to because of ObamaCare. That means there are people walking around today going from business to business, looking for a job that will not find that business that will hire them because of ObamaCare. When you have young people with 5-, 6-, $7,000 deductible health insurance, they are paying for the bureaucracy. They are not paying for health care. Apparently, some religious beliefs dictate against birth control. Mine doesn't, my Christian beliefs. But I absolutely respect the religious beliefs of those who are against it. They should not have to pay for people to violate their religious beliefs. That used to be the way this country grew and was blessed by God. But as we turn further and further away from what was a blessing to America, then the world hurts. I have seen it in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America. When we are not strong--as I have said numerous times, quoting a South African gentleman: When you get weak, we suffer. Please tell people in Washington to quit getting weaker. We suffer when you are weaker. These kind of programs, ObamaCare, make us weaker. When we provide the resources, the ability for the largest supporter of terrorism in the world to have over $100 billion, which they say some of it is for sure going to be spent on more terrorism, that is the kind of activity that will not be blessed. That is the kind of activity that brings a nation's demise. So health care is costing more. Deductibles are going up. People are paying more for higher deductibles, less coverage. Yes. There are some who, because of the government subsidies, are saying: Well, mine's a little less than it was before. But the people that are working are paying more, and it is devastating. Mr. Speaker, it is critical that those of us who have a voice in this city make our voices heard for those in our districts. You can't be listening to the talking heads in this town and think you have heard from America. I mean, look at Politico. Last week they said I had a close race. Tuesday, with one opponent spending tremendously more than I did, two opponents, I won with 82 percent. So that is what Politico calls a close race. Mr. Speaker, I know that I didn't win with 82 percent because of my looks and certainly not because of the way I sound. It is because I make my voice heard for the huge majority of people in east Texas with all the common sense they have got. That is what I am hearing from them. They are outraged that we have allowed ObamaCare to last as long as it has. They are suffering. They are outraged that this administration has turned on our friend, Israel, and seeing that Iran is rewarded for their massive misconduct, as they have continued to be the largest supporter of terrorism in the world, with this administration as an accomplice, as an enabler. There are consequences to nations and governments that enable crime and misconduct and terrorism and abuse. For those who believe in the Bible, it was Hosea. God was explaining why he was about to come down on the children of Israel. I love the rather loose translation when he says that it is because they have selected leaders who were not my choice. So people around the country can say all they want: Well, this President is not my President. This Governor is not my Governor. This person is not my elected representative. I don't agree with them. But everyone in the country will suffer the consequences of poor choices as leaders. That is the way self- government works. Now, I have been reporting, Mr. Speaker, from this very podium for years about the misuse and abuse and providing our security by Homeland Security. I am very grateful to Judicial Watch. In their lawsuit against Homeland Security, they have been able to obtain records that verify what some of us have known to be true because of whistleblowers providing us information. While some, whether CNN and other places, belittle what we have said, we knew what we were talking about, but we couldn't give the sources. Judicial Watch. This headline says: ``Homeland Security Records Reveal Officials Ordered Terrorist Watch List Scrubbed.'' It says: ``Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained 183 pages of documents from the Department of Homeland Security revealing that the Obama administration scrubbed the law enforcement agency's `Terrorist Screening Database' in order to protect what it considered the civil rights of suspected Islamic terrorist groups. The documents appear to confirm charges that Obama administration changes created a massive `hands off' list. Removed data from the terrorist watch list could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terrorist attack.'' Mr. Speaker, I would also submit that we have seen the email--I believe Senator Grassley requested more information about it. To my knowledge, we have not seen additional explanations or information about the email about a person's terrorist ties, indication that he was a radical Islamist. The email response was: Oh, this guy's on the Secretary of Homeland Security's hands-off list. We have read stories about the White House allowing at least one or more individuals with terrorist ties to come to the White House. There are consequences for ignoring the law, ignoring the lawbreakers, and not protecting our homeland. The article says: ``The new documents were produced in response to a Judicial Watch February 2015 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed back on February 13, 2015.'' It should be noted, I mean, that that is over a year ago. The Freedom of Information Act request should have been answered promptly, but this administration is too caught up in trying to cover up their own tracks. That is why we haven't even gotten the Attorney General to provide Members of Congress the documents showing support for terrorism, the boxes of documents that were provided to people who were convicted of supporting terrorism. The Justice Department provided it to them. I have asked repeatedly, and the most I have gotten is reference to a few Web sites. They covered up their own wrongdoing. They have covered up ties to terrorism. They have covered up for people who have supported terrorism. And there are consequences for that. You learn more when you leave this town, Washington, D.C. But when you have people in Africa, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, India, and Afghanistan telling you that your administration in America is supporting violence by not standing up against radical Islam and when you hear that from Muslim leaders who recognize the failures of this administration, then you know that the whole world is seeing what is going on and it is only here that people have become so blind. I know there are people in the Republican establishment that just cannot believe that a man like Trump, who has spent his whole life taking one position, could be leading so big in different contests. And, yes, my friend Ted Cruz is doing quite well. It is nice to see somebody that has been consistently doing well. But around the world they see what is going on. The Republican establishment doesn't seem to understand. People are furious. They are furious about ObamaCare. They are furious that we turned on our friend, Israel. They are furious that we have enabled Iran to continue their terrorist ways. All of this at the same time--of course, this was--Donald Trump's big issue that shot him to the top is border security. This article from today from KRWG News, ``Border Crime Taking A Toll On Residents In Southwest New Mexico, Arizona,'' says: ``Residents of New Mexico's Bootheel and parts of southern Arizona say human smuggling and drug trafficking is taking its toll on the region. ``The Deming Headlight reports that residents are scheduled Thursday to express their concerns to Federal officials during a meeting at the Animas Community Center in Animas, New Mexico. ``Judy Keeler, a longtime resident of the rural border region, says her home was recently burglarized and it's not an unusual episode for other residents. ``Residents have said State Highway 80 has become a favorite for Mexican cartel drug runners who manage to navigate out of the Peloncillo Mountains along the Arizona-New Mexico border. They want an even more increased presence from the U.S. Border Patrol.'' Apparently, they are not going to get it. We still hear people say there is no way to secure our entire border, but this brings back a recollection in history. One of my least favorite Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, secured the border after Pancho Villa had some of his thugs come across the border and kill American families. Americans back then with good sense said: We can't have that. They spurred the President on until he sent tens of thousands of what we call National Guard troops now, and they secured the border. Nobody came across our border that we did not want to come across. He did it back in the early 1900s, and we can't do it now. Well, the truth is, Mr. Speaker, we could do it now, but you have to have an administration with the will to provide for the common defense of the American people. Instead, we have enabled a massive amount of crime across the border regions that is spilling into other areas of the country. Drugs are spreading around the country. We have heard, also, from the FBI Director himself. There are ISIS cells, and there are ISIS investigations in every State in the Union. So when are they going to be triggered? We know that, when they are triggered with reports like we have just read here, the administration has continued to cleanse our Homeland Security records to purge training material for the FBI, for Intelligence, for Homeland Security so they don't actually learn exactly what radical Islam is. They don't actually learn the verses in the Koran that are relied upon by radical Islamists. When we do finally have a Muslim leader like President Sissi in Egypt, who stands up in front of a room of Muslim imams and demands that they take back their region from the radical Islamists, this administration chooses to try to punish him and not help him, like this administration did, and wanted to do more for the Muslim Brotherhood. I am tired of hearing from foreign Muslim leaders their question: Why is your country still helping the Muslim Brotherhood? Don't they know? Don't you know? The Muslim Brotherhood has been at war with you since 1979, and you keep helping them. Well, that is the way you lose a country. You lose it. We have got our choice. Fiscal irresponsibility, which is immoral. Instead of doing like all preceding generations in this country, which have always had as their theme, ``we want to make our country better for our children than we had it,'' now we have gone through a couple of generations who have said: You know what? Forget the future generations. We want future generations' money spent on us now. Fifty years ago, seventy-five years ago, one hundred years ago, even when cars were first invented, you would not have seen a bumper sticker like is not uncommon today, retired persons say, ``We are spending our children's inheritance.'' You wouldn't see that because they wanted to make the country better than they had it. Mr. Speaker, I know you personally, and you and I and our colleagues, we talk about it. We have talked about it today--heated conference-- because we want a better country even than we have had with more opportunity, more freedoms, as we see freedom slipping away. Adam Kredo has a story here: ``The flow of illegal immigrant children into the United States is expected to rise to record-breaking numbers in 2016 as deportations decrease, according to leading members of the Senate's Judiciary Committee. ``At least 20,455 unaccompanied minors have been caught during fiscal year 2016 along the U.S.