Louie Gohmert

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.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, news has come out, February 2, Groundhog Day, in this article from Adam Kredo entitled, ``The Obama Administration Has Not Prosecuted a Single Palestinian Terrorist Who Killed Americans.'' ``The Obama administration has not prosecuted a single Palestinian terrorist responsible for killing Americans abroad, despite a congressional mandate ordering the Justice Department to take action against these individuals'' . . . ``Palestinian terrorists have murdered at least 64 Americans, including two unborn children, since 1993. Yet the U.S. Government has failed to take legal action against those who committed the crimes, lawmakers disclosed during a Tuesday hearing on the Justice Department's failure to live up to its mandate to bring these terrorists to justice. ``Many of the terrorists continue to roam free across the Middle East, with one hosting a Hamas-affiliated television show in Jordan. ``With criticism mounting from Congress and U.S. victims of terrorism, Justice Department officials say they are working to initiate cases, but warn that this could take `many years' to play out. ``The Justice Department has repeatedly declined to comment when faced with questions from Congress about the lack of prosecutions, according to Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security. ``The Justice Department `has not been able to cite one example for this committee of even a single terrorist who has been prosecuted in the U.S. for any of the 64 attacks against Americans in Israel,' DeSantis said. `Indeed, many of these terrorists roam free as the result of prisoner exchanges or evasion. `` `This is not what Congress intended' when it created the DOJ's Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism in 2005,' DeSantis added. `This is not what the American people want, and this does not provide justice to the victims' families that has been so tragically elusive.' ``The Justice Department has sought to evade questions about its failure to prosecute known terrorists responsible for the murder of U.S. citizens. ``This includes its failure to level charges against Ahlam Tamimi, the Palestinian woman responsible for blowing up a Jerusalem pizza shop in 2001. The attacks killed 15, including a pregnant American woman. Tamimi currently resides in Jordan and hosts a television show on the Hamas-owned Al Quds station. `` `When the Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned the Department of Justice about this case, the Department declined to comment,' DeSantis said. `If in fact bringing to justice the perpetrators of terrorism against Americans in Israel is a high priority for the DOJ, then surely people of this nature should be prosecuted for their crimes.' '' . . . ``American victims of terrorist attacks abroad who testified at the hearing offered sharp criticism of the Justice Department for failing to take on terrorists in the U.S. courts. ``Sari Singer, who was injured in a 2003 Palestinian terror attack on a bus in Jerusalem, said that she has lost faith in the government.'' Singer said, ``I grew up believing that my country would be there for me and protect me no matter where I was in the world. These last years have left me feeling let down.'' I would insert parenthetically, Madam Speaker, that she shares that same feeling with the victims in our State Department of the attacks at Benghazi, and the many hours people waited thinking surely our government will come to our aid. So it sounds like victims of terrorists abroad share this, whether it is from Benghazi or whether it is from other terrorist attacks, that the administration is not going to be there for you. The article goes on: ``Peter Schwartz, whose nephew Ezra was shot in the head by a Palestinian terrorist in November 2015, said that the Obama administration has not been forthcoming about any potential investigations into the incident'' . . . ``The Obama administration was criticized in August when it sought to limit the restitution American victims of terrorism could receive. The administration argued in a legal briefing issued to the court that a large cash award to these victims could complicate the administration's efforts to foster peace between Israel and the Palestinians.'' Clearly, the administration's interests, as Sari Singer observed, is not with American victims of foreign terrorism. It is with the foreign terrorists that maybe if we sidle up to them enough, maybe if we will be nice to them and not punish them, then maybe they won't keep killing American citizens. That is false thinking. Madam Speaker, I can't help but think as we find out this week that this administration has released $100 billion to the largest supporter of terrorism in the world--Iran--and Iran has made clear that once they got this money from the Obama administration that they were going to increase their help to terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah. In other words, they told us in advance that when America cedes to Iran $100 billion extra, they are going to be able to help more terrorists commit more of their acts of terrorism. Now, back when I was a judge or even back years and years ago as a prosecutor, we always approached cases that if you assisted somebody, say you gave them money, and they told you before you gave them the money that they are going to use some of this money to commit a criminal act, then we always felt like you could prosecute those people. Jurors could bear that out because if you knowingly aid, assist--even encourage--you don't even have to give them money. If you just encourage them to commit a violent act or encourage them to go about what they plan to do, and they already said, ``We plan to commit more terrorism with what you give us,'' then you were an accomplice. Under the laws federally, and as well as in the laws I am aware of in most States, certainly in Texas, you would be charged as a principal. So if you gave money to someone knowing that they said, ``We are going to use money and help kill people and help terrorism,'' and then they committed the terrorism, you could be convicted of the same terrorism of those you gave the money to help. It is interesting that those principles seem to apply to all other Americans, but this administration feels surely they won't apply to this administration. Sure, Iran has said they are going to support more terrorism once they get all this extra money from the Obama administration. But apparently the Obama administration, according to these pleadings they filed, if you just be nice to the terrorists, let them keep their own money, gee, they will probably quit killing Americans. It doesn't work that way. Let's take a look at who this administration, this Commander in Chief's administration, is willing to punish. I have a letter here that was sent by my friend, our fellow colleague, Duncan Hunter, to the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee when he discusses Sergeant First Class Charles Martland and points out he is considered a first- rate warrior. ``While in Afghanistan in 2011, at a remote outpost, Martland confronted an Afghan Local Police commander for kidnapping a young boy and raping him repeatedly over several days. The issue was brought to the attention of Martland and his fellow soldiers after the boy's mother asked for help, after she also was attacked by the ALP--or Afghan Local Police--commander. ``When Martland and Captain Danny Quinn confronted the rapist, he admitted to the charge and laughed in their faces--at which point Martland and Quinn took matters into their own hands. This occurred after two separate but similar human rights violations, including another rape, near the outpost, resulting in no punitive action whatsoever. ``The Afghan Local Police commander was dragged to the perimeter gate, where he was thrown out and told never to come back. It is important to note that the Afghan Local Police commander left on his own, only to deliberately exaggerate his injuries. Multiple sources have confirmed this fact, including a linguist and authorities who were never interviewed by Army investigators after the incident. ``For this action, Martland was removed from the outpost and faced reprimand. He later was allowed to reenlist, only to face a Qualitative Management Program review board in February 2015.'' That would be a year ago. ``The Army argued that the black mark on his record, which states he assaulted `a corrupt Afghan commander' is cause to expel him from duty, despite the fact that he has the full support of his command and immediate leadership. In fact, the Department of Defense Inspector General reported to me that''--this is a letter from Duncan Hunter--`` `personnel are very supportive of the Sergeant and his efforts to remain in the U.S. Army. . . .' And there continue to be efforts within his command to not 'inadvertently hamper his efforts.' This was in response to an alleged gag order put on Martland and his fellow soldiers''--apparently, about trying to stop the rapes that were going on in Afghanistan. ``Importantly, Martland was permitted to resubmit an appeal to the Qualitative Management Program decision after his first appeal was denied outright. And recently, a decision within Army Human Resources Command recommended that the Army uphold the judgment that Martland be removed from service, although a final decision has yet to be made about his future.'' Madam Speaker, we have an American hero in Sergeant First Class Charles Martland. Dragging a child rapist out of the confined area that this child rapist was using to be a serial rapist, doing harm to children in Afghanistan, is an act of heroism, not an act to be condemned. In fact, courts I am aware of, certainly juries in Texas, would say that was acting in defense of a third person. This man is guilty of nothing except a heroic act to save children and women from being raped by a corrupt police commander. But under this administration, where we give money to supporters of terrorism, the largest supporters of terrorism in the world, and where we beg courts not to give large reimbursements to victims of terrorism, our own American victims of foreign terrorism because that might not help, it might make the foreign terrorists mad if they have a judgment against them, then it seems like this is perfectly consistent with the policies of this administration. We give money to terrorists who say they are going to use it to support terrorism; we don't give money to victims of terrorism. In fact, this administration should have done what the House passed and implored the administration to do, and that is to make sure that not a dime was allowed to be released to Iran until the verdicts outstanding against Iran by American victims of Iranian terrorism were paid first. But in its haste to get all this money to those who say they are going to use a bunch of it to support terrorism, the American victims were left in the lurch. It is more than irresponsible. It is unconscionable what has been going on. At some point, people in this administration have got to figure out what most of the American people have figured out, and that is you are not going to stop terrorism by trying to be sweet and kind to the terrorists. Some of us learned it on the playground growing up. I guess now that the Federal Government has control of education to such an extent that schools are forced to teach to the test--I have even had elementary schools tell me: We have had to do away with recess in elementary school because we just don't have time. We have got to teach them to the test so that we can get that Federal money and we can stay open. But if you allow recess and kids are on the playground and you have kids that were smaller like I was, you learn you are not going to stop bullying by giving your money to a bully. If you give a bully money, not only do they not respect you, they have more contempt and it encourages their bullying. You can't do that. You have to stand up to bullying. You find out when you do that, sometimes you will have a teacher, like my fifth grade teacher, that took up for the bullies, but you will ultimately find more teachers will not tolerate that kind of conduct. This administration never learned that. Maybe there was no chance to learn that in the young schools in Indonesia. Maybe that is why we have a Commander in Chief that thinks we should reward the terrorists, the supporters of terrorism, and punish the victims of terrorism by not letting them have proper financial restitution. But it is tragic what is going on. It is tragic. There are a number of stories about Sergeant Martland, including from my friend Jay Sekulow. He said: ``Yet, for his actions, he was immediately pulled from the battlefield and this decorated war hero is now facing expulsion from the military.'' This administration's priorities are so completely out of step with truth, justice, and the American way--what used to be the American way. Perhaps the American way has been fundamentally transformed in the last 7 years, so now the American way has become that we help terrorists, give them money, and we punish those who are victims. Well, of course, we know that our Secretary of State thanked Iran for their activities. I haven't heard whether or not Secretary of State Kerry has thanked Iran for this latest story. This from foxnews.com, ``Iran's Supreme Leader Awards Medals to Troops Who `Captured' U.S. Sailors.'' The story says: ``Iran's supreme leader has awarded medals to five members of the Iranian Navy whom he said 'captured intruding' U.S. Navy sailors during a tense incident in January. ``Ayatollah Ali Khamenei awarded the Order of Fat'h medal to Admiral Ali Fadavi, the head of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards, and four commanders who seized the two U.S. Navy vessels, according to Reuters. Iran's state media reported the news on Sunday. ``Order of Fat'h given by Chief Commander of Armed Forces to IRGC Navy commanders who captured intruding U.S. marines''. . .``In a tweet from his account Sunday, Khamenei misidentified those who were `captured' as being members of the Marines. ``On January 12, Iran captured the ten sailors whose boats `misnavigated' into Iranian waters, according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Though the sailors were released the following day, Iran released video of the sailors being captured, detained and apologizing for the incursion. ``Though Iran initially accused the sailors of spying, Fadavi later said an investigation had established the sailors were led astray by `a broken navigation system' and the trespassing was `not hostile or for spying purposes'. ``The sailors were attempting to navigate from Kuwait to Bahrain when they crossed into Iranian waters.'' Well, Madam Speaker, we have got satellites that could show exactly what happened. I would think that if this administration wanted to defend our sailors, they would show the satellite footage of where they were and we would be able to see for sure whether or not they did cross into Iranian waters. But consistent with these reports and stories we have already looked at this evening, it seems if they are going to act consistent with this administration's prior actions, this administration wouldn't want to embarrass the Iranian military, the supporters of terrorism, and so we wouldn't want to show that they were liars. So we won't show by satellite footage exactly where our sailors were, and we won't show exactly where our other naval vessels were. These were reported to be small vessels. Well, you don't have small Navy vessels unless they are near much larger Navy vessels. Normally, if they are larger Navy vessels, there are other small vessels that can go rather quickly. If you have the Navy vessels there, there is a good chance there is a carrier nearby, an airstrip, where jets could be there in no time whatsoever. It used to be under other Commanders in Chief, not this one, but other Commanders in Chief, that if we had sailors who were in danger of being captured by a country, particularly the largest supporter of terrorism in the world, our jets would be put in the air. They would get there immediately. They would keep flying overhead and protecting those sailors until the Navy itself could get there to rescue them. For some reason, this administration thought it was a better idea not to put our aircraft in the air--kind of reminiscent of Benghazi. We are not going to send aircraft that could have been there in minutes. But, heck, I was asking a former commander at Ramstein Air Base clear up in Germany. He didn't realize where I was going. I asked: How long would it take, say, to get to North Africa from Ramstein? He said: About 3, 3\1/2\ hours at the most. I said: So you could have been at Benghazi in 3\1/2\ hours? He said: Oh, well, we had ordnance on the planes that particular evening, and it would have taken awhile to reconfigure those. Well, if you can get clear from Ramstein Air Base to Benghazi in 3, 3\1/2\ hours, tops--we have got planes a whole lot closer to where these Navy vessels were--they should have been able to be there in minutes. I am sure some commander or some admiral who is afraid of the Commander in Chief would never admit that, not these days. But the fact is this once proud United States military who protected its own for the last 70 years and now it calls upon the largest supporter of terrorism to come get our sailors and to have them kneel on their knees, hands behind their heads, as if they are POWs, embarrass them to the maximum, for that, Secretary of State Kerry thanked Iran. Well, Madam Speaker, I see my friend from Nebraska is here. I yield to my friend. Nebraska Values

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I am very grateful to my friend from Nebraska. Mr. Fortenberry and I came in together, and I am so glad we did. We have been friends ever since. What a noteworthy tribute he had to pay. I am grateful for that tribute. Madam Speaker, we have had so many Americans who have given, as Lincoln said, the last full measure of devotion for freedom, for liberty, for people who were not even Americans, because that is who Americans have been. I know our current President is fond of saying that is who we are, and then he provides access to $100 billion for Iran--the largest supporter of terrorism. It says it is going to keep supporting terrorism, just with a lot more money now that the President has made all of this available. The President says that is not who we are, and then he shows us that we open our arms to terrorists from all over the world. So many Americans gave their lives and gave their limbs for liberty in Iraq, for liberty in Afghanistan. In fact, in Afghanistan, if I recall my figures correctly, in the 7\1/4\ years under Commander in Chief Bush, from October of 2001 until January of 2009, there were just over 500 precious American lives given for the cost of freedom in Afghanistan. Supposedly, we were told by this President, the war was pretty much over. He sent more troops for a while to Afghanistan; but even after, supposedly, the war has been over and troops have been left over there, we keep getting Americans killed. It is because of the rules of engagement that so needlessly tie their hands. It is because this administration would rather punish Green Beret Sergeant First Class Martland for stopping a serial child rapist. It would rather punish him--throw him out, end his military career-- because this administration, at least here in this country, does not want to offend the serial child rapist in Afghanistan. No wonder people around the world have lost so much respect for the United States in the last 7 years. They know that stuff is going on. They knew that Sergeant Martland stood up for the child and for the woman. They knew what he did. They spread the word. Then the word spreads when Sergeant Martland makes international news because this administration wants to punish him for dragging him out of the compound--not killing, not beheading, not disemboweling--in an act of defense of many third persons. They find out this administration punished the military hero, the Green Beret who protected the victims. It is incredible. I mean, any administration that would do that would probably turn around and, if it heard about some entity that was allowing unborn babies to be killed and was selling body parts, might be tempted to punish the people who exposed it instead of punishing those who did such a heinous act. Those who have read Scripture know there will come a time when right is wrong, wrong is right, the good are punished, and the evil are rewarded. But we also know the day will come when the ultimate judge of the world will set things straight. So this is a story from Martha Mendoza, Maya Alleruzzo, and Bram Janssen from the Associated Press: ``Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq is razed.'' This is heartbreaking. This is a monastery Americans were devoted to restoring. It is a monastery where people came to know Jesus of Nazareth for the last 1400 years. It is a place where God did miracles in people's lives. It is a place where our military were very, very careful to protect because they knew the Christian significance. As this administration miscalculated--apparently, our intelligence agencies did not miscalculate. Apparently, our intelligence agencies made very clear to this administration that ISIS is not a JV team, that these are dangerous people and they have to be stopped and you have to ramp it up. So it wasn't our intelligence. We didn't have bad intelligence. The reports are out there. The administration, thinking it knew better than those on the ground in the area, did not take ISIS seriously. Now, this Christian monastery over 1400 years old has been razed. The story from Iraq: ``The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites. ``For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for U.S. troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ's name, were carved near the entrance. ``Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists--St. Elijah's Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out. ``In his office in exile in Irbil, Iraq, the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared quietly at before- and after-images of the monastery that once perched on a hillside above his hometown of Mosul. Shaken, he flipped back to his own photos for comparison. `` `I can't describe my sadness,' he said in Arabic. `Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.' ``The Islamic State group, which broke from al-Qaeda and now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians and forced out hundreds of thousands of Christians, threatening a religion that has endured in the region for 2,000 years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed buildings and ruined historical and culturally significant structures they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam.'' Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that these writers know what leaders in this administration still, after all these years, have not figured out. It is Martha Mendoza, Maya Alleruzzo, and Bram Janssen. They point out in this article that these people believe that these sites are contrary to their interpretation of Islam. Yet, this administration says, no, it has nothing to do with Islam. The article continues: ``Those who knew the monastery wondered about its fate after the extremists swept through in June 2014 and largely cut communications to the area. ``Now, St. Elijah's has joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches in Syria and Iraq. The extremists have defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra. Museums and libraries have been looted, books burned, artwork crushed--or trafficked. `` `A big part of tangible history has been destroyed,' said Rev. Manuel Yousif Boji. A Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Michigan, he remembers attending Mass at St. Elijah's almost 60 years ago while a seminarian in Mosul.' `` `These persecutions have happened to our church more than once, but we believe in the power of truth, the power of God,' said Boji. He is part of the Detroit area's Chaldean community, which became the largest outside Iraq after the sectarian bloodshed that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraq's Christian population has dropped from 1.3 million then to 300,000 now, church authorities say.'' Christians are under persecution, being killed in greater numbers than any time in our history. Yet, it is not the Christians being persecuted in greater numbers than any time in history. It is not the group that many in the world recognize are the most persecuted religion in the world. This administration wants to welcome those of the religion of persecution rather than the most persecuted group in the world, that being Christians, although just recently this article from CNS News, ``550 Syrian Refugees Admitted to U.S. Since the Paris Attacks''--and, of the most persecuted highest number killed in the history of the world, Christians, this administration admitted two. An article from the Texas Tribune points out that Governor Greg Abbott and my friend, Democrat U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, ``pressed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Monday to explain why the agency plans to reduce its aerial surveillance on the Texas-Mexico border.'' ``Monday's request comes as CBP is reporting a new surge in the number of undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. From October to December of 2015, about 10,560 unaccompanied minors entered Texas illegally through the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. That marks a 115 percent increase over the same time frame in 2014.'' Madam Speaker, what is clear is that, as this administration says, oh, we are arresting fewer people coming into the country illegally, these kind of reports make clear, well, yeah, if you close your eyes, you will keep arresting even fewer. That is what they are doing. They are closing our eyes to our ability to see people that are violating our law. At the same time, we get this report from the Washington Examiner that sanctuary cities now cross the 300 mark, with Dallas and Philadelphia added to it. Madam Speaker, with so much to be depressed about, I want to commend the people of the State of Iowa, where I spent a couple of days last week and where I have spent other times many days in the past. When I am among the Iowans, I feel like I am back home in East Texas. The people are wonderful. I had somebody ask earlier today about: What do you think about your party? I said: What do you mean? He said: Well, you look at the people that won the Iowa caucuses. So? The comment was made: Well, in the Democratic caucus or primary, you had two White Socialists--this was the comment from this person--and in the Republican primary, the first and third vote-getters were Cuban, Hispanic Americans, and the fourth was African American. Isn't that interesting the way things have turned? Well, I have enjoyed coming to love the people of Iowa, and I look forward to the days ahead because of them. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride that I recognize today the great accomplishment of the Waskom Wildcats football team, a team which--for the second year in a row--has captured the title of Class 3A Division II Texas State Football Champions. The Wildcats' winning season culminated with their thirty-first consecutive win, a stellar streak they began during their 2014 championship season. Waskom ended this 2015 season undefeated with a perfect 16-0 record. The Waskom Wildcats were eager for a rematch with the only team to beat them in the prior season, and began their run to the title by toppling a talented team from Center with a 34-22 victory. Equally satisfying victories followed, as the Wildcats pounced on teams from all over east Texas in their quest to secure a spot in the championship. The state championship game found the Waskom Wildcats in a tangle with the Franklin Lions. The Wildcats rallied from an early deficit to take the lead at halftime, then a drive to a second consecutive state championship with a decisive 33-21 final score. The life lessons learned about teamwork and discipline will no doubt improve every participant in immeasurable ways. My heartfelt congratulations are extended to Athletic Director and Head Football Coach Whitney Keeling and his staff including Coaches Jeremy Kubiak, Greg Pearson, Gary Wilson, Jeff Lyles, Vencent Lee, David Higginbotham, Matt Goode, Justin Watson, Frank Crisp, Joe Williams, and Lorenza Thomas; also, Managers Isaac Irving, Cameron Williamson, Trey Jones, Zach Grubbs, Taylor Minatrea, Lamontre Stephens, and Athletic Trainer Matt Dyson. The players themselves who prepared diligently enduring through strains, pains, and grueling practices and emerged again as champions included Tramaine Butler, Keileon Johnson, Tay Green, Jaire Jackson, Pedro Rodriguez, Keylon Johnson, Kaleb Haynes, Eric Stephens III, Kevy Luster, Lucas Norton, Logan Hughes, Dylan Harkrider, Jason Jinks, Chan Amie, Latavius Stephens, TK Hamilton, Mike Reason, Jacob Reeves, Tramel Butler, Chris Pacheco, Kyle Mcinnis, Chris Stafford, Victor Tapia, Bryan Holland, Vicente Segura, Dalton Adams, Brighton Harris, Morgan Browning, Bradley Cochran, Dylan Powell, Logan O'Connor, Christian Smith, Xzavian Russell, Jack Smith, Josh Mauldin, Ashton Thulen, Jacob Bennett, Rowdy Martin, Cody Kyker, Kevin Sanford, Raymond Ramirez, Jacob Norris, Ty Carter, Hunter Johnson, Jay Reeves, Josh Cole, and K.T. Ceaser. A team and its coaches cannot soar to the heights of champions without the encouragement and full support of the school itself starting at the top with Superintendent Jimmy E. Cox and Principal Kassie Watson, to whom a debt of gratitude is also owed. Additional laudatory acclaim and gratitude must also go to the entire city of Waskom which once again revealed itself to be a tight knit community of undying support for the champion Wildcats. May God continue to bless these young people, their families, friends and all those who refer to Waskom as their home. It is a tremendous honor to congratulate the 2015 State Champion Waskom Wildcats, as their legacy is now preserved in the United States Congressional Record which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the order of the House of today, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I send to the desk a privileged concurrent resolution and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today on a motion offered pursuant to this order, it adjourn to meet at 1 p.m. on Friday, January 15, 2016, unless it sooner has received a message from the Senate transmitting its concurrence in House Concurrent Resolution 107, in which case the House shall stand adjourned pursuant to that concurrent resolution.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, having been the location for the State of the Union Address last night, we agree that we care deeply about this country, but there were some things that were said here from this lectern right here, where national and international leaders speak when they are invited to speak here in the House, that I felt needed some deliberation. It is noteworthy. My late mother, English teacher that she was--if I had given this speech, the first thing she would have harassed me about was that you start the first five paragraphs--and this is the content: I have come, I know, I also, I hope, I will keep, I don't, I want, I want. My mother would have made big red circles around there and said: Eliminate the first person. It tells people that you care more about yourself. Get rid of that. Quit having so much first person. Of course, she would have done the same thing toward the end of the speech when we have: I hold, I know, I intend, I can't, I am asking, I see, I will be, I can, I travel, I see, I see, I know, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see, I know, I believe, I stand. No doubt my late mother would have taken a red pen and said: Son, if you want to give a great speech, quit talking about the first person ``I'' all the time. You have got to eliminate it if you want to give a great speech. So, Mr. Speaker, since we care deeply about each other in this country, those who are in elected positions, I thought maybe, since the door is not always open to me at the White House--I know that going back to the ObamaCare days when the President said: If you have got better ideas, my door is always open. I know my office kept trying to get me into that open door. I am sure the President was telling the truth. I am sure his door was open. But there were so many Secret Service agents and staff members between me and that open door, I was not allowed to come present my better ideas on health care. I still have them. Hopefully, we will get a chance to work those in. Some of the things, Paul Ryan and I have been on the same page for years; some of them are a little different. Tom Price has had some great proposals, Mike Burgess. We have a lot of doctors here that have had some great ideas on how to fix it. From that experience, I know that the door is not always open, so this is the format in which I have to point these things out. When the President said, ``second, how do we make technology work for us and not against us,'' what immediately comes to mind is what many Republicans have been concerned about and some of my Democrat friends have been very concerned about. Don't seem quite as concerned under a Democratic President as they were under President Bush, but, nonetheless, still concerned that the President asked, perhaps rhetorically, how do we make technology work for us. Mr. Speaker, I would humbly submit that the President has got technology working for the administration pretty well. You have got NSA that has been amazing in their ability to use algorithms and sort through emails. You have got the Federal Government, as we found after the Snowden revelations, after we had been told by both Bush and Obama administration officials that we are not checking people's phone calls, we are not getting that information. It turned out that, in the FISA court, both administrations had been seeking and getting blanket orders not consistent with the Constitution, which requires specificity. You have to specifically name what it is being searched for and specifically the reason you have for searching it. There is no specificity. They just said: We want every list of everybody's phone call in your phone company. The judge said: Oh, sure, that is specific enough--every single phone call without any reason, just need the information. So you have got emails, you have got phone calls. Then, of course, under ObamaCare, the Federal Government is going to get to have everybody's medical records. It sounds like crony capitalism involved in having a deal with a private entity to gather everybody's medical records. So you will have the Federal Government and a private company gathering everybody's medical records. Then we have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that, under the guise of trying to protect people from unscrupulous banks, you have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau say: We want every debit and credit card record of everybody. That way we can watch for unscrupulous banking practices and banks. Well, that is not the way the Constitution requires things be done. As a judge, if you wanted somebody's bank records, you had to come to a judge like me in a felony case and you had to have probable cause established under oath that there is probable cause to believe a crime was committed, this person committed it, and only then would I sign an order allowing them to get someone's bank records. Not under the CFPB. Under the guise of helping people, they are gathering people's bank records, whether they want them to have them or not. That needs to stop. The President said: ``We have done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.'' The trouble is I remember back in 2006 when Democrats were rightfully and righteously pointing out that with a Republican President, President George W. Bush, and Republicans in control of the House and Senate, they felt it was outrageous that we were going to have a $160 billion deficit, that we would bring in $160 billion less than we would spend. They were right. We should have had a balanced budget then. We were trying to get there. We were pushing for cuts trying to get there. But they convinced the American public Republicans can't be trusted; they have got you a $160 billion deficit. You put us in charge, and we will cut that to get a balanced budget. Then we got a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate, and what happened? The budget that they gave us created about a $1.6 trillion deficit. So much for the $160 billion that we were lambasted for allowing. They 10-times that right up to $1.6 trillion or so. People need to understand, when the President says we have cut the deficit by almost three-quarters, when you still haven't gotten back to that $160 billion deficit that we were lambasted for back in 2006, you still have not done an adequate job. We wish that the President and Democrats in the Senate would work better with us so that we can get back more to the kind of budget the Democrats promised Americans back in the fall of 2006. Then the President said: ``More and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.'' I want to applaud the President, Mr. Speaker, for stating the truth. Under his watch, more and more wealth and income has been concentrated at the top. The President has actually admitted on the record a couple years or so ago that it is true that for the first time in American history--it has never happened before under any other President--the first time in American history, under President Obama's watch, 95 percent of all income in America has been reported went to the top 1 percent of income earners in America. Ninety-five percent of the country's income went to the top 1 percent. It never happened before, not under a Republican, not under a Democrat, not under anybody. That has never happened before. In fact, we feel the middle class shrinking, and it is not in a good way where they are moving up to the rich. They are moving down to the poor, and the poor are getting poorer. It is not because a free market system doesn't work. It is because the government, under this President, blew past the 73- or 74,000-page-per-year record that President Bush finally reached and now is pushing toward 80,000 new pages of regulations every year that business has to live under. The only chance you have is to be a big investment bank that got us into trouble, that nearly brought down the country, because the regulations of this administration and the push that this administration has had against community banks that did not get us in trouble is about to bring them under. We are losing them constantly, and the big banks are getting bigger and more powerful instead of getting lower to a point where they would not bring down the country as they nearly did previously. The President says: ``The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start.'' My understanding was he was promising that he would get rid of that. I thought when he got elected, okay, look for the silver lining. He is going to get rid of No Child Left Behind. Hallelujah, that is a good thing. Let's get the control back to the States and the people as the 10th Amendment requires, because education is not an enumerated power. It is reserved to the States and people. Before the Federal Government got involved, I know in Texas--I have seen the stats--it was nearly 75 percent of all education employees were teachers in Texas. Makes sense. Then that year President Carter started the Department of Education. Now everybody has got to have a massive number of bureaucrats at the State level and at the local level. You have got to have people at the local school district providing all the data that is being demanded at the State capitol because it is being demanded here in Washington. So we are now about 50 percent of our employees in Texas--about--are teachers. Why 70 to 75 percent down to 50? Because we have a Federal Department of Education. The emphasis is on being bureaucrats, not on education, and we need to get back to that. I sure wish that had been a promise the President had kept. There are numerous promises and statements made. I am just highlighting some here, Mr. Speaker. But when the President says, ``Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far,'' I am not sure where that number is coming from. It may come from the same source that the President used to say: ``Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office.'' In both cases, I haven't been able to find any basis whatsoever for either of those statements and would welcome hard, factual evidence, not something they create and make up--it is easy to make things up-- but an actual survey. Because I have seen surveys that show that, even though this President was raised as a child in a Muslim country back in Indonesia--he thought that that would get him more respect in Muslim countries--the surveys I have seen show he has less respect in Muslim countries than President Bush did, and that was bad enough. But at least the countries had more respect for President George W. Bush. They knew he was serious and meant business. Unfortunately, Muslim countries actually believe that they could take--say, just hypothetically, Mr. Speaker--they could take 10 of the U.S. Navy sailors, just take them into custody, and this administration would do nothing, nothing to retaliate or respond. As President Reagan made clear and history showed, you get peace through strength. If you don't get peace through strength, then the only way you get peace is total subjugation to a tyrant. The President said: ``America is about giving everybody willing to work a chance, a hand up.'' Yet this is the very President that, with executive orders, changed--this administration at least--and violated the existing welfare reform laws because it was a requirement. If you could work, you had to work. I was thrilled to see a graph that a professor at Harvard had at a seminar up there at Harvard back in 2005. He showed that for 30 years of the welfare system, '65 or '66 to '95 or '96, that single moms' income, when adjusted for inflation, was just flat-lined. Single moms' income was flat-lined. No increase over 30 years and spending trillions of dollars, they were no better off. Yet, after the welfare reform, after the Republican revolution under Speaker Newt Gingrich, welfare reform required working, if people could. They had a graph that showed that, for the first time since we started having welfare, from '96 through 2005 or through 2004, single moms' income had a sharp increase over that period and was still headed up. I am not sure if it was still headed up when this President took that requirement away, which no doubt put them back on a flat line again, making them worse off. I am sure it is not intentional that he would make single moms worse off; but when you have the data to show what happens, it is very unfortunate he put single moms back on a path to low income that never increases after adjusted for inflation. The