-Mexico border as of last month, according to Committee Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley, who warned that if this trend continues, the number of illegal minors could eclipse a massive 2014 surge that strained the resources of the Department of Homeland Security and prompted investigations into the Obama administration's handling of the issue.'' Now, one of many problems is you have people that are coming to America because there are more opportunities here, which begs the question: Why are there more opportunities here than there are in their home country? When you analyze the situation, what you find is the reason they don't have businesses booming in their home country is because of graft or corruption or a corrupt government or a dictatorship because, as the old saying goes, ``capital is a coward.'' Money to capitalize or invest always goes to where it feels safest-- that is why it is ``capital is a coward''--and it is not very safe in countries where the government is corrupt, the rule of law is not applied across the board, and the laws are not enforced across the board. One of the great ironies in the world right now is that people are leaving countries where there is violence and the rule of law is not enforced. They are coming to America where, for most of our history, we have done a better job than most any country ever in enforcing the law across the board. Once here illegally, those same people are saying: Now that we are here, we want you not to enforce the law across the board. We want you to ignore your law on immigration and law on becoming citizens. Ignore it. If we do that, it will make us like the corrupt countries they came from and make us a land of no opportunity, where people will have to go to some other country where they enforce the law. I have had even Members of Congress say: Well, if it all goes bad, we will all pack up and head to Australia. But I was talking to some people from Australia this year, and I mentioned that to them, and they didn't laugh. They looked very somber. They said: You know, if something happens to the United States, you are not going to be coming to Australia, because China will take us over like that. If the United States is not standing strong, they said, our country, Australia, will be gone. China would grab us up in a heartbeat. It is important that America stand strong. You can't stand strong when you are financially bankrupt. You can't stand strong when you are morally bankrupt. We seem to have our choice of ways we could meet our demise. Our military is being degraded under this administration, the Navy going back to its size back in--was it?--the early 1900s before World War I. Weakness is provocative. I haven't heard anybody else notice. Maybe there is no correlation; maybe there is. It seems historically, from my study of history, that when a nation's enemy sees that nation's biggest friend pulling away and not being as good a friend, then that enemy is provoked to attack. But it was in May of 2010 when this administration sided with Israel's enemies in demanding that Israel disclose all their weapons systems, including any potential nukes. I was shocked by that. The United States had never sided with all of Israel's enemies like that before. I thought about the Bible story of King Hezekiah when the Babylonian leaders had come to visit and schmoozed with him, and Isaiah asked him: What have you done with the Babylonian leaders? Of course, this is a Texas paraphrased version, but he bragged about: I have taken them and shown them all of our treasure. The most literal translation from the Hebrew says: And I showed them all the defenses we have in our arsenal, our armory. Isaiah explained: You are going to lose the country. You don't show your enemy--you don't even show your friends--all of your defenses, and yet we were demanding that of Israel. Within 48 hours, Israel's enemies launched a flotilla to go challenge the lawful blockade of the Gaza Strip. All that Israel was doing was trying to prevent more rockets from going in because the rockets were being launched at them every day--totally legal. They were trying to defend themselves against rocket attacks and created a terrible situation at the blockade. But as America continues to help fund Iran's desire to support terrorism, and as this administration has turned its back on nations like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, I hear from leaders in those countries where they say: You know, all we wanted was a little help against our enemy. Of course, in Nigeria, having been there and having met with so many of the parents of girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, radical Islamists, we then hear that our administration here says: Oh, yeah, we will give you some help, but you have got to change your religious beliefs. You have got to change your laws so it supports same-sex marriage and you fund abortion, and then we will give you more help. The President in Kenya basically said at a news conference, in effect: You take care of your country. You are not going to come tell us what our religious beliefs and laws should be. As a Nigerian Catholic bishop stated: Our religious beliefs are not for sale--not to President Obama, not to anybody. But there are consequences in world history when one nation tries to destroy the religious beliefs of another country--their closely, firmly held religious beliefs. There are consequences when a nation forgets to say: Thank You, God, for all of our blessings. Thank You, God, for protecting us. Thank You for allowing us to live in the greatest country, a country in which there is more opportunity, more assets per person than anywhere in the world. This is the one country where the number one health problem for our Nation's poor is obesity. It is a terrible problem that we need to deal with. But where in history do you have a country where the nation's poor have, as their number one health problem, obesity? This Nation has been blessed beyond anything that people could have ever dreamed when this Nation was founded. But the Founders did see one thing. They saw the threat of giving more and more power to a Federal Government. I was fortunate to call Justice Scalia a friend. A group of seniors from my hometown of Tyler, Texas, from my church, Green Acres Baptist, came up to Washington, D.C. They said: Hey, you are supposed to be friends with Justice Scalia. We would love to meet him. That is one thing we really want to do in Washington. So I called over, and Justice Scalia, bless his heart, he said: Sure, come on over. So they arranged it. We had the meeting. He walks in. They are all seated there, the seniors from my church, and Justice Scalia could be very talkative. I treasure meals with him, exchanging jokes and stories. It made you feel good about the world. He walks in and leans up against the table at the front: So, you want to meet me. What is your question? What questions have you got? It kind of took them by surprise. One said: Do you think we are the freest Nation in history because of our Bill of Rights? Justice Scalia, in his inimitable style, said: Oh, gosh, no. No. The Soviet Union had a better Bill of Rights than we did. I had forgotten. I made an A on a paper in college that I did about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the Soviet Union. Yeah, they were promised all kinds of rights, but the government was given the power to erode all of the rights that were said to be protected. He said: No. The reason that we are the freest country in history is because our Founders did not trust government, and so they wanted to make it as hard as possible to pass laws. See, the Founders thought that gridlock was a blessing, gridlock was a great thing, because it meant that, as people anticipated passing laws, it would be tough because many laws regulate what you can and can't do. The more laws you pass, just as this administration has shown the American people, as it has set all-time records for the most pages of regulations--there are over 79,000 new pages of regulations every year. How can anybody make a living with that kind of regulation coming out year after year, certainly for the last 7? Incredible. The Founders knew that. They wanted to make it hard for any governmental agency, any government bureaucracy to create laws that took away freedom because they had some libertarian tendencies. Justice Scalia, said: So they wanted it hard to pass laws, so what do they do? They create a legislature with two Houses, and certainly that was part of the compromise. But in England, the House of Lords is not particularly powerful, but they wanted both houses with the power to stop what the other one was doing. They wanted it very difficult in one house to pass a law. I think they would cringe if they saw all the bills that are just passed with unanimous consent or on suspension that we do more and more and more, because they wanted it tough to pass laws. I have friends say: You guys should be in session more often. I say: You don't know what you are asking for, because every day we are in session, we pass some new bill, we pass some new law. Many of those laws take away freedoms of Americans. The Founders knew that. That is why, Justice Scalia said, they created two Houses. If one House got a law through it, the other one could stop it cold. But that wasn't enough to protect our freedom. We want an executive, but not one like a prime minister. The prime minister is elected by the legislature. We don't want that. We want it tough. We want independence. So we are going to have a chief executive, a President, that is elected totally separate from the legislature. Even if the House and Senate finally agree on something, we will give him the power to just say: No. I am not going to let it happen. But that is not enough. We want more gridlock. So let's create a judicial branch, as they did in Article III, that could turn around and say: No. The House, Senate, and the President may have agreed, but we don't agree. It is not consistent with the Constitution. Justice Scalia said that is why we are the freest Nation in history: because our Founders did not trust government. So, Mr. Speaker, it concerns me when I see voters begin to think that our hope is going to arrive on Air Force One. One of my greatest thrills was becoming friends with Chuck Colson. As Chuck Colson said: Our hope will not arrive on Air Force One. The old saying, the axiom, is true: democracy ensures a people are governed no better than they deserve. If you want a good President, you have got to be a good country. An immoral country is not going to elect a great leader. They are going to elect an immoral leader. When you see Christians who believe that the only way to the saving grace of Jesus is to ask for forgiveness and, as the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, it is amazing to see Christian leaders saying they are going to put their faith in a guy that says he has never had to ask for forgiveness. But that was modified later to: Well, I don't think God's concerned with trivial things like that. If I were God, I wouldn't be. But thank God I am not God. He seems to care about every individual. If you believe the Bible, that is what it says. And then, if there is not enough bad news, this comes from KPNX today: ``Attorney General Report: Possible smuggling trail between the Middle East and Arizona border.'' We have talked about that before. Long before, the Attorney General indicated that there appeared to be a trail between the Middle East and the Arizona border. We have this story this week from Stephen Dinan from The Washington Times: ``Top border chief to agents who object to Obama amnesty: `Look for another job.' '' There you are, Mr. Speaker. When the head of the border agency says they are not going to enforce the laws that exist, then one of two things, either that is what the country deserves because it has become immoral and lawless or the country rises up and says: We will never have another administration like this. As long as we are alive, we are going to make sure we have an administration that enforces the law, no matter who it is. Apparently, since people govern no better than they deserve, we now find out that Hillary's highly paid IT guru at the State Department had no actual national security experience. So, apparently, we elected an administration that ensured people were governed no better than they deserve and, apparently, they felt like we didn't deserve a State Department with national security experience. Is it any wonder--I thank God--that there have been more Benghazis under that kind of attitude? One was too many. We see yesterday that the Justice Department grants immunity to the staffer who set up the Clinton email server. I have been a prosecutor. I have been a judge. I have been a chief justice. When someone grants immunity, they are closing in on a prosecution. That is the intent. You don't grant immunity to someone and someone doesn't normally seek immunity unless they are concerned that they may have violated the law. They seek immunity because they violated the law. Immunity is granted when, with the prosecution, the investigators--in this case, the FBI--feel that laws are being violated. So we are going to grant immunity to this person so that we can get the person further up. But I still maintain that, as long as Hillary Clinton does not condemn or expose the Obama administration to any of the truth about what went on in Benghazi and about the hands-off list of terrorists and homeland security, I do not see her getting indicted. It is a good insurance policy. Another article from the New York Times: ``As Campaign Unfolds, So Do Inquiries Into Hillary Clinton's Emails.'' So many voters don't seem to care. Why? Because people are governed no better than they deserve. If they are more concerned about themselves than their children, they are going to get what they deserve. Well, we had Mitt Romney come out today just before we voted condemning Donald Trump as phony and a fraud. Everybody knows that people across this country are furious with the establishment. So if that idea was Donald Trump's--to get Mitt Romney to come out and condemn him--it was a brilliant plan. Because that is like asking Marv Levy to tell you how to win the Super Bowl, after he lost four of them. In any event, Mr. Speaker, this country is in grave danger. I was all over the 12 counties that I represent. This country has so many great citizens. They deserve better than what they are getting. I hope and pray the majority in the country will wake up and see the dangers to our own national defense, to our own national security, from government intrusions into our private lives, from drugs that are coming in through Mexico, and from terrorists that are coming into this country. The FBI Director himself says we have got them in every State. We are in big trouble. It is time the American people woke up and said, as our parents did: We don't care what has happened before. We are going to make sure this country is left in better shape, with more opportunity, than we had growing up. Mr. Speaker, we are going to have to hurry. The clock is ticking. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus). Planned Parenthood