President said: ``I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed and there is red tape that needs to be cut. But, after years now of record corporate profits''--that is a problem. Outdated regulations--I am asking rhetorically, Mr. Speaker. Is that the reason that he has set records with nearly 80,000 pages of new regulations where you have got the founders of some of the biggest businesses in the country saying: With all these regulations pouring out of Washington every year, I could never found the company that I have today. I could never get started today because of these massive, bloated regulations? Here again, he takes a shot at big banks or Big Oil. It is interesting, Mr. Speaker, if you look back at the President's proposal on his American Jobs Act--my American Jobs Act that I filed before his was a lot better, it would have stimulated the economy better--he said he was going to punish Big Oil. But if you look at the deductions he was eliminating, they were basically deductions that only the smaller, independent oil producers could take, which kept them in business, and that Exxon--the big companies--didn't even take the deductions. They were not eligible to take those that the President was going to eliminate. Therefore, it was going to put out of business the independent oil and gas producers, which would be a boon to the Big Oil that the President said he didn't like. He has talked about and railed against the big banks and the fat cats on Wall Street, but it is as if there is a wink and a nod there: I am going to call you names, but I am going to let you make more money than you have ever made in your lives while the rest of those in the country make less money than they have ever made--because, under this President's policies and regulations, that is what happened. He says that immigrants aren't the reason that wages haven't gone up enough. I hope that we will have a chance to show him the accurate data that show, yes, that is the biggest reason that wages haven't gone up. For all of the jobs that have been created, it looks like the number indicates it is the same number of immigrants that have taken jobs during that time. The President said that he plans to lift up the many businesses. Mr. Speaker, that is the problem. This President thinks he is the one who lifts businesses or puts them down. It is true that he can destroy businesses, as he has done, but the fact that anyone thinks the government is the one that lifts businesses is at the heart of the problem with this administration, one of many. The President says that, over the past 7 years, we have nurtured that spirit. He is talking about discoveries in DNA. Yet, with the 70,000 to 80,000 pages of new regulations every year, there is not much spirit there to nurture. He said that we have protected an open Internet, but he failed to mention that the government took over the Internet. The FCC had said that they were not going to take it over. Then he gave a speech, saying that we were going to take it over. The next thing you know, they have taken it over. He says that he is putting Joe in charge of mission control. He is talking about curing cancer. I love the idea that we are going to cure cancer. That would be fantastic. A lot of loved ones I have lost have died of cancer. Then I heard he was going to put Joe in charge. Then I remembered, Mr. Speaker, wasn't it he that was going to stamp out all waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government, so he was going to put Joe in charge, and we knew it could happen? It seems like he says he is going to put Joe in charge when he may not really be serious about doing anything or having any results. So we will see. In any event, there are a lot of problems that he failed to address and the fact that he was being mocked by Iran as he was speaking about the higher respect that other countries have. Go back to President Reagan. The radical Islamists had so much more respect for President Reagan. They didn't like him, but they had respect and fear. Proverbs said: ``Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.'' There is a component of fear within respect. They had no fear of Carter, but they had so much fear and respect for Reagan that they released our hostages the day he was sworn in. I am hoping and praying that we get a leader elected who takes office a year from now who has that kind of respect. He says that, when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or to Moscow to lead--they call us. I wish the President got more briefings or was able to attend more or got better information if he is not getting this, but we have had a real problem under his Presidency. People have been shocked, including some here in this body--I was not really shocked--when Egypt and some of our Muslim ally nations have done airstrikes. The big news was they didn't consult Washington, and people in the administration were upset: Why didn't they check with us? I have met with those people. They said: We can't tell this administration, because they will leak it to our enemies. We can't trust them. For heaven's sake, this administration has declassified information on nuclear weapons, trying to embarrass and harass Israel. They have taken steps to try to prevent Israel from defending themselves. Is it any wonder that Egyptian President el-Sisi--whom I have tremendous respect for--and other leaders, including Iran and other leaders in the Middle East, when they have got a problem, they don't talk to Washington except for the largest supporter of terrorism, Iran? Iran knows they can push President Obama around and his administration, John Kerry. They can push them around, and they do. They can take our sailors and not have any consequences. But when they have got a real problem, they go to Moscow, because they know Putin is a man who means business. I don't think he can be trusted. I think he is one of those with whom anything should be verified and that he should be carefully watched. Some people in this administration think Putin is an anathema and a mystery. They can't figure him out. He is one of the most transparent leaders in the world today. Those of us who know Russian history know you can read him like a book. You can anticipate what he is going to do. He is very transparent. The President says that, as we focus on destroying ISIL, we don't have a plan. We don't have strategic orders for our military to take out ISIL, but, somehow, he is focused on them. In having been all over north Iraq myself and in having met with Iraqi leaders, especially Kurdish leaders--because they are the military leaders we can trust--I know what they say. In having just heard another report in September again, we have U.S. military planes flying. They see trucks that are loaded with weapons and supplies for ISIL. We know they are going to ISIL as those are about the only people using some of these roads, with the big trucks. One of our A-10 pilots said his rules of engagement allowed him to neither crater the road and stop the supplies to ISIL and stop the weapons going to ISIL, nor did he have the authority to take out one of the trucks unless one of the trucks fired at him, and only then could they fire at that truck only. ISIL knows that, so they don't fire at A- 10s or at any of our helicopters or aircraft. That is why most of the planes that go out with ordnance come back with most of their ordnance. It is because of this President's rules of engagement. How else can you explain that, after 7\1/4\ years under Commander in Chief and President George W. Bush, we lost right around 500 precious American military lives in Afghanistan; and then, basically, when we were told the war was over, for 7 years now under Commander in Chief Obama, we have lost three to four times that many people and the peace? When I talk to people privately--you won't get this in a public meeting but in private meetings with our military--they indicate that it is our rules of engagement: We have to be worried that, if we defend ourselves and live, we will go to Leavenworth for 20 years; so a lot of us would rather die as somewhat of a hero than go home and go to Leavenworth for defending ourselves. So we have lost three to four times as many under President Obama--in 3 months less time when the war was supposedly over--than we lost during the actual war in Afghanistan. The President says that our foreign policy must be focused on the threat from ISIL and al Qaeda. I agree it must be, but, unfortunately, it isn't at this time. I will just finish with this, Mr. Speaker. He points out that we also can't try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis. That is not leadership. That is a recipe for a quagmire, spilling American blood and treasure. Ultimately, it weakens us. It is the lesson of Vietnam and of Iraq that we should have learned by now. Mr. Speaker, Sam Johnson--after 7 years in the Hanoi Hilton as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam--was beaten and tortured. If you remember the scenario, Nixon had promised in 1972 to get us out of Vietnam. He calls for the Paris peace negotiations. They start. North Vietnam makes this show about storming out. So Nixon ordered the carpet bombing of Hanoi and North Vietnam for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks of bombing, North Vietnam rushed back to the negotiating table and said: Let's get this done. And there was a peace deal. As Sam Johnson and others were being taken to the bus to be taken to the military plane to leave North Vietnam, he said one of the meanest officers or higher officials there at the prison was laughing and said: You stupid Americans, if you had just bombed us for 1 more week, we would have had to surrender unconditionally. Mr. Speaker, the lesson of Vietnam is this: If you are going to send American military men and women into harm's way, give them everything they need to win. Let them win, and then bring them home. That is the lesson of Vietnam that this administration and many others have not learned. That is why, instead of 500 military heroes losing their lives in 7 years in Afghanistan, we have had three to four times that many lose their lives under President Obama. It is because this lesson of Vietnam has not been learned. Give our military what they need to win, and give them rules of engagement and orders to win, and then bring them home. I hope and pray somebody gets that message in this administration so that we have no more needless loss of life in foreign countries by the heroic, patriotic men and women of our military. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, we have now learned that the administration is releasing or has released Muhammad al-Rahman al- Shamrani, a 40-year-old citizen of Saudi Arabia. He was transferred to Saudi Arabia on January 11, 2016. Apparently, The New York Times had gotten ahold of documents regarding--and this is from an October 2008 recommendation for the continued detention under the Department of Defense control for Guantanamo detainee, and then it gives the long number--it is Muhammad al-Rahman al-Shamrani. If you read what purports to be secret--I don't know how The New York Times got it--but you read over in his file that this Guantanamo detainee--that would be Mr. Shamrani--on 14 October 2007 stated: ``When I get out of here, I will go to Iraq and Afghanistan and will kill as many Americans as I can. Then I will come here and kill more Americans.'' He also stated: ``I love Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and if I ever get out of Guantanamo, I will go back to fight the Americans and kill as many as I can.'' The detainee stated he hated all Americans and will seek revenge if ever released from Guantanamo. The detainee said that, if he is released, he would again participate in jihad against the enemies of Muslims, to include the United States. The detainee is proud of what he has done, and he is willing to do anything to fight against the enemies of Muslims. The detainee stated he decided to become more religious because of his dislike of the U.S. and its citizens. So for those who have been confused about the rules of civilized warfare, there is nothing illegal, unconstitutional against the Geneva Convention for holding people who are part of a group who are at war with your country until the group they are a part of announces they are no longer at war with you. Now, war was declared, as some of my Muslim leader friends in the Middle East and Africa tell me. It is obvious to the rest of the world that radical Islam declared war on the United States back in '79 after President Carter laid the foundation to allow what he called a man of peace to come in and take over ruling Iran. His name was Khomeini. It was after that that our American Embassy was attacked and over 50 people taken hostages, Americans. Basically, we did nothing about it. So I know the President likes to say that Guantanamo is used as a recruiting tool, but the fact is, oh, basically, if we get rid of Guantanamo, then that pretty much eliminates anger at America. The fact is that while President Clinton was sending American military to protect Muslims who were being unfairly treated, there were not only attacks against Americans. There was planning going on, not only to attack the USS Cole, but to attack America, our facilities, our embassies, our buildings, and they were planning 9/11. There were no detainees at Guantanamo. Yet, all of this plotting and planning--and from my discussions with people in the Middle East when I have been over there, with people who are from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, when I have been in those countries--I haven't been into Syria, but I have been right there at its border--but they all say the same thing. What they use to recruit is in 1979 we were attacked by radical Islamists. We did nothing under President Carter. In '83, we were attacked and around 300 marines were killed in Beirut. Congress, under Democratic control, said we are getting our people out. So President Reagan ordered the evacuation from Beirut. Instead of fighting back, we ran home. I understand that Reagan felt that was one of the big mistakes of his Presidency. So the attacks have been ongoing. The World Trade Center attack in 1993, the attack on the Khobar Towers, so many attacks under President Clinton. He sent a lot of tow missiles, blew up some tents. It seems maybe like there was an aspirin factory. It was not Guantanamo that was the driving force in all