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas. He and I were at Texas A&M together in the Corps of Cadets, and I know he didn't have to look down to read what John 15:13 was because that used to be a Campusology question that freshmen had to memorize. The question was: What is the inscription on the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M? The proper correct answer, succinct: The inscription on the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M is ``Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends, John 15:13.'' It is also touching to me each time I come through the southern entrance of the Capitol, the main entrance for visitors coming into the Capitol--I guess more visitors come in through that entrance-- immediately as you pass through the metal detectors, up on the right is a statue of a Catholic priest named Father Damien. The statue is a bit strange in the way it is squared off, but there is nothing strange about the life that he lived. The fact that Hawaii would pick as one of the two allowable statues it has, Father Damien to be represented, I think, is most noble. It also indicates, I think, that 50 years-plus ago, when Hawaii came into the Union, at that time our Nation was still a Christian nation. Our motto still above the Speaker's head here, ``In God We Trust,'' was front and center most everywhere. So it shouldn't have been a surprise that Hawaii wanted to pay tribute for one of its two statues a man who learned of lepers being sometimes just thrown off a passing ship if they had leprosy. Sometimes they would dock and let them go to shore, but there was nothing but squalor, as I understand, back in those days. People knew that leprosy was contagious. It is terrible to think, but in the words of the poet, the inhumanity to man. But it was an island full of lepers that knew they were going to die as their skin and parts rotted off. Father Damien heard about the situation, went to the island knowing that by going to that island he would indeed get leprosy. He prayed it would be later rather than sooner so he could minister to all those hurting on the island. But he helped them set up a way of life, and instead of just having hopeless, nonsocietal squalor to live in, he helped them build a way of life, a sense of normality, a way in which they could finish out their life with some element of peace. I believe it was around 15 years or so before he got the leprosy that eventually took him. On the plaque of Father Damien's statue, one of the first you see when you come in our Capitol from the southern entrance, the words inscribed at the top of the plaque, ``Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' That is certainly what Father Damien did. That is certainly what our fellow Aggie, Major Shawn Campbell, did when he laid down his life for his country. With that background, we ought to approach most every issue that this Federal Government faces. We have an obligation to those who have gone before us and have laid down what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion. They have given their lives that we might have a better life. How tragic it is that political correctness has so infiltrated and overwhelmed the United States of America, that when you study history, the colleges are often described as the intelligentsia, the people who are well educated that really figured things out, who are open-minded, where they used to be the most open minded. When I attended Texas A&M, it was, if not the most conservative, one of the most conservative colleges, universities in America. I was proud to be there, proud to be in the Corps of Cadets, proud to have an Army scholarship that committed me to 4 years in the United States Army after I graduated, proud to look forward to serving my country. As conservative as we were, we were not afraid of inviting very liberal speakers, and we were not afraid of having debate with them, very civilized debate. I recall helping usher Ralph Nader around when he came to Texas A&M, as one of my friends was a host. That was no big deal. It was really an opportunity for a conservative like me and others to have a dialogue with Ralph Nader. It sometimes shocks people that a conservative like me can have some very liberal friends, just like the great Antonin Scalia was very close friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They had totally different views. He believed in upholding the letter of the law of the Constitution and she didn't, but they were friends. So you can have that friendship, but it is an embarrassment--should be an embarrassment--to this Nation that so many who proclaimed in the sixties and seventies to be the most open-minded among us ended up becoming professors at colleges and began to teach the teachers. Those teachers, in turn, went back and taught elementary school, middle school, and high school. Somehow, over the last 50 years, we have gone from a Nation that recognizes that true conservatism is confident enough in itself that it is not afraid to have debate and dialogue and hear from all types of viewpoints. Tragically, as the intelligentsia in America become more and more established in the universities, they have allowed these open-minded, broad-minded liberals to have places of prominence in our institutions of higher learning, and somehow they have become the most close-minded people in America. They don't want to hear from conservatives. They are embarrassed to have a conservative come speak. It is rather tragic, because no longer are our universities, generally speaking, places where all types of thought are analyzed. They are not taught all types of thought. They are given a very narrow version. It is usually very critical of anyone who is conservative, anyone who believes the Constitution should mean what it says, anyone who stands up for the Judeo-Christian principles on which this Nation was founded. One of the great things about being founded on Judeo-Christian principles has been that if true Christian principles are applied to government, then anyone of any religion is free to practice that religion or not practice that religion, unless the religion is actually a religion of politics that dictates that their believers cannot follow the letter of the law within the United States Constitution. From this podium, I have spoken many times about the Holy Land Foundation trial in the United States District Court in the Northern District of Texas. It was the largest prosecution regarding terrorism in our Nation's history. The Holy Land Foundation was found to be a front organization for radical Islamists who were funneling money. They called themselves a charity. Some would be funded to charities, some would be for the children, but they also funneled money to terrorist organizations that were used to terrorize people here and abroad. The Bush administration Justice Department, since President George W. Bush did not have a heavy thumb on the scales of justice and allowed the Justice Department to pursue any crime that they saw, any threat to America--unlike the present day--they went after the Holy Land Foundation. They had evidence to show that the Holy Land Foundation and many organizations and many leading people claiming the Muslim faith were actually tied together and were coconspirators in funneling money to charities, for sure, but also to terrorist organizations. As I understand from former members of the Justice Department who are still friends, the strategy was to get convictions in that first massive prosecution. I think there were over 100 counts of supporting terrorism. They were to get convictions there. In the same case, having named many coconspirators who were not actually indicted, if they could get those convictions, as they knew the evidence indicated they should, then they would go after the named coconspirators who were unindicted at that point and go ahead and indict them and get prosecution and conviction of coconspirators. Well, there were some names of groups and individuals in that prosecution named as coconspirators supporting terrorism who were offended. Perhaps they were more concerned with their public image of being charitable when, actually, they were being exposed through this prosecution by the evidence that existed that they were coconspirators in supporting terrorist groups and terrorist acts. They filed a motion to have their name struck as coconspirators in supporting terrorism. One such group was CAIR, or the Council on American-Islamic Relations. People like Imam Magid, who has been president of the Islamic Society of North America, was also named as a coconspirator. Anyway, they filed motions to have their names stricken as coconspirators. There was an evidentiary hearing, evidence produced, and the United States district judge ruled in the case that there was plenty of evidence to support that those individuals named were indeed coconspirators to fund terrorism. Well, not happy with that, they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They said: Gee, we should have our name struck as being coconspirators in supporting terrorism. I have even read from the opinion of the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled that not only is there evidence that these individuals--like CAIR, the Islamic Society of North American--not only is there evidence, but there is actually substantial evidence that they have been coconspirators in funding and supporting terrorism. Well, I believe it was November 2008, right after Senator Barack Obama was elected President, that the convictions were obtained in over 100 counts. Before the conviction could become completely final, there was a new administration coming in. We had a new Attorney General coming in. The new President and the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, had a different agenda. They were not going to prosecute radical Islamist supporters, people that funded radical Islam and their terrorist activities. There would no longer be those prosecutions. So they were dropped. They were dropped. None of those who were listed as coconspirators were going to be prosecuted by the Obama Justice Department--or, perhaps a better way of saying it is the Obama-Holder ``just us'' department--because they didn't prosecute. As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals indicated, there was plenty of evidence to support that they were conspirators. But if that were the end of the story, that would be bad enough. Instead of not prosecuting, this administration made the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, one of the most influential organizations with a voice inside the White House. If they objected to anything, then the White House immediately flew into action and did whatever CAIR--this named coconspirator of radical Islam, of terror-- indicated by phone or otherwise, in person. Whatever they indicated was offensive to them as named coconspirators in supporting terrorism, whatever offended them, this administration made sure it was blotted out, covered up, or stopped, whether it was a seminar or conference being given at Langley or an intelligence facility. A 2-day conference for law enforcement on radical Islam that was going to be led by people who had spent their adult lives studying radical Islam and who knew the dangers and would warn of the dangers, CAIR finds out, they call the White House, and from what we understand, that is what led the White House to call Langley and cancel the conference on radical Islam for law enforcement and come out with new directives. In effect, it seemed like they were saying, unless CAIR approves of somebody--these conspirators who support terrorism, according to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals--unless this coconspirator that supports terrorism agrees to any comment about Islam, you can't make it, you can't have it in training materials. So then began a partnership between what were alleged to be supporters of radical Islamic terrorism and the FBI. Actually, some of that began during the Bush administration. But they had this partnership with many of the named coconspirators supporting radical Islamic terrorism. They are still partners with the President, with this administration. When I say ``coconspirator,'' I am referring to as named in the pleadings in the prosecution in Federal court that were ruled on in the district court, ruled on by the Court of Appeals, and they said, yes, there is plenty of evidence to support that they have supported radical Islamic terrorism. So those coconspirators have been a great help to this administration in advising them of things that offended them as, apparently, coconspirators to support radical Islamic terrorism. Some years back, when we found out the FBI training materials had been completely purged of any information that CAIR found objectionable, we wanted to see those documents. But we were told that they had been classified. The documents, the training materials, that were cut from what FBI trainees could see, they classified them because they didn't want the country to know how ridiculous some of the things that were removed from the training material were when trying to train people on what radical Islam was. Because they are classified, I can't say specifically what training materials were removed. But I can make the global statement that, to me, if a student training to be an FBI agent is needing to learn about the most radical enemy of the United States that has been--some of my Muslim friends in the Middle East and North Africa have said: They have been at war with you since 1979, and you are still helping them. We don't get it. Well, this administration not only helps those coconspirators, they listen and are sensitive to anything the coconspirators supporting terrorism find to be troublesome. But, to me, if you have, say, a verse from what they call the Holy Koran and you are showing FBI agents Scripture that a radical Islamic terrorist holds as Gospel and that the percentage of Muslims who have taken this radical Islamic path utilized to help radicalize themselves and others, that would be something an FBI agent should know. But, unfortunately, since CAIR objects to FBI trainees knowing verses from the Koran that have helped radicalize Muslims into becoming radical Islamic terrorists, it makes it tough to really be a well- informed FBI agent. Even if you are in the FBI and you happen to know some of those Scriptures, even though they have been blotted out, hypothetically speaking, from training materials, you know you have got to keep your mouth shut because anybody in the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, any of our intelligence agencies, that makes the political or occupational mistake in this administration of pointing out some truth about radical Islamic terrorism, their career will be over, as my friend--and I can now call his name, since he has retired--after he knew so much, tried to warn so many about radical Islam, about groups within radical Islam, including the ones that conducted the terrorism murders in California, tried to warn, provided information. But since his information was offensive to radical Islamic terrorists, then he had to be purged from Homeland Security. A man that helped start Homeland Security, had been with them from the beginning, who had won acclaim and notoriety within Homeland Security for identifying hundreds of people with terrorist ties, became a problem. I tried to work with him for a number of years. We couldn't get enough assistance. No assistance in the administration. We knew they would come after him. So we were privately trying to help this would-be whistleblower go through proper channels. When Homeland Security and Congress recommended he go file an IG complaint, I knew it was a mistake. We should have taken action ourselves. But he filed the IG complaint. The IG's office in Homeland Security had already been condemned for altering an IG report in order to protect the administration. They were going to do an investigation on thousands of pages of records that linked some people that advised this administration with terrorists and terrorist organizations? They deleted those thousands of pages? I knew that, if he filed an IG complaint, they would come after him because the evidence was so damning for this administration that they would do what they always do. You don't go after the people that are conspiring to harm America. You go after the whistleblower who has blown the whistle on your callousness toward those who would hurt America. And they did, even having a grand jury empanelled to just harass and destroy the personal lives of him and his wife. This man is a patriot. Phil Haney is a patriot. He should have been getting all kinds of awards, not just one letter commending him for finding all these terrorist ties. Instead, they go after him. And the grand jury, after they have probed every orifice, figuratively speaking, that they possibly could, couldn't come up with anything. So then they put him in, basically, a closet, gave him no responsibility, in essence, forcing him to go ahead and retire, which he has. This is no way to treat one of the most wonderful and intelligent patriots I have ever met. His wife ended up in the hospital during all that harassment by Homeland Security and the Justice Department. But that is what this administration does. If you are a coconspirator, according to the courts, in supporting radical Islamic terrorism, then we want you as an adviser to this administration. If you are going to blow the whistle, say, on potential perpetrators of the Boston massacre at the Marathon or the California terrorism that could have been prevented had they properly followed up on the warnings from Philip Haney, you go after the heroes, go after the patriots, and allow the supporters, according to the courts, of radical Islamic terrorism to be your advisers. So, with that background, Mr. Speaker, I see this article today. It was published on 25 February 2016 by Allum Bokhari from Breitbart. The title is ``FBI Scrubs References to Islam from Anti-Radicalization Game After CAIR Complaints.'' Okay. So CAIR, this named coconspirator supporting radical Islam that two Federal courts said absolutely there is plenty of evidence to support that, not only does this administration not prosecute them, but they have a wonderful office right down the street. In fact, I saw some of them at a hearing this week that Chairman Goodlatte called in the Judiciary Committee. It was an excellent hearing exploring the naming of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist activity. So the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, I mean, you know, are two peas in a pod. So of course CAIR is going to be there at the hearing, and they were. One of them was kind enough to wave at me. Nice to be recognized. So the article says: ``Earlier this month, the FBI launched Don't Be A Puppet, a browser-based video game designed to counter recruitment propaganda from violent extremists.'' We call them violent extremists because this administration will not call them the radical Islamic terrorists that they are. Our Muslim leader friends in the Middle East and in North Africa, not in our public meetings, but in the private meetings, are appalled that this administration won't call it what it is because it makes it difficult for peace-loving Muslims to say: This is a part of Islam we need help stamping out. They can't say that when this administration is saying it is actually not part of Islam. So people can be comforted. The named coconspirators for radical Islamic terrorism objected to radical Islam being mentioned in this game to try to stop radical Islamist converters or people being converted. And so the FBI has now removed and replaced references to Islam and Islamic terrorism on the site. ``The FBI originally intended to launch the site in November, but progress was stalled by CAIR's complaints. At the time, the Islamic lobby complained that the Web site, which is targeted at young people at risk of extremist recruitment''--that is code for radical Islamic recruitment--``would lead to the `stigmatization' and `bullying' of young Muslims. CAIR also contended that the Web site should instead focus on rightwing extremists, which they argued were a greater threat to American youth.'' And parenthetically inserting here, of course, radical Islamists are not a threat to America. Oh, yeah. They tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day, the Christmas bomber, the underwear bomber, yeah, radical Islamist. Oh, yeah. They were behind the bombing of Americans at the Boston Marathon. Oh, yeah. They killed all those people in San Bernardino. And oh, yeah, our FBI Director says there are Islamic State cells and investigations in every State in the union, but since this coconspirator to support radical Islam is objecting to using the term ``Islam'' or ``radical Islam,'' we can't refer to that. So we have to start talking about rightwing radicals, this Clinton- esque, rightwing conspiracy that we later found out actually was not a rightwing conspiracy at all. It was a relationship between a President and an intern. And you can be sure your sins will find you out from the stains it leaves. But the article goes on: ``The game still includes a scenario where players are invited to go on an `overseas mission'--but the character's Arabic name has been replaced with a western-sounding one, (Sean S).'' Oh, my dear friend Sean Hannity's name is Sean. So it was nice of them to put the initial S there after Sean so they wouldn't think of Sean Hannity, the most popular Sean in America. But how wonderful that this radical Islamic game is now using the name Sean. That is lovely. Anyway, no longer radical Islamic name. But the article says: ``The FBI also appears to have heeded CAIR's advice to focus on rightwing extremists, with a new example featuring a `white supremacist rally' where players are told to commit violent acts in the name of white supremacy. ``According to the IJ Review, `the new version of the game does not mention Islam, Muslims, or any particulars of Islamic ideology or targets at all, aside from the usual disclaimers that ISIS does not represent mainstream Islam.' '' ``While the FBI avoids mentioning the terrorist group at CAIR's behest, the Islamic State remains among the largest terrorist hubs in the world, with recent estimates from the U.S. intelligence community putting its number of foreign recruits at approximately 30,000. ``Still, you never know, the FBI may be right to shift focus. Maybe animal rights activists are planning to set up their own terrorist state too?'' I hadn't thought about that. Maybe animal rights activists are out there planning some massive international caliphate starting in Syria and Libya, and, boy, do they want Egypt back. That is why the Muslim Brotherhood is fighting so hard to overcome our friend. And when I say ``our,'' I am not including the President. I know there is no love lost there. Why? Because President el-Sisi there in Egypt is a Muslim who has stood up to radical Islam. That does not endear him to this administration. So it is important to note where we are. I think it is also an indication as to why so many Americans are concerned about where our country is and how fundamentally it has been transformed for the worse. There is more racial tension. I understand Karl Rove was accused of doing some division politics where you find a group, divide the group against each other, and you know the majority will be on your side. You create groups. But this administration has been the master of division politics even though it has created more racial strife than we have had since the sixties and even though we had a Nation that elected an African American President. I have talked probably to thousands of people who have said: Well, I voted for President Obama because I wanted to be able to say that I voted for the first African American President. What happened to Martin Luther King's dream of a day in America when we are judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin? For heaven's sake, to elect a man because of his race is as racist as any of the wackos in America who indeed actually are racist. You shouldn't be electing somebody because of the color of their skin. Elect them because of who they are, what they believe, and whether they will help the country. We have seen the divisions in this country. We have seen more debt arise than was ever imaginable. How can a man accuse George W. Bush of being unpatriotic because in 2006, for