of those years, decades of war against the United States. It didn't exist. The elimination of Guantanamo will not end the animosity and the desire of radical Islamists to eliminate America from the map along with Israel. And just to be clear, today the story from Susannah George, ``Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Baghdad Mall Attack,'' they are still at war. Whether they are JV or not, they are killing people. Adam Kredo from the Free Beacon reports today, ``Obama Administration Stonewalling Investigation into 113 Terrorists Inside United States'': ``Senators Ted Cruz and Jeff Sessions disclosed Monday that they had been pressuring the Obama administration for months to disclose the immigration histories of these foreign-born individuals implicated in terror plots.'' Senators Cruz and Sessions wrote to the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security and the Attorney General: ``The American people are entitled to information on the immigration history of terrorists seeking to harm them.'' They note that we already knew 14 of the people that were brought over as refugees turned out to be terrorists, foreign terrorists, radical Islamists, but they were given legal entrance as refugees. We have a right to know how many of those 113 that have now been arrested for terrorism were foreign born, how many of them came in as refugees. These are all important. Then we see the story from yesterday by Jonah Bennett that almost half of California driver's licenses went to illegal immigrants in 2015. Wow. Under the REAL ID Act, that means nobody from California should be able to use their driver's licenses to get on airplanes to travel in interstate commerce or foreign travel. And then the story from Philadelphia, January 8, absolutely tragic. A man walks up shooting police. A discussion today that there may be other people that were involved. The gunman said he shot the Philadelphia officer for the Islamic State. The police have said that. However, despite the fact that this radical Islamic terrorist has said he shot the police officer repeatedly in an ambush for Allah and for the Islamic State, here is the headline from a story by Dave Boyer from today: ``Obama Administration Wondering whether Shooting of Philly Cop Was Terrorist Act,'' because they don't take the radical Islamist terrorist who shot the policeman for Allah and for the Islamic State. Perhaps they think he is confused. He doesn't sound confused. He sounds like he knew exactly what he was doing when he walked up and ambushed, trying to kill by repeatedly shooting a Philadelphia policeman. The story of January 8 from Jay Solomon in The Wall Street Journal, ``Nuclear Deal Fuels Iran's Hard-Liners,'' and it makes clear, as it says down here: ``As much as $100 billion in frozen revenues are expected to return to Iran after sanctions are lifted, which U.S. officials said could happen in coming weeks. The White House hoped the cash windfall would aid Mr. Rouhani's political fortunes.'' Madam Speaker, mark my words. If that $100 billion to $150 billion is provided by this administration here in the United States of America to Iran, to its current radical Islamic leaders who hate the United States, who have not signed the deal that President Obama is so proud of--and they have breached it repeatedly already, we know--that money, some of that money will be used to finance the killing of Americans and Israelis. Now, back when I was a judge--years and years ago, a prosecutor--we would say, if you fund somebody who says they are going to use some of that money, as Iran has, to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, which we know are terrorist organizations, been named as such, and you know they are terrorist organizations, you know the money you are providing is going to, in turn, be provided to terrorist organizations. See, back when I was a prosecutor or judge, we would say: You know what? If you are knowingly providing money to someone who has already said they are going to give it to terrorists who are going to kill people, well, it sounds like there is a case to be made for you being as guilty as they are. Certainly, it goes beyond the pale of gross negligence, but that is hypothetically speaking. I am not a prosecutor. I am not a judge. I am not a chief justice anymore. But when is the sanity going to return when people who say they are your enemies who want death to America, continue to say ``death to America,'' continue to say we are going to provide more money, once you give us that $100 billion, $150 billion, once you give us that, we are going to fund more terrorism, and it is already being reported. Just the announcement that the money is coming has already stimulated more attacks on those who would hope to be free in Iran. It is tragic, just tragic. But, in any event, we are living in perilous times. Many understand that there are radical Islamists who are at war with us. It is time to recognize that the release of a man who has said he wants to kill Americans and will after he is released should be taken at his word. I know there is some claim that he may not have said the things that are attributed to him by our own officers, our own personnel that were monitoring him, but let me just say that is a real easy one. There is video somewhere, unless that has been lost with some of the emails that were being pursued by Congress. Unless it has been lost with emails that have been deleted to try to avoid turning them over to Congress, those videos can be consulted, and we can know for sure whether this Islamic radical that President Obama has released from Guantanamo said the things that our people said he said. I was hearing some of my friends' comments about the gun laws. I know we all share the desire to lessen and eliminate gun violence in America. The thousands of felony cases that came through my court caused me repeatedly to think back. I don't recall anybody who committed a crime with a gun that got it legally. Outlaws don't get guns legally. It has been made clear that the things our President has proposed would not have stopped one of these mass murderers that he now says spur him on to take action. I would encourage my friends: Let's work to take action that will actually stop the mass murders, that will actually stop the gun violence, but that will not occur by taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Hardy).

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, news surfaced today. Here is a story from Ed Morrissey: ``Has the State Department released a smoking gun in the Hillary Clinton email scandal? In a thread from June 2011, Hillary Clinton exchanges emails with Jake Sullivan, then her deputy chief of staff and now her campaign foreign-policy adviser, in which she impatiently waits for a set of talking points. When Sullivan tells her that the source is having trouble with the secure fax, Hillary then orders Sullivan to have the data stripped of its markings and sent through a non-secure channel.'' Then it is quoting from the email: ``If they can't, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading and send nonsecure.'' The article goes on to say: ``That's an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand. Regardless of whether or not Sullivan complied, this demolishes Hillary claim to be ignorant of marking issues, as well as strongly suggests that the other thousand-plus instances where this did occur likely came under her direction.'' Fox News also noticed the email this morning, although they don't have a copy of it linked. And it is quoting: ``However, one email thread from June 2011 appears to include Clinton telling her top adviser Jake Sullivan to send security information through insecure means. ``In response to Clinton's request for a set of since-redacted talking points, Sullivan writes, 'They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They are working on it.' Clinton responds, 'If they can't, turn it into nonpaper with no identifying heading and send nonsecure.' ``Ironically, an email thread from 4 months earlier shows Clinton saying she was 'surprised' that a diplomatic officer named John Godfrey used a personal email account to send a memo on Libya policy after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi.'' The article goes on later: ``Did those talking points get illegally transmitted on Hillary Clinton's order? If so, then Sullivan may find himself in legal trouble, too. Paragraph (g)''--quoting from the law-- ``makes it clear that `each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.' ``This explains why more than a thousand pieces of classified information have found their way into Hillary unauthorized and unsecured email system--and why the markings have been stripped from them. Hillary herself apparently ordered the Code Red, so to speak. In an update, the author says: ``There are a few people wondering whether the `TPs' ''--or talking points--``in question in this thread were classified in the first place. ``There are a couple of points to remember in that context: Unclassified material doesn't need to be transmitted by secure fax; if the material wasn't classified, Sullivan would have just faxed them normally. ``Ordering aides to remove headers to facilitate the transmission over unsecured means strongly suggests the information was not unclassified. On top of that, removing headers to avoid transmission security would be a violation of 18 USC 793 anyway, which does not require material to be classified--only sensitive to national security.'' Also: ``State did leave this document unclassified, but that's because there isn't any discussion of what the talking points cover. They redacted the subject headers with B5 and B6 exemptions, invoked to note that the FOIA''--Freedom of Information Act--``demand doesn't cover the material. ``Ordering the headings stripped, and Sullivan's apparent reluctance to work around the secure fax system, makes it all but certain that the material was classified at some level--and Hillary knew it.'' Just breaking news of interest. Activities of Abdurahman Alamoudi

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, a matter of grave concern continues to arise stemming back from a man who was born in Eritrea named Abdurahman Alamoudi. And this is from DiscoverTheNetworks.org. He, Mr. Alamoudi, immigrated to the United States in 1979. That would be the same year, Mr. Speaker, you will recall, that radical Islam declared war on the United States, attacked our embassy in Tehran, took over 50 Americans hostage, and held them for over a year. That same year, that year, 1979, is the year Mr. Alamoudi came to the United States, and then he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1996. In 1981, he founded the Islamic Society of Boston. It is not in this article, but I have also seen the documentation of his founding. And it is, I think, worth noting that the Islamic Society of Boston that Mr. Alamoudi founded, the two mosques in the Boston area, one of which produced the Tsarnaev brothers, where they worshipped and learned more about Islam. This article says, from 1985 to 1990 Mr. Alamoudi served as executive assistant to the president of the SAAR Foundation in Northern Virginia. In 1990, Alamoudi founded the American Muslim Council. The following year, he established the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, whose purpose was to ``certify Muslim chaplains hired by the military.'' During the 1992 Presidential election cycle, Alamoudi courted both the Democratic and the Republican Parties. When Bill Clinton emerged victorious, Alamoudi increased his donations to Democrats. He went on to serve the Clinton administration as an Islamic affairs adviser and a State Department ``goodwill ambassador'' to Muslim nations. In 1993, the Defense Department certified Alamoudi's American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council as one of two organizations, along with the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, authorized to approve and endorse Muslim chaplains. Among the chaplains endorsed by Alamoudi's group was James Yee, who eventually would be arrested in 2003 on suspicion of espionage. Mr. Speaker, it is very reassuring that this man arrested on suspicion of espionage here in the United States was certified by Mr. Alamoudi's group. In March 1993, Alamoudi disparaged the Federal Government for the ``flimsy'' evidence it had used as a basis for arresting Mohammed Salameh, a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing of February 26 of 1993. Salameh was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison on what, apparently, Mr. Alamoudi thought was flimsy evidence. It goes on: ``In 1995, Alamoudi helped President Clinton''-- interesting verb that, helped--``Alamoudi helped President Clinton and the American Civil Liberties Union develop a Presidential guideline entitled `Religious Expression in Public School,' which established a legal justification upon which the ACLU would file lawsuits restricting Christmas celebrations and removing Nativity scenes from public schools. ``Alamoudi made numerous controversial statements during the 1990s and early 2000s, including these: ``In 1994 he said: `Hamas is not a terrorist group . . . I have followed the good work of Hamas. ``In March 1996, Alamoudi said he was `honored to be a member of the committee that is defending' Islamic Association of Palestine''--or IAP--``founder Musa Abu Marzuk, who in 1997 would be deported from the United States because of his Hamas-related activities. `I really consider him to be from among the best people in the Islamic movement.' ''--that is a quote from Alamoudi--``Alamoudi added. `Hamas . . . and I work together with him.' '' In December of 1996, as Alamoudi continued to work with the Clinton administration to find good Muslims to work in the government, Alamoudi told a meeting of the IAP: ``I think if we were outside this country we can say, `Oh, Allah, destroy America,' but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it . . . You can be violent anywhere else but in America.'' ``In October 2000, Alamoudi attended an anti-Israel protest outside the White House, where he proudly declared himself `a supporter of Hamas' and `a supporter of Hezbollah.' '' And apparently there is video of that. In 2000, Alamoudi literally ``began making regular trips to Libya, where he met with government officials to discuss strategies by which they could create `headaches' for Saudi Arabia. ``In January 2001, Alamoudi attended a conference in Beirut with leaders of numerous terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. ``In June 2001, Alamoudi was a guest speaker at a Northern Virginia conference where senior Islamic militants from throughout the Middle East were gathered. Many of the speakers denounced the `Zionist entity that aims to destroy the Muslim ummah,'' or community. ``That same month, Alamoudi attended a briefing on President Bush's faith-based initiative, and the White House invited him to the post-9/ 11 prayer service on September 14th at the National Cathedral in Washington. In September 2003, British customs officials arrested Alamoudi at Heathrow Airport as he was returning from Libya with 340,000 in cash given to him by President Muammar Qadhafi to finance a plot involving two U.K.