heaven's sake, we had a $160 billion deficit, about $160 billion or so more going out than we had coming in? That is un-American. That is unpatriotic. He is accusing George W. Bush. And what happens? He becomes President, and he demands a $1.6 trillion deficit. So if Bush were unpatriotic for having a budget that helped create $160 billion deficit--obviously, it is Congress that passes the ultimate budget, with no thanks to the Senate. But I guess that makes it 10 times more unpatriotic for anyone who supports a budget that creates 10 times more of a deficit. It is interesting that Americans have gotten so upset in this election cycle. Some are actually scared. Some of them reflect the opinion that I have mentioned that I heard from a senior gentleman from Togo, Africa, when I was visiting there in years past. Before I left, he wanted to meet me and visit with me. As he explained: ``We were so excited here when you elected your first Black President. But since he has been President, we have seen America grow weaker and weaker. And please tell people in Washington''--so I keep telling people here, Mr. Speaker, I want them to know what he said. ``Since he has been President, we have seen America grow weaker and weaker. And when America is weaker, we suffer.'' They are Christians. They know where they are going when they die. But he was making emphatically clear that, as America has gotten weaker and weaker in this administration and there is more domestic division in this country under this President, friends around the world are suffering more than ever before. There are more Christians being persecuted than ever in history and more Jews being persecuted than ever in history. Despite this administration's repeated statements about all of the hate crimes against Muslims, the FBI statistics do not, have not, and will not bear that out. It is not Muslims in America that are the number one victims of hate crimes. Try looking at Jews. Try looking at others, because it is not the Muslims. So it begins to be a bit offensive as more Christians are being persecuted and killed in the world than ever at any time in our world history to continually defend those whom courts have said are coconspirators in persecuting Christians and Jews. It is basically anathema to what America has been and thought in the past. So as that has gone on and people have gotten so upset, it has been amazing to see an ally in Congress, Ted Cruz, being attacked for being for amnesty. I was here. I was thrilled when Ted Cruz got elected. I had known him. I knew he was brilliant and I knew he was truthful, so I was thrilled. A number of us would meet sometimes at his office, sometimes other places, trying to strategize: How do we stop the Republican establishment's caving in and doing the will of the administration to allow a massive amnesty? We knew the administration was not enforcing the border properly. We knew that they were allowing people in in droves; and the more they came in illegally, the more others heard that you can come in illegally. As one of the border patrolmen told me in the wee hours of the morning: We are called logistics by the drug cartels and the gangs in Mexico. All they say they have to do is get people across the river and Homeland Security is logistics. We ship them anywhere they want to go. There is a great deal of truth to that. So it has been amazing to see this reinvention of what really happened back in those days. We had a fantastic election in Florida where our friend was elected there, a Tea Party favorite. Thank goodness. We were so thrilled, because it meant because of his promises we had another ally in the Senate that would help us stop the Republican establishment's cave to the Obama administration's desire for amnesty. Chuck Schumer, for all he is, he actually can be quite persuasive. And John McCain, for all his efforts in 2007 that nearly cost him a chance to be the nominee so he could lose in defeat to the Democrats, his push for amnesty in 2007 nearly kept him from being the nominee to lose in the general election. Gosh, if he had continued to push his amnesty, he would not have gotten the nomination. Who knows? Maybe Barack Obama would not have won in 2008. It is interesting to think about. I was looking at this article by Sarah Rumpf back in January of 2015. She had been asking about problems that I had, and I pointed out, I referred back to broken promises by our Speaker and why we needed a new Speaker, and it was the same Republican establishment problem we had had. As the article says, one of the biggest broken promises included ``promising to `fight tooth and nail' against Obama's executive amnesty orders, but then allowing the CR/Omnibus bill to proceed forward.'' But it wasn't just that. It was so much that had been going on for a number of years. So there was no one who felt more dejected than our little group that was gathering regularly trying to come up with ways to slow down the Gang of Eight bill because we knew that once this handsome, young, articulate guy that had just been elected from Florida was talked into being the leader on the bill--very clever getting him to be the leader on the bill--we knew it was going to be a very, very, very difficult thing to stop. Going back, here is an article from April 15 of 2013 by Byron York of the Washington Examiner: ``A Look Deep Inside the Gang of Eight Bill-- and How They'll Sell Immigration Reform to Conservatives.'' He points out regarding this Gang of Eight bill, he says: ``Of course some in the GOP are still panicked by last November's election results and will be inclined to sign on to almost any deal. But many of the more conservative Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill will have to be convinced that the Gang's proposal is an acceptable way to go. It won't be easy.'' Anyway, he points out that, ``Starting this week, with the release of the bill, the Gang will launch an extensive public information campaign''--with Senator Rubio leading--``lots of press releases, frequently asked questions, and fact sheets specifically addressing the concerns about reform that conservatives have raised in recent months.'' It also talks about, ``The GOP Gang''--the GOP Gang of Eight, he is talking about--``members know full well that the Federal Government has promised all those measures and more over the years, and the border is still not secure and businesses still hire illegal immigrants. For example, Congress has passed multiple laws requiring entry-exit systems similar to what the Gang will propose, and the system has never been built. So Gang members know that conservatives, at least, will be skeptical. ``The answer the Gang hopes will reassure those skeptics is the concept of triggers. They've set up three points at which the bill's requirements will have to be met before the process''--of amnesty is what he is talking about--``can continue.'' But anyway, it goes on and discusses the Gang of Eight bill. Americans had heard these promises before, going back to 1986 when a hero of mine and a hero of my friend Dana Rohrabacher, who was a former speechwriter, got talked into signing off on an amnesty that turned California blue probably for the rest of my lifetime. That was a Republican President that got tricked into doing that. They got the amnesty, never got the enforcement. And that is what the Gang of Eight bill was going to do. Americans knew it, but we had to fight it like crazy. So anyway, I just find it interesting, as someone who met with Senator Cruz on a regular basis trying to strategize, my friend, Steve King, and I met in his office sometimes about all of these efforts to stop this Gang of Eight bill that would have given amnesty. Here is another, from June 11, 2013, ```Gang of Eight' Immigration Bill Clears Senate Hurdle.'' I know Senator Cruz was doing all he could to stop it--greatly appreciated. Actually, if they hadn't slowed that down, that gave us the ability to slow it down even further. Here is an article from The Daily Signal by Amy Payne and Kelsey Lucas, June 24--my anniversary--2013. It talked about that Gang of Eight bill now has ``ballooned to 1,190 pages.'' That makes it what you would call comprehensive. As I pointed out to friends before, when you hear the words ``comprehensive bill,'' the loose definition of a comprehensive bill in Congress is one in which some people want to hide things that could never possibly get passed if people knew what they were voting on. So it is comprehensive and massive so you can hide those things that could never pass on their own if people knew what they were voting on. So it is amazing to see in politics how perception that is completely false can be considered true just because people are saying it. I know. I was here, and I am grateful that Ted Cruz got elected. Without his advice, his meeting with us, encouraging, doing all he could in the Senate, I don't believe we would have stopped amnesty, and I don't believe this election would even be competitive. The Democratic nominee would walk away with this thing had the Gang of Eight bill been passed as they wanted. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire how much time remains?

Mr. GOHMERT. One other thing that has been really intriguing, Mr. Speaker, this verse has been quoted time and time again in recent years. I know there are people that freak out when I quote Bible verse because they had one of these liberal teachers that didn't teach them the truth about American history and the fact that the Bible has been the most quoted book--nothing even close--so many times more than any other book or any other author ever in American history. The Bible has been quoted on the House floor and Senate floor by Presidents more than any other book. The President says we are not a Christian Nation. I used to say I won't debate that, and now I think he is right. But we were. We started out based on Judeo-Christian principles, so much so that a very thorough decision by the U.S. Supreme Court back in the late 1800s, when we had finally done the right thing and eliminated the scourge to this Nation that had held this Nation back for many decades, called slavery, was finally ended. The Supreme Court went through all of the foundings, the Founders, the statements of the Founders, statements and founding documents, statements of State constitutions, and concluded after all of the recitation of evidence--130, 140 years later--they said: This is a Christian Nation. Well, it was back in the late 1800s. It doesn't hurt to still quote scripture. We have other religions represented in the House--friends. You can be Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, whatever you want to be. I have got a number of really wonderful Jewish friends in Congress. You can be whatever you want to be because a government based on Judeo-Christian principles will protect everyone's rights. Islam will not protect rights like that. There is really not another religion that, beliefs of which, will protect every religion, no religion, equally. That is because we know. God gives us those choices. So who are we to take them away? Back in 2 Chronicles, the verse is very clear, and God was pointing this out. I realize Moses--it is up there, the only full face profile here in this room--was considered the greatest lawgiver of all times, although the Supreme Court last summer basically said: Forget what Moses said and God said. He didn't know what he was talking about. When Jesus quoted Moses about marriage, he didn't know what he was talking about. They were a bunch of fools. They didn't know. We are much smarter than Moses and Jesus. Now our Supreme Court majority is our God. But 2 Chronicles 7:14: ``If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.'' I preached a sermon on that last summer entitled ``Humble or Crumble.'' We do need to humble ourselves as a Nation, but we don't even have to do it as a Nation. It makes clear it is not everybody. It doesn't have to be everybody in America. Just those who are called by the Lord's name. If you humble yourself, pray, see God's face, turn from your wicked ways: I will hear from heaven, I am going to heal your land. You will be blessed beyond. I really think that after the Civil War and we finally ended the scourge of slavery, that is when we started being blessed beyond measure. So the 20th century was just absolutely incredible, and we became a superpower blessed beyond measure. When we became a superpower, of course, like so many times in history, nations that were begun on the Judeo beliefs, once they turned from acknowledging God, then God let them go. That is why Christians had believed this was such an important verse. I have heard it thousands of times in recent years. I just have to note, Mr. Speaker, it is interesting now that Christian leaders across the Nation have said: I think we are going to have to change this. Let's have a new translation. How about if we say: If my people are called by my name, we'll select a leader who says he has never humbled himself, he has never asked forgiveness of God, if we can just get a leader who will never humble himself, then God will hear that from heaven and he will heal our land. I want to close with these words from Francis Scott Key, April 14, 1814. As a captive on a British ship and the British unmercifully bombed Fort McHenry, he didn't figure there was much left. When the morning came and there was Old Glory, he penned The Star Spangled Banner. I will close with the last verse, Mr. Speaker: ``O! thus be it ever, when free men shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation; Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n-rescued land Praise the Pow'r that hath made, and preserved us as a Nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just; And this be our motto, `In God is our trust!' And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!'' May we remember those words. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Flores). Honoring Major Shawn M. Campbell