-based al Qaeda operatives intending to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince, later King Abdullah. Alamoudi was subsequently extradited to the United States. In October 2003, he was arrested at Dulles Airport on charges of having illegally accepted $10,700 from the Libyan mission to the United Nations. ``With Alamoudi in custody, federal authorities released a transcript of a telephone conversation in which he had: lamented that no Americans had died during al Qaeda's 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya; recommended that more operations be conducted like the 1994 Hezbollah bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died; and clearly articulated his objective of turning America into a Muslim nation. ``Alamoudi was indicted not only for his illegal dealings with Libya, but also for tax evasion and immigration fraud. He ultimately pled guilty to, and was convicted of, being a senior al Qaeda financier who had funneled at least $1 million into the coffers of that terrorist organization. He also acknowledged that he had pocketed almost $1 million for himself in the process. In October 2004, Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison. ``During the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development trial of 2007, which examined evidence of the HLF's fundraising on behalf of Hamas, the U.S. government released a list of approximately 300 of HLF's 'unindicted co-conspirators' and 'joint venturers.' Alamoudi was named in that list . . . In addition to the affiliations listed above, Alamoudi has also been, at various times, a board member of American Muslims for Jerusalem; the head of the American Task Force for Bosnia; a board member of the Council for the National Interest Foundation; a director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR''--which, by the way, Mr. Speaker, has very open access to the highest officials, including the President. They are the ones that got Langley to call off a 2-day seminar for law enforcement on radical Islam and got the rules changed so people that were American experts on Islam could not talk to any U.S. Government group about radical Islam unless they got approval from people like those that CAIR approved of. CAIR--we are talking also about a named co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial in which convictions were obtained for principals in the Holy Land Foundation for supporting terrorism. I would humbly submit that had Eric Holder not become Attorney General and Barack Obama not become President of the United States, many, if not all, of those co-conspirators would have been then indicted and tried as supporters of terrorism. Instead, a new President and a new Attorney General came in, and instead of being indicted and tried for supporting terrorism as they were named in the Federal District Court in Dallas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said in opinions--there was plenty of evidence to support that they were co-conspirators--well, the new administration dropped the matter, and these people became helpful to the administration in advising on Islam. It also notes that Mr. Alamoudi was a founding trustee of the Fiqh Council of North America, a board member of the Interfaith Impact for Justice and Peace, a regional representative for the Islamic Society of North America--which was also a named co-conspirator for supporting terrorism--a board member of Mercy International, president of the Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada, a board member of the Somali Relief Fund, secretary of the Muslim Brotherhood Affiliated, Success Foundation, and director of the Talibah International Aid Association. In fact, in an article back in 2004, Andrew C. McCarthy noted that: ``Abdurahman Alamoudi was sentenced today to 23 years' imprisonment for terrorism financing, false statements on his naturalization petition, and tax violations. The sentence was imposed by Judge Claude Hilton of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. ``Alamoudi was influential in the American Muslim circles, and thus in Washington. He participated in several political and charitable organizations, founding the American Muslim Council--an enthusiastic supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. The federal government permitted him a key role in selecting the Islamic clerics who minister in the military and in the prison system. Over the years, moreover, he occasionally traveled the globe as an emissary of the State Department. ``As we now know, he also traveled to Libya, engaged in financial transactions with Qadhafi's government, and collected hefty sums, including the $340,000 seized from him when he was arrested last year, which were designed to be routed back to his causes in the U.S. without the knowledge of American authorities. All of those activities violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act imposes terrorism- related sanctions prohibiting unlicensed travel to and commerce with Libya.'' I will parenthetically insert here that it had to be very convenient for Mr. Alamoudi, this convicted supporter of terrorism, to be working for the State Department as he went to different countries and apparently continued to conspire to support terrorism as the State Department funded his travel on its behalf. But also found was this article. The author was Brian Blomquist and the date is June 27, 2003. It is an article about the esteemed U.S. Senator Charles, or Chuck, Schumer entitled, ``Schumer wants fanatical imams rooted out of jails, armed forces.'' The article says: ``Militant Muslim imams are preaching a distorted, hateful form of Islam to U.S. soldiers and federal prisoners, creating a `dangerous situation,' Senator Charles Schumer charged yesterday. ``Schumer said the problem is that the Pentagon and the federal Bureau of Prisons select Muslim imams on the advice of Islamic groups in the grip of the fanatical Wahhabism strain of the religion. `` `While the potential Wahhabi influence in the U.S. Armed Forces is not well documented, these organizations have succeeded in ensuring that militant Wahhabism is the only form of Islam that is preached to the 12,000 Muslims in federal prison,' Schumer said at a Senate hearing on extremist Wahhabi Islam, which has been linked to terrorism. ``In February, the New York prison system barred its top Muslim chaplain from its prison facilities after the imam, Warith Dean Umar, said the 9/11 hijackers should be treated as martyrs. `` `The imams flood the prisons with anti-American, pro-bin Laden videos, literature and sermon tapes . . . The point of prison should be to rehabilitate violent prisoners.' '' Mr. Schumer is so right. The article goes on: ``The Bureau of Prisons uses the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, which is under investigation for possible funneling of money to terrorists, and the Islamic Society of North America, which has board members with terror links, Schumer charged. ``American Muslim Foundation President Abdurahman Alamoudi said his organization had no role advising the Pentagon. Alamoudi said he formerly gave the Pentagon advice on selecting imams, but `they pushed me out.' '' Well, we know that that was not until right before the British Government arrested Alamoudi and then provided apparently the U.S. Government plenty of evidence to show that Alamoudi was supporting terrorism. That is why I was so shocked, since the FBI got information from Britain, gathered their own information that they had been gathering at least since 1991 on radical Islamic beginnings here in the United States, that during the Bush administration the FBI would have a partnership outreach program with the Council of American-Islamic relations, of which Mr. Alamoudi was a board member. CAIR was a named co-conspirator for supporting terrorists, which the courts have said there is plenty of evidence to support that they are. While the FBI had gathered such evidence, they were outreach partners with this organization, CAIR, named as a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation. This article from WND, ``Pentagon admits chaplains from Muslim Brotherhood group,'' published on March 6, 2014, by Aaron Klein said: ``The U.S. Army and Air Force has selected two Muslim chaplains from a program run by an Islamic group closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood that was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co- conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas. ``WND broke the story in 2011 that the controversial Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, is the official endorsing agency for the U.S. Armed Forces Muslim chaplain program. ``WND further reported that year that the Muslim chaplain program was founded by a terror-supporting convict, while the Army's first Islamic chaplain, who is still serving, has been associated with a charity widely accused of serving as an al-Qaida front. ``Now, ISNA has announced that two of its former applicants for chaplaincy were selected to serve on active duty in the United States Army and Air Force. `` `The significance of this news is that the Department of Defense . . . has not selected an ISNA-endorsed chaplain for active duty in over 15 years,' said the ISNA press release. ``ISNA Chaplain Services Director and Islamic Endorsing Agent Abdul- Rasheed Muhammad said in a statement that the two chaplains selected for active duty are ready to serve Allah and the country--making the statement in that order. `` `After speaking by phone with both soldiers, it was more than clear both were eager and ready to serve Allah and country'. . . `May Allah bless our new chaplain candidates and their families as they prepare for new challenges and opportunities in the Army and Air Force Chaplain Corps,' said Muhammad. ``While the new chaplains' ties to ISNA has received some attention in the conservative blogosphere in recent days, missing from the conversation is the larger partnership between the U.S. military and not just the ISNA but also other terror-tied groups. ``In fact, Muhammad himself, the ISNA's endorsing agent, has been tied to a group accused of serving as an al-Qaida front.'' By the way, parenthetically, 1993 was the year in which we had another terrorist attack, that being the first attempted bombing, or the first bombing, of the Word Trade Center in an attempt to bring it down and kill tens of thousands of Americans. ``Since the Muslim chaplain program's inception in 1993, ISNA has been the official endorsing agency of the new chaplains. ``In 2005, ISNA initiated a yearly Muslim chaplain conference that includes leadership talks for chaplains in both the military and the U.S. prison system. ``Discover the Networks notes that ISNA--through its Saudi- government-backed affiliate, the North American Islamic Trust-- reportedly holds the mortgages on 50 percent to 80 percent of all mosques in the U.S. and Canada. `` `Thus the organization can freely exercise ultimate authority over these houses of worship and their teachings,' states Discover the Networks. ``ISNA was founded in 1981 by the Saudi-funded Muslim Students` Association, which was founded partially by the Muslim Brotherhood. The two groups are still partners. ``WND previously attended an MSA event at which violence against the U.S. was urged by speakers. `` `We are not Americans,' shouted one speaker, Muhammad Faheed, at Queensborough Community College in 2003. `We are Muslims. The U.S. is going to deport and attack us! It is us versus them! Truth against falsehood! The colonizers and masters against the oppressed, and we will burn down the master`s house!' '' Well, Mr. Speaker, with those kind of comments coming at their meetings, it is so wonderful that principles from these organizations have such close ties with the current leadership in the country, in the White House, in the State Department, and in the Justice Department. This article goes on: ``ISNA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document, `An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,' as one of the Brotherhood's likeminded `organizations of our friends' who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation, according to Discover the Networks. ``Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as `one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States.' ``According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA `is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation' that publishes a bimonthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that `often champions militant Islamist doctrine.' The group also `convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred,' states Emerson. Emerson cites an ISNA conference in which al-Qaida supporter and PLO official Yusuf Al Qaradhawi was invited to speak. ``Emerson further reports that in September of 2002, a full year after 9/11, speakers at ISNA's annual conference still refused to acknowledge Osama bin Laden's role in the terrorist attacks. ``Also, ISNA has held fundraisers for terrorists, notes Discover the Networks. After Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense. The group also has condemned the U.S. government`s post-9/11 seizure of the financial assets of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ``ISNA, meanwhile, has an extensive relationship with the Obama administration, which recently announced it is open to diplomacy with the Muslim Brotherhood.'' Mr. Speaker, this is where I have to say, having visited with leaders in the Middle East, Muslim leaders who are actually friends of the United States, not in official open meetings, but when we get in private, they ask the question: Why does your U.S. administration continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood? Do you not understand the Muslim Brotherhood has been at war with the United States since 1979, and you have got friendly Muslims that want to help you--I would submit that the current President of Egypt is one of those--and yet you are insistent on helping the Muslim Brotherhood that is at war with the United States? Oh, not with violence yet, but they claim they are getting so much accomplished in taking over the United States without violence, that they don't want to use that yet. That will come later if necessary. But right now they are doing such a good job as advisers and in important positions in the administration that they should not be using violence. Well, back to the article: ``The relationship began even before Obama took office. ``One week before last year's presidential inauguration''--again, keeping in mind this article is from 2014. ``One week before last year's presidential inauguration, Sayyid Syeed, national director of ISNA's Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances, was part of a delegation that met with the directors of Obama's transition team. The delegation discussed a request for an executive order ending `torture.' ``ISNA President Mattson represented American Muslims at Obama's inauguration, where she offered a prayer during the televised event. Mattson also represented ISNA at Obama's Ramadan dinner at the White House. ``In June 2009, Obama senior aide Valerie Jarrett invited Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls, which Jarrett leads.'' Yeah, that is what you want. You want someone who supports the Muslim Brotherhood's idea that women don't have rights. They have no business showing their face in public or driving or having property. Yeah, that is what you want advising the White House on women's issues, for heaven`s sake. The article goes on: ``One month later, the Justice Department sponsored an information booth at an ISNA bazaar in Washington, D.C. ``Also that month, Jarrett addressed ISNA's 46th annual convention. According to the White House, Jarrett attended as part of Obama`s outreach to Muslims. ``In February, Obama's top adviser on counter-terrorism, John Brennan, came under fire for controversial remarks he made in a speech to Muslim law students at an event sponsored by ISNA at New York University. ``In his speech, Brennan, who later became CIA director, stated that having a percentage of terrorists released by the U.S. return to terrorist attacks `isn`t that bad,' since the recidivism rate for inmates in the U.S. prison system is higher. ``He also criticized parts of the Bush administration's response to 9/11 as a `reaction some people might say was over the top in some areas' that `in an overabundance of caution we implemented a number of security measures and activities that upon reflection now we look back after the heat of the battle has died down a bit we say they were excessive, OK.' ``WND reported Brennan stated at the ISNA-organized event that the Obama administration is working to calibrate policies in the fight against terrorism that ensure Americans are `never' profiled. ``Speaking at the question-and-answer session, Brennan declared himself a `citizen of the world.' `` `We need to be looking at ourselves as individuals. Not the way we look or the creed we have or our ethnic background. I consider myself a citizen of the world,' he said. ``Brennan told the audience the Obama administration is trying to `make sure that we as Americans can interact in a safe way, balance policies in a way that optimizes national security but also optimizes the opportunity in this country never to be profiled, never to be discriminated against.' '' Yes, that is right. Sure. If you hate America and you want America's Western lifestyle and freedoms destroyed, you want women subjugated, we shouldn't profile people just because they want America destroyed as part of their religious beliefs. That kind of thinking gets a nation in trouble. And, thus, we are in trouble. This article was published this week, January 5, 2016, from Jennifer Hickey, ``Ripe for Radicalization: Federal Prisons `Breeding Ground' for Terrorists, Say Experts.'' Here we are in 2016 substantiating the statements that Senator Chuck Schumer made back in 2003 that our prisons have been, for years now, a breeding ground for radical Islamism. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, we have allowed people who have been named--and for which the Federal courts have said there is plenty of evidence to support that they are co-conspirators in financing terrorism and supporting terrorism--we have allowed them to pick imams, approve imams, put imams in our military and in our prisons. Is it any surprise that 13 years after Chuck Schumer raised that issue, that since nothing has been done about it, that the Federal prisons are a breeding ground for radical Islamists? This quote from Representative Stephen Fincher, my friend from Tennessee, says: ``Over the years, our Federal prisons have become a breeding ground for radicalization.'' That is supportive of what Chuck Schumer said years ago. In fact, this article by Carol Brown, December 5, 2014, american thinker.com, ``Prisons are Breeding Grounds for Jihadist'': ``Muslims comprise 15% of the prison population. This number far exceeds the percentage of Muslims in the general population. It is eighteen times greater, to be exact.'' So there are 18 times more Muslims in Federal prison than the percentage of Muslims in the general population. That raises issues, questions, and problems. ``Put another way, there are about 2.4 million Muslims in the United States and 350,000 of them are in jail. That means more than 12% of Muslims in America are incarcerated. ``Reports on the number of prisoners who convert to Islam vary and are framed in different ways. Some sources estimate 40,000 prisoners per year convert. Others put the numbers closer to 135,000 per year. Some posit that 80% of inmates who `find faith while in prison convert to Islam.' ``One thing is for sure: The majority of those who convert to Islam in prison are black, with as many as one in three black prisoners converting. The number of Hispanic prisoners converting to Islam is also on the rise. ``These numbers are staggering. And the implications are serious, as will be addressed further on in this article. ``There are numerous reasons why conversions to Islam are skyrocketing in our jails. ``Many prisoners feel angry, disenfranchised, and yes, even victimized and wronged by society. Many harbor a deep disdain for America. They are, therefore, prime targets for recruitment to a religious ideology that shares many of these attitudes. ``In addition, Islamic teachings are often framed as a noble code of ethics to live by. Case in point: The Nation of Islam is the largest prison ministry.'' I am sure they are meaning the largest prison ministry in the United States. Mr. Speaker, this is going on as I speak. It has been going on for the 13 years since Chuck Schumer brought it up in the Senate, and we don't appear to have learned any lessons from this. My friend Dana Rohrabacher is pushing that we invite the President of Egypt, President el-Sisi, to come speak to a joint session of Congress. I was talking to Chairman Royce about it. He believes it would be a good idea. Our majority whip, Steve Scalise, just met with President el-Sisi in Egypt. I am thrilled he did. He is a Muslim leader who understands the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to freedom in Egypt and in America and in Europe. It is time we did something about it to protect ourselves. You don't have to profile Muslims, but you should be profiling those who are studying radical Islam, like Qutb, like in his booklet ``Milestones,'' which Osama bin Laden said radicalized him--or helped. Yet, this administration will not allow our Justice Department, our intelligence departments and agencies, and our State Department to be educated on radical Islam. So, of course, you are going to be admitting a woman who takes a man's name that denotes a terrorist Islamic Jihadist from hundreds of years ago, Tashfeen Malik. Our Homeland Security has run off people who are real patriots, like Phil Haney, and who are brilliant on the issue of radical Islam. We have run them out. The message is clear that you had better not study radical Islam and you had better not know anything about radical Islam in Homeland Security because, if you do, we will run you off if we don't do something worse. Thank God Phil Haney had such a clean record. They were looking for anything. Our country is in trouble, and there are people who want to destroy it. It is ridiculous that anybody still has to say: We know all Muslims are not terrorists. Of course, they are not. But it is ridiculous to continue to allow and to even encourage radical Islamist imams in our prisons to transform prisoners into additional radical Jihadists, who are going to go off like bombs, figuratively and literally, at some point down the road. We also have to look at our immigration policy when it comes to continuing to allow people like al-Amoudi--who hates America, who considers himself to be a person who could help bring about the global caliphate, a person who is financing terrorism--have his wife come and have a child in America. Before he started trying to radicalize that country and take power unto himself as if he were a dictator, Morsi's wife--Morsi, the former President of Egypt--had a child here. Do you think that child was being brought up to love America? Do you think al-Amoudi's child was being raised to love America while his parents were scheming to terrorize it? Anwar al-Awlaki is one about whom my friends on both sides of the aisle have discussed the proprieties or improprieties of having a President just issue an order to kill an American citizen, Anwar al- Awlaki, a man who led staffers in Muslim prayers right here on Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill staffers were led in prayer by a man who, ultimately, the Obama administration--the President himself--considered to be so dangerous he had to take him out with a drone strike in Yemen. He was so dangerous to the United States that we couldn't even risk arresting him later. He had to take him out with a bomb strike. How was he an American citizen? His parents, who raised him to hate America, came to America on student visas. They studied here and had Anwar al-Awlaki. They took him back to Yemen and taught him to hate America. He became so dangerous that even President Obama felt he had to order a strike on an American citizen, without his having had a trial, without due process. He felt he had to take him out with a drone because that American citizen--an American citizen only because his parents came here on visas--was too dangerous for them to do anything else. It is time we started protecting our homeland, and we need an administration that will do it. In closing, Mr. Speaker, let me just add that the reports have been that the Obama administration used the NSA to spy on Members of Congress to help it keep the Iran treaty in play. Mr. Speaker, we have got to get to the bottom of that. If it turns out that our President was unconstitutionally spying on Members of Congress, I do not care if they were all Democrats or Republicans. I do not care. They may have been Democrats. It doesn't matter. If he were spying on Members of Congress--using the NSA or any other government agency to spy on Members of Congress--we need to find out if it happened. If he were, he needs to be removed from office, period. Otherwise, we can't save the Nation. I hope and pray those allegations are not true. I hope and pray that the President of the United States did not have the NSA spying on Members of Congress to help him with the Iran deal, to help him as he was supporting the biggest supporters of terrorism in the world. I hope and pray that is not true. I hope and pray it is not, but we need to find out. 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. I thank my friend, Mr. Smith, for all his work on this issue. When I was a young boy unable to read and my mother would read stories from the Bible, it was so enlightening. As I began to read in elementary school and read the Bible for myself, I was always so perplexed to read that there were generations thousands of years ago that devolved and degenerated to the point that they would sacrifice their own children on the alter to avail other idols. It appeared clear that there is not much that is more despicable to God, and it makes sense for anyone who believes there could be a God that there could be nothing more despicable than the taking of innocent life. That is what you find in the Bible. It may have been allowed to go on for generations for years. But when the wrath came, it was judgment that was truly ungodly. Since 1973, the realization that here in America we have been sacrificing the most innocent--before they could even be capable of saying a lie, stealing, any wrong whatsoever, their lives are taken away from them. And then to further realize that you have some legislators that have fought to prevent children that were attempted to be aborted, that were born alive--they fought to let them die even after they are born alive. Then you realize one such legislator now has been voted into the White House. It is a bit scary, where we are in America. I know there are some that say: You are a man. You can't complain about the sacrifice of unborn children on the alter of inconvenience. I am not a slave, never have been, but I would hope that, if I were alive 200 years ago, I would have stood with John Quincy Adams, I would have stood with the abolitionists, to say: How can we expect God to keep blessing America when we are treating our brothers and sisters with chains and bondage? Well, I am alive today. We need to stop the sacrifice of the most innocent and the most helpless among us. Our judgment will be coming one way or another.