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Justice Scalia says in one of his dissents: ``I have exceeded the speed limit on occasion.'' He said: ``A man who has no enemies is probably not a very good man.'' He said: ``If you read the rest of the section, you would say, to find a way to find a meaning that the language will bear that will uphold the constitutionality. You don't interpret a penalty to be a pig. It can't be a pig.'' He did know how to bring things back to tangible terms. He said: ``If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.'' I've experienced that myself. There were times I disagreed with the law, but it was constitutionally made and passed, and I followed the law as a judge and chief justice. That is exactly what he did. In a dissent in 1996, Justice Scalia said: ``The Court must be living in an another world. Day by day, case by case, it is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.'' Ten years later, in 2006, he says: ``So the question comes up, is there a constitutional right to have homosexual conduct? Not a hard question for me. It's absolutely clear that nobody ever thought when the Bill of Rights was adopted that it gave a right to homosexual conduct. Homosexual conduct was criminal for 200 years in every State. Easy question.'' He made those statements in remarks at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, back in 2006. In 2009, he said: ``The Court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution. Alas, the quest cannot succeed.'' He also said: ``This case, involving legal requirements of the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck's aphorism that `no man should see how laws or sausages are made.''' He said: ``God has been very good to us. One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor.'' Certainly, Justice Scalia did God honor. A lot of people don't realize what a tenderhearted man he was as well. After the horrendous murder of Justice Michael Luttig's father and the assault and attempted murder of his mother in their own garage, two streets over from my house, the family did not want to call Michael and describe the horrors that had been inflicted on his father and mother. Middle of the night, Justice Scalia is in bed. Justice Scalia gets called, would he go out to Michael Luttig, Judge Luttig's house, and let him know in the wee hours of the morning that his father had been killed. Justice Scalia, for whom Judge Luttig had clerked, he knew Michael Luttig loved him. He put on his warmup suit and went out in the middle of the night many miles away because he cared. As I conclude, Mr. Speaker, I thought about the words of John Quincy Adams in the Amistad case. He didn't think he had won the case. He was finishing. He was afraid he had not done an adequate job defending these Africans who should be free and should be free to go where they wanted without chains, without bondage. So he finished his argument by saying, and this is John Quincy Adams, 1841, in the Supreme Court: ``As I cast my eyes along those seats of honor and 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 the 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. I humbly hope, and fondly trust, that they have gone to receive the rewards of blessedness on high.'' In taking, then, his final leave of the bar there at the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams said he hoped that every member of the Supreme Court may go to his final account with as little of earthly frailty to answer for as those illustrious dead. And he said: ``That you may, every one, 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.' '' Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt whatsoever that Justice Antonin Scalia, my friend, our friend, the luminary of the Supreme Court, heard those words days ago: ``Well done, good and faithful servant.'' Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in tribute to one of the greatest jurists in this Nation's history. Justice Antonin Scalia had a preeminent mind following an excellent education. He has a beautiful family and has already been very sorely missed. I thought it might be helpful, Mr. Speaker, to get a sense of the man and how profoundly concerned he was with the place in which this country finds itself after world wars, after depressions, after all kinds of threats: a massive civil war in the 1860s, all kinds of things that have threatened this Nation, even the War of 1812 during which this Capitol was set on fire. There were all of these threats; yet, at this time in which we live, he could see and he tried to sound the warning alarms for what the majority of the Supreme Court was doing to this country. It seemed to be encapsulated rather well back in the June 12, 2008, decision in the case of Boumediene vs. George W. Bush, President of the United States, combined with another case. The decision of the majority of the Court, as Justice Scalia pointed out, was so totally inconsistent with the majority's own majority opinion in a prior case regarding people who were captured on the battlefield and who were clearly at war with the United States. Throughout the history of warfare at least among civilized nations during the period of warfare, the civilized thing to do was to hold those who were at war with you until such time as the groups they represent, they come from, declare they are no longer at war with you. Then they can be released unless they have committed some heinous crime for which they should account beyond that of being part of the war against the Nation. The Supreme Court majority had previously said basically that, of course, the Constitution gives the Congress the power to create tribunals, to create courts. As my former constitutional law professor said, there is only one Court in the whole country's Federal system that owes its creation to the U.S. Constitution, and that is the U.S. Supreme Court. All other Federal courts, tribunals, owe their existences and their jurisdictions to the United States Congress. So the majority Court had previously said, in effect, that Congress could, in cases where enemy combatants are seized on the battlefield, hold them without right of writ of habeas corpus, because that has basically been the history of civilized warfare. Obviously, in uncivilized warfare, people were taken, abused, tortured, made slaves. That has happened throughout the history of mankind. But for nations that were civilized, you simply held them, hopefully, in humanitarian conditions. In the Boumediene case, Justice Scalia starts his dissent by writing: ``I shall devote most of what will be a lengthy opinion to the legal errors contained in the opinion of the Court. Contrary to my usual practice, however, I think it appropriate to begin with a description of the disastrous consequences of what the Court has done today.'' Justice Scalia goes on: ``America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. ``On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and 40 in Pennsylvania. ``It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington or board a plane anywhere in the country to know that the threat is a serious one. Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed. ``The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us.'' What comes next is, perhaps, one of the most profound statements that any Justice on the Supreme Court ever put in writing, but he was right. And being right in his discernment of the Supreme Court's decision, he knew he needed to put this next sentence in print. So, in talking about the majority opinion, Justice Scalia wrote this: ``It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.'' He wrote: ``That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court's blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today. The President relied on our settled precedent in Johnson vs. Eisentrager''--this was back in 1950--``when he established the prison at Guantanamo Bay for enemy aliens. Citing that case, the President's Office of Legal Counsel advised him `that the great weight of legal authority indicates that a federal district court could not properly exercise habeas jurisdiction over an alien detained at Guantanamo Bay.''' Further down, the Justice writes: ``In the short term, however, the decision is devastating. At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield. ``But others have succeeded in carrying on their atrocities against innocent civilians. In one case, a detainee released from Guantanamo Bay masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese dam workers, one of whom was later shot to death when used as a human shield against Pakistani commandos. ``Another former detainee promptly resumed his post as a senior Taliban commander and murdered a United Nations engineer and three Afghan soldiers. Still another murdered an Afghan judge. It was reported only last month that a released detainee carried out a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, Iraq. ``Their return to the kill illustrates the incredible difficulty of assessing who is and who is not an enemy combatant in a foreign theater of operations where the environment does not lend itself to rigorous evidence collection.'' Justice Scalia goes on: ``During the 1995 prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, federal prosecutors gave the names of 200 unindicted coconspirators to the `Blind Sheikh's' defense lawyers; that information was in the hands of Osama Bin Laden within two weeks.'' Justice Scalia went on to write page after page, explaining the perils that the overzealous and underthinking majority of the Court had imposed on the United States, on our military. Justice Scalia made clear, when it comes to war, the decision that the majority made was to basically tell our military: Instead of protecting yourselves and protecting your brothers and sisters in arms, we are going to require you to go out there, gather up DNA evidence, get blood evidence, maybe just drive a forensic wagon out there onto the field of battle. Start gathering evidence because some moronic person in a palace in Washington--``palace'' being what some of the Justices who first went through the new Supreme Court building said about it back in 1935, that palace in which they reside--has said that, in a time of war, we have lost our mind in America, and we are going to now start putting our military at risk of their very lives so they can go gather up evidence to satisfy some bloated judge in a palace in Washington. That is why he made the profound statement that he did in this dissent. His words will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That is extraordinary. Dear Justice Scalia finished the dissenting opinion by saying: ``Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable `functional' test for the extra territorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson's opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into the detention of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner. ``The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.'' What a magnificent man. What a brilliant man with extraordinary common sense. So, Mr. Speaker, my staff helped me. We have all been picking out favorite quotes that Justice Scalia has provided, both in written opinion and in speeches. One of Justice Scalia's statements was: ``Never compromise your principles, unless, of course, your principles are Adolph Hitler's, in which case you would be well-advised to compromise them as much as you can.'' Another statement by Justice Scalia was: ``More important than your obligation to follow your conscience, or at least prior to it, is your obligation to form your conscience correctly.'' Justice Scalia said: ``You think there ought to be a right to abortion? No problem. The Constitution says nothing about it. Create it the way most rights are created in a democratic society. Pass a law. And that law, unlike a constitutional right to abortion created by a court can compromise.'' Justice Scalia said: ``A Constitution is not meant to facilitate change. It is meant to impede change, to make it difficult to change.'' Brilliant statement. Some think the Constitution is a living, breathing document. I have discussed this over at the Supreme Court palace with him, and I have discussed it with him at lunches, breakfasts. There are a handful of special privileges that I count myself blessed to have been able to enjoy, and one of those handful has been time spent with Justice Scalia. He had an incredible sense of humor. He could crack me up. Most of the time, he meant to. Sometimes his sarcasm was just too humorous not to laugh. And he attacked himself with self- effacing humor. He said this: ``I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you've gotta get another day job.'' He was a funny man, but a brilliant man. God blessed that man with wisdom. Justice Scalia said: ``I love to argue. I've always loved to argue. And I love to point out the weaknesses of the opposing arguments. It may well be that I'm something of a shin kicker. It may well be that I'm something of a contrarian.'' He said: ``Well, we didn't set out to have nine children''--talking about his beautiful family. He said: ``We're just old-fashioned Catholics, you know.'' Justice Scalia said: ``I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better. That's what the First Amendment is all about.'' Today I see around our college campuses conservatives like me are often shunned. I am grateful to have been invited to speak at Oxford in England and at Cambridge. But it is amazing that places like my conservative Texas A&M, there are students there--much fewer there, but all over the country at what are supposed to be enlightened universities--that don't want to hear any view different from themselves. When I was at A&M, I mean, I helped host Ralph Nader. I didn't agree with him on much, but I loved the exchange with him, the thoughts that went back and forth. He was a very intriguing man. We weren't afraid of discussions with liberals. It is one of the things I loved about Justice Scalia. He was so brilliant, so grounded. His faith was so strongly standing on God's Word, the Bible. He knew who he was. He knew whose he was, and he knew whose was his, and he loved his family dearly. Justice Scalia said: ``Undoubtedly, some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.'' It was absolutely a great dissent. Pointing out the hypocrisy, the flawed thinking, the incredible poor quality of the writing in the majority opinion in the ObamaCare decision, Justice Scalia said: ``This Court, however, concludes that this limitation would prevent the rest of the act from working as well as hoped. So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere. We should start calling this law SCOTUSCare instead of ObamaCare.'' The Supreme Court of the U.S. care, how about that? He went on to say: ``Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of this Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.'' He goes on. It says: ``If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority and they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system. Americans should appreciate that; they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there so the legislation that does get out is good legislation.'' Mr. Speaker, it brings to mind a discussion I heard him have with some people from my district, some senior citizens that were coming to Washington, 50 or 60. They had asked me: They say you are friends with Justice Scalia. Do you think we could meet him? I felt comfortable enough to call him. He said: Sure. Bring them. So we worked it out, brought them through the side entrance, came into a meeting room. They were all seated there when Justice Scalia came walking in. He leans up against the table in front of them, and they were kind of in awe because they knew how brilliant Justice Scalia was. He said: Well, you wanted to meet me. Here I am. What questions have you got? It kind of took the group aback, so people were struggling to try to come up with a question. Finally, one of them said: Well, Justice Scalia, wouldn't you say that we are the freest Nation in the history of the world because we have the best Bill of Rights? In typical Scalia style, he said: Oh, gosh, no. The Soviet Union had a much better bill of rights than we have got. It guaranteed a lot more freedoms than we have. And I've forgotten, but in college I made an A on a paper that discussed the Soviet constitution and the bill of rights. He was right. That old Soviet bill of rights guaranteed all kinds of rights, but it didn't protect them. He went on to say--and I am not quoting exactly--but the gist of what he had to say is, now, the reason America is the most free Nation in the history of the world is because the Founders didn't trust the government, so they made it as difficult as they could to pass a law. It wasn't enough to have one House; they wanted two Houses, and not like England where one of them doesn't have all that much authority. They wanted two Houses where either one of them could stop a law from being passed. So even if one House were successful in finally getting a majority of people to agree on a law, then the other House would have to agree, and they could stop it completely in its tracks. That wasn't good enough. They wanted another check and balance, another way to stop law. They wanted to create gridlock. So they said: You know what? We don't want a parliamentarian system where the legislators elect a prime minister. No. We want an executive elected totally different from the legislature. So we will have him elected in a whole different way, and then he can stop any law they may try to pass. And that is not good enough. Let's create another branch, the judiciary branch, and then they can nix anything that is passed. No, we are the most free Nation in history because the Founders didn't trust government and they made it as hard as possible to pass laws. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Louisiana, my neighbor--wonderful points being made. I also want to call attention, Mr. Speaker, today to the 43rd anniversary of the release from imprisonment of American POWs from North Vietnam, among whom is our friend and hero here in the House, Sam Johnson. It was nice of staff to have a little reception for Congressman Johnson, and it is important to remember such things and try to learn from our mistakes. Because once again, in the last couple of weeks, I have heard references to mistakes of the past, like the lesson we should have learned from Vietnam, and then they get the lesson all wrong. We really didn't allow our military in Vietnam to win the war in Vietnam. Our pilots, our military operations, they could have won that war had they been allowed to do so. And the best indication of that is, after 7 years that Sam Johnson spent in just the most horrid conditions, horrendous torture, joined by other American heroes, like John McCain, who was 3 years at the Hanoi Hilton, where Sam Johnson was. I know he was shot down 5 years before the release, but it was only the last 3 years that he was placed in confinement there with, I believe, 10 others in the worst of the worst facilities, so bad that even today, after they cleaned up some of the torture chambers and tried to dress them up, they still won't let Americans go into the original Hanoi Hilton where they held 11, including Sam Johnson, in the most horrid of conditions. But the chronology, basically, in a nutshell, Nixon promised that he would, if he was reelected, he would get us out of Vietnam. So after reelection, they start the Paris peace talks--and I realize this is a gross generalization. They start the Paris peace talks. The North Vietnamese storm out. So Nixon orders carpet bombing of sites in North Vietnam that they had never been allowed to bomb before, including the areas in Hanoi itself. Sam has related personally that, when they first heard the first bomb drop, they thought: Wow, one might fall here. And then they were absolutely overjoyed that, finally, their country, the United States of America, was finally bringing the war to the North Vietnamese leaders. They had not done that. So there was massive bombing for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, tremendous bombing, then the leaders came rushing back to the peace tables: Let's work this out. They got a peace accord agreed to. They agreed to provide all the names, locations of Americans who were killed in action or missing in action, provide all of the POWs. Apparently, American officials knew pretty quickly they didn't give us everybody, and that is another dark chapter in our history. But they agreed to release the POWs. As Sam Johnson and others were being released from the Hanoi Hilton, he said probably the cruelest of the officers there was laughing and smirking at the Americans as they were allowed to leave and go to a bus and, basically, said: You stupid Americans. If you had just bombed us for one more week, we would have had to surrender unconditionally. Yes, that is right. The lesson of Vietnam should have been that we should never, ever put our military in harm's way without giving them all of the equipment and ordnance they need to win and the order to win. If we are not willing to give them rules of engagement that allow them to win, they should not be sent. Yet, since this administration has been in office, there have been three to four times more American military lives lost. I am told by many in the military, because of the rules of engagement, because of where they are placed, without being able to properly defend themselves, that, under Commander in Chief Obama, three to four times more military members, American military members, have given their lives, their last full measure of devotion, than were lost during the 7\1/4\ years in which the war in Afghanistan raged at its highest under Commander in Chief Bush. The difference is you had one Commander in Chief that gave them more authority to win and a second, a later Commander in Chief, that tied their hands behind their backs. So that brings us to where we are today, 43 years after Sam Johnson and other American POWs were released from North Vietnam. The real lesson of Vietnam still hasn't been learned because we have still got American military members being killed abroad, in Afghanistan, without giving them the rules of engagement to protect themselves. And if that were the end of the story, that would be bad enough; but it is even worse when our military members have been subjected to the examples of having American military members punished, sent to prison if they dared to put the safety and lives of their men as the first consideration of their actions and their orders. So we have a lieutenant in Leavenworth who, when an Afghan on a motorcycle refused to honor the signs, the orders to stop, refused to stop or even slow down when shots were fired in his direction, and so you have to give some credit to this administration and the military leaders and the orders that make their way from the top down and the rules of engagement as to why, just in recent weeks, we have lost military members when someone on a motorcycle rode up and exploded themselves. They knew. Our American military that died in that suicide motorcycle bombing, they knew what had happened to the lieutenant. All of our people in Afghanistan know what happened when this administration makes an example out of an officer who dares to put the safety of his own people uttermost in his mind. It is a sad time in America. Our allies notice that, if we will not even take the life, the treasure of our own American military more seriously, then how can they possibly put their faith in us that we will keep our word and protect them? They have seen what happened in Ukraine. They didn't really lift a finger to help the Ukrainians against the Russian aggression. In fact, after Russian aggression against Georgia, President Bush put some sanctions in place. Relations got more chilled between the United States and Russia because of the egregious, unfair actions of Russia in Georgia. The first thing this President did was send Hillary Clinton over with a plastic, red button. They put the wrong interpretation on it. They meant to say a reset button, and they got the wrong language on there. The message was very clear to the Russians: Ah, President Obama and Hillary Clinton don't care if we violate their allies. They don't care if we invade their friends. They don't care. They want a reset button and basically have apologized for getting upset that we in Russia invaded Georgia. So Hillary Clinton and President Obama are fine with us invading other places. What were they supposed to think that this administration would do when they invaded Ukraine? Well, they guessed right, that this administration wouldn't really do anything about it. Oh, I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I forgot. This administration did do something about the Russian aggression. In fact, the President delivered it. He didn't know the microphone was picking him up when he said, basically: Tell Vladimir that I will have a whole lot more flexibility after the election. So they got the messages. We can pretty much abuse and invade, whatever we care to do. It is outrageous what has happened to American reputation abroad. So today is the 43rd anniversary. We salute Sam Johnson and all those POWs that were released today from North Vietnam. I wish we had learned the lesson from the horrors that they experienced. In fact, there is an article here by Anne Bayefsky. It originally appeared on FOX News. This was released February 11, 2016, by Human Rights Voices: ``There is a dangerous scam gaining traction at the United Nations, backstopped by the White House.'' That is our U.S. President's House. ``It's called `violent extremism.' Given the U.N.'s long and undistinguished history of being unable to define terrorism, and an American President who chokes on the words `radical Islamic terrorism,' pledges to combat `violent extremism' have become all the rage. ``It turns out that the terminological fast one is a lethal diplomatic dance that needs to be deconstructed, and quickly. ``In 1999, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation''--that is the OIC--``enemy'' insert parenthetically, Mr. Speaker--the OIC, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has all of the Islamic nations except the United States included in it, and they also include the Palestinians that are in the nation of Israel. I always get confused whether the OIC has 50 states and we have in the United States 57 States or whether the OIC has 57 states and we have 50. So I shared that with our President when he was running for the Presidency as he got confused whether the U.S. has 57 states--no, that is the OIC--and the United States has 50. It is confusing. The article states: ``In 1999, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation . . . adopted an `anti-terrorism' treaty stating that `armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination . . . shall not be considered a terrorist crime.' ``In practice, that means it is open season on all Israelis, as well as Americans and Europeans who get in the way. Each of the 56 Islamic states''--actually, the OIC is 57 because they claim Palestine--``and what the UN labels the `State of Palestine,' is a party to this treaty. ``The September 11 terror attacks then launched a growth industry in U.N. counter-terrorism chit-chat and paraphernalia. ``Year-after-year, Islamic states have prevented the adoption of a UN Comprehension Convention Against Terrorism by refusing to abandon their claim that certain targets are exempt. ``In 2001 the U.N. Security Council created the Counter-Terrorism Committee. But it is unable to name a state sponsor of terrorism. In fact, from 2002 to 2003, Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism, was a member. ``In 2005 the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, once chaired by Colonel Qaddafi's Libya, created the U.N. expert on `the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism'--as if countering terror is not about protecting human rights. ``In 2006 the General Assembly adopted a Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. It manages to cast terrorists as victims. `Pillar Number One' starts by worrying about `conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism.' `Youth unemployment,' for instance, purportedly results in `the subsequent sense of victimization that propels extremism and the recruitment of terrorists.' ``In 2011 the U.N. established the Counter-Terrorism Center--at the initiative of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis threw $100 million at the venture and became chair of the `Advisory Board.' Saudi financing of radical charities and `academic' exercises around the world are somehow left out of Center events on investigating and prosecuting terror financing. ``Integral to the-best-defense-is-a-good-offence routine, has been the constant unsubstantiated allegation of an `Islamophobia' pandemic. ``For the first decade of the 21st century, the Islamophobia charge was hurled in UN resolutions on the `defamation' of Islam or the `defamation of religion.' Defamation meant the freedoms of human beings should be trumped by the `rights' of `religion.' ``In 2009 `defamation' was repackaged by the General Assembly as `human rights and cultural diversity.' Ever since, the over 100 countries of the `Non-aligned movement' vote against Western states and demand the freedoms of human beings be trumped by `cultural diversity.' And that's cultural diversity Iran-style. In December 2015, the UN resolution praised Tehran's Centre for Human Rights and Cultural Diversity--the brainchild of former Iranian President and well-known human rights aficionado Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ``In the last six weeks alone, Islamic states have staged two UN meetings focusing on `Islamophobia and inclusive societies,' and `countering xenophobia.' Two weeks ago, the servile Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon couldn't mention `antisemitism' on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz without connecting it to `anti-Muslim bigotry.' ``Of course, the Islamophobia drumbeat skips right over the xenophobia, antisemitism, and exclusively that is endemic--and officially-sanctioned--in Islamic states. ``This is the substrate from which Ban Ki-moon has now manufactured a `Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.' Introduced in January, the General Assembly is meeting on February 12, 2016 to push the plan forward. ``After one mention of `ISIL, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram,' the Plan insists that violent extremism `does not arise in a vacuum. Narratives of grievance, actual or perceived injustice . . . become attractive.' `It is critical that in responding to this threat,' stresses the Plan, that states be stopped from `overreacting.' Topping `conditions conducive to violent extremism' is `lack of socioeconomic opportunities.' '' Mr. Speaker, this just shows the ignorance in the U.N. in propagating such a plan and the sheer naivety, if not outright intentional misleading, of those who would read their report. Lack of socioeconomic opportunities is not what caused one of the wealthier Islamists to put together and carry out a plan of attacking the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, apparently, this Capitol. He was wealthy. So are many of those who are funding terrorism. It arises out of radical Islamic beliefs. Nobody should have to ever say: We know all Muslims don't believe this. It should go without saying. We know that. But for those that do, it is sheer idiocy to claim that Islam has nothing to do with the radical Islamic terrorism that is occurring. When you have one of the most world-renowned experts on Islam who has studied his whole life on the Koran, the holy Koran, as he would call it, the tenets and the pillars of Islam and even has his Ph.D., we are told, in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad--Mr. Speaker, I think I forgot to mention he is the head of ISIS. The head of the Islamic State is one of the world's foremost experts on Islam, and he says the Islamic State is exactly what Islam is all about. I know, when I was a judge, people had to put on evidence as to educational background and study in an area so that I, as the judge, could determine whether that man or woman was actually an expert in their field. I would say the head of ISIS, with his educational background and his research and study, certainly is far more of an expert on Islam than our President or Valerie Jarrett or anybody in this administration. The article says: ``Here we go again. The bigots, fanatics and killers are allegedly driven by our annoying insistence on fighting back--which the Plan astonishingly calls `the cycle of insecurity and armed conflict.' ``As per usual in U.N. negotiations, the Obama administration has jumped on board while Islamic states are holding out for greater elaboration of their grievances and even more `nothing to do with religion or Islam' clauses. ``The U.N.'s idea of a win-win is an illusory `global partnership to confront this menace' that allows states to define violent extremism any which way they want: `This Plan of Action pursues a practical approach to preventing violent extremism, without venturing to address questions of definition.' ``Only U.N. con-artists could present refusing to identify a problem as the most practical way to solve it. ``More practically speaking, the latest Palestinian terror wave began by pumping bullets into a young mom and dad in front of their little kids for the crime of being Jews living and breathing on Arab-claimed land. In U.N. terminology, Eitam and Naama Henkin were `extremist settlers.' ``So to all you extremist lovers of liberty: beware the violent extremists in U.N. clothing, and the morally-challenged commanders in chief bringing up the rear.'' Well written. We have got to wake up. We had another bombing. We have more violence. We hear from ISIS leaders that they have been able to get some of their best warriors into the United States and into Europe posing as refugees. We have the head of the FBI who warns all of us in the House and all of us in the Senate and says we have cases regarding the Islamic State in every State in the Union. Still, we let the administration get away with turning a blind eye toward the real problem and say we need to welcome more and more refugees. We are told by the people who are in charge of the vetting: We will vet them, but we have no information really to vet them with, so, sure, there are going to be some terrorists come in. We have an obligation in this House, and those Senators at the other end of the hall, to our Constitution, and we are to provide for the common defense. We are supposed to provide that defense against all enemies--foreign and domestic. For those who don't know the Constitution well enough, there is no right by someone illegally in the United States to have a hearing before an article III Federal District Court. In fact, there is no District Court mentioned in article III. The only court mentioned is the Supreme Court. As my old constitutional law professor said, there is only one court in the country that owes its existence to the U.S. Constitution. Every other Federal Court, every other tribunal, and magistrate in the country owes its existence--that is a Federal entity--owes its existence to the United States Congress. We have the right to create them; we have the right to remove them. Our own military do not have a right to a United States District Court. Why? Because the Constitution says Congress has the full authority to create disciplinary systems for the military. That is why the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, was created. Why in the world should we have people in this administration advocating for people illegally in this country, people illegally in this country that want to do damage to America, and advocate that they have a right to a U.S. District Court that our own military heroes don't have a right to? The answer is: They don't have that right at all. There is an article: Female Suicide Bomber Pair Kill 58 in Nigerian Refugee Camp. Having been there and having wept with family members who have lost kids, had kids kidnapped, held, their little girls raped repeatedly for months now, and the best this administration does is start a little social media campaign: Bring Back Our Girls, are you kidding me? Give Nigeria all the Intel they need to wipe out Boko Haram. Let them do it. The Taliban was totally defeated between October of 2001 and February of 2002. Without one single American life lost, we had embedded military in Afghanistan, no lives lost, and the Taliban was totally routed by February. Then we did something that wasn't very smart. We began basically an occupation of Afghanistan. It hasn't worked out well. Here is an article: CIA Director Says Islamic Group has Used, Can Make Chemical Weapons. It quotes Brennan on CBS News and Lara on 60 Minutes as saying: The CIA believes the IS group has the ability to make small amounts of mustard and chlorine gas for weapons, and ``there are reports that ISIS has access to chemical precursors and munitions that they can use.'' Mr. Speaker, we need to have learned our lesson, and we haven't. If this administration doesn't stand up, more lives will be needlessly lost. I yield back the balance of my time.