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and also the committee I am on, Natural Resources. This has been an ongoing issue, particularly in Natural Resources, when we come to the sue and settle situation. I appreciate my friend from Georgia pointing out that there are groups that don't want rules, that are just out for themselves. I, too, was against the Occupy Wall Street anarchy that was attempted. I have never stood here in support of Wall Street. I fought the Wall Street bailout tooth and nail when friends on the other side of the aisle, many of them, were supporting it. Both sides of the aisle supported it. I am not standing here for Wall Street. I am standing here for fairness for American citizens across the country. That is what most people in both parties want. They want fairness. Here is a report that the tactic of sue and settle ``reached a zenith in Fish and Wildlife's 2011 mega-settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians, and other green groups over the species act. That agreement allowed Fish and Wildlife to claim it must take action on some 750 species covered by 85 legal actions. The deal's immediate effect was to tee up 250 species for full protection, including sweeping `critical habitat' designations that will restrict commercial or other use of millions of acres of private property.'' The problem is, when the judicial system is abused, and as a former litigator, judge, and chief justice, I know when litigants come before the court and they say, ``We have reached an agreement, and here it is,'' then the judge's hands are normally tied, sign off on the agreement; but when it is a sympathetic group wanting to take away private property rights from private property owners, when they themselves have done nothing to produce or make that land profitable, to do so unfairly without proper notice by going behind the landowner's back, filing a suit with a sympathetic agency like Fish and Wildlife, having the agreed judgment signed, and then all of a sudden the most affected people were not given notice, they have their property rights taken away. I realize there were groups like Occupy Wall Street that don't want anybody having private property rights. Look, the Pilgrims tried it. It doesn't work when you just have a socialist system, share and share alike, because when you pay people the same thing to work and not work, then eventually people quit working. This bill is about fairness. What is wrong with giving notice to all of the people involved and letting them participate? That is the right thing to do.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the words of my friend from Oregon. These are difficult times, and it is even more difficult when unfairness comes from the United States Government with all its power, with all its resources, when it begins to pick on American citizens, when it uses its resources to snoop on Americans, especially when it uses resources to spy on Americans in order to help maintain power of the government over the people. One of the problems with ObamaCare is it provides every American's medical records to the Federal Government--as if the Federal Government didn't have enough personal information. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in the process of gathering people's credit card and debit card information supposedly to protect individuals. What we have seen in our Judiciary Committee as we have had hearings on the abuses by Federal Government bureaucrats is there seems to be this desire among different agencies and departments: They have no business having a SWAT team, but they want one. They want military power to go out and take people down whenever they get ready. For many years, Congress has not done an appropriate job of keeping in check criminal laws. There are far too many criminal laws, the number of which we don't know exactly, but which allow a violation of a regulation to be a crime, which allows the full power of the Federal Government to go after individuals. We heard the horror story about the fellow from the Northwest trying the create a better battery. He gets run off the road by three black Suburbans, hauled out of his little gas-efficient car, thrown down on his chest, boot in the back, handcuffs on, and no idea what he had done. He never even had a traffic ticket. It turns out that he hadn't violated any law necessarily, but he had mailed a package to Alaska that he knew needed to go by ground only, so he checked the box ``ground only.'' He didn't know that he needed a little sticker with an airplane with a line through it. So he didn't put that on. The result was he was run off the road, thrown to the ground, handcuffed, dragged to jail, then drug off because the Federal Government gets to pick their venue. And since they knew he didn't really know people in Alaska, and that is where the package was going, they dragged him to Alaska to prosecute there. When he was finally acquitted--maybe it was jury nullification, they just thought it was too unfair--then the prosecutors, the power of the Federal Government and the vindictive people that control things, decided they couldn't let him get away with only having done months in jail; so, having ransacked his home under a search warrant because he didn't put the little sticker on the package he mailed, they went back through all of the accounting of items found, the inventory, and found that there were some chemicals that are required not to be abandoned, and a regulation--again, a regulation some bureaucrats put in place, not Congress--that required those substances were never to be left for more than 14 days. Since the prosecutors had had him dragged off to Alaska and put in jail up there, he was involuntarily forced to leave the substances. They were properly stored, but they were successful in prosecuting him for abandoning the substances. Or the retired gentleman down in Houston who wasn't able to testify before our committee because he had had a stroke while he was incarcerated because of the overaggressive prosecution by the Federal Government. He had a greenhouse and raised orchids. He sold to some local florists. He had gotten a package from South America. Apparently, it wasn't properly packaged according to some bureaucrat's regulations, and therefore he had his home raided and ransacked. His wife testified she called home and didn't recognize the voice of the person answering. She asked who it was. He said: Well, who is this? She said: I called my home to talk to my husband, and I have a right to know who you are. Well, it was a Federal agent. He was handcuffed in his own kitchen because somebody sent him a package from South America that didn't meet some cubicle jockey's idea of what was properly sending a package. During the year and a half he was imprisoned, he had a stroke and couldn't communicate. Or the poor guy that had lobster shipped to him. He was arrested, incarcerated, and charged with violating not American law, but American law that says, if you violate a foreign law, then you can be arrested in America, and they alleged that he violated a Caribbean island's laws. That country's attorney general said: No, we don't believe he violated our laws. Nonetheless, he was incarcerated. The stories go on and on of abuse when a government becomes all powerful the way this one has come close to being. When Congress doesn't adequately rein it in, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope for Americans across the country to be able to stand in the face of such an overwhelming power as our Federal Government. So I appreciate my friend from Oregon talking about the situation with the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service. It seems that there are people within the Interior Department that have an insatiable appetite for acquiring more and more and more land, and more and more and more private property taken away from private individuals. It is getting out of control. If any landowner dares to say, ``I want to keep my own private property,'' then they can have a right to worry that the Federal Government will come after them, harass them, and make their lives miserable until they finally consent. It is why we should have removed the President's ability to just name land as a national monument, as President Clinton did, one of the world's largest deposits of coal in Utah, just put it off limits by calling it a national monument. It was never intended for those purposes. That is why we should have ended-- well, actually, it had ended the program that allowed billions of dollars to be accumulated and spent buying more and more land for the government to control. It is very difficult in my district. It is not like the Federal Government owns one big swath of land. It can surround private property and make the lives of private property owners miserable, make it unbearable, being a horrible neighbor. Even if the Federal Government doesn't own the private property, they can make usage of that property very unpleasant. Is it any wonder right now in America that Donald Trump is leading in the Republican primary in so many of the polls? Ted Cruz is viewed as an outsider, though he is in the Senate, because he stood up against the establishment, the status quo. Americans are tired of the Federal Government being unaccountable and becoming so big that it is out of control. Having prosecuted felony cases early in my career, having been a judge handling thousands of felony cases in Texas, I understand crime. I understand how it has to be stopped. But I also see when the Federal Government becomes a part of the problem instead of part of the solution. When we had this horrendous shooting in San Bernardino, so many people killed at a Christmas party--or this administration preferred to call it a ``holiday party''--where Christians and Jews get singled out, of course this administration won't prosecute a hate crime against a Christian or a Jew and then continue to warn us that they certainly will protect against any hate crime against a Muslim. Nonetheless, we find out there was a straw buyer who broke the gun laws to buy a weapon for the killers. We don't need a new gun law. The man violated the gun laws. And then we found out that actually this administration has been prosecuting fewer gun violations than the Bush administration, and in recent years continues to prosecute fewer and fewer and fewer gun violations. If one were cynical--especially in view of the Washington adage that no matter how cynical you get in this town, it is never enough to catch up--you might say: Wait a minute. This administration, for example, compared to the Bush administration--in '04, the Bush administration prosecuted nearly 9,000 gun violation cases brought by the ATF. This administration, in 2013, prosecuted around 5,000, and it has prosecuted fewer each year since. It is almost as if--and I know there wouldn't be an improper motive. The House rules tell us that. But it is almost as if you had an administration that is not prosecuting gun violations so they can turn around and demand more laws restricting law-abiding gun rights because, if they really wanted to stop gun violence, they would be prosecuting more aggressively. When we think about the losses of lives, all the lives that could be saved if this administration would simply enforce the laws that exist, it is heartbreaking. You think about those families who lost a loved one because this administration didn't prosecute the gun violations that could have stopped those losses of lives. It is tragic that this administration will continue to clamber for more laws when the solution should lie first in enforcement of the laws we have before it clambers for more laws. There is an article published January 5, 2016, saying: ``Obama Announces Gun Control Actions, Expands Background Checks'' on FOX News. The article says: ``The President, speaking at the White House, said background checks `make a difference' and will be expanded so that they can cover purchases online, at gun shows and in other venues.'' It quotes the President saying: ``Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions.'' Mr. Speaker, we have got to get President Obama some good help. The people around him certainly would not be dishonest enough to misrepresent to the President what the law is, but somebody is misrepresenting to the President what is true and what isn't because we know he would not be dishonest. He would certainly not intentionally misrepresent to the public when he says that you can just go online and buy a gun without a background check when that is not true. If you are a criminal, I am sure it is true that that could be done. But for law-abiding individuals, the kind that don't go out and commit crimes, they followed the law. The law requires for gun dealers, whether it is a transaction over the Internet or not, there has to be a background check. But somebody keeps feeding the President false information that he passes on to the United States citizenry. We have got to get the President some help so he can get the facts straight that he conveys to the American public. I haven't bought a gun online, but talking to people that have, if you go online to buy a gun, there is going to be a background check. You cannot just have the gun mailed to you. You have to go to a gun store. They don't really appreciate having you buy a weapon online and then come to the store where they have brick and mortar invested in the local economy. They are the ones that have to make sure the law is complied with. But you can't just go online and buy a gun unless you are an outlaw already violating the law, in which case more laws won't make a difference. Only enforcement of existing laws would stop that kind of conduct. There is an article from Paul Bedard, January 5: ``Obama's New Gun Control Force 8X the Size of Pentagon's ISIS Commando Team.'' It points out: ``According to a White House fact sheet, the President plans to deploy 200 more Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents `to help enforce our gun laws.' ``He also plans to add at least 230 new FBI agents to pore over the backgrounds of gun buyers . . . In Iraq, by comparison, the White House is moving to install an estimated 50-200 Special Operations Forces to take down ISIS.'' Here again, it is not enough to simply add FBI or ATF agents when this administration refuses to prosecute gun violations, gun law violations, even as aggressively as the Bush administration did. Of course, this administration seems to think the Bush administration was too lax on gun policy, but yet they won't even prosecute but a fraction of the cases that the Bush administration did. It is also worth noting that, when this article compares to the actions in Iraq, having been to the command center there in northern Iraq myself, having talked to people on the ground there, having talked to people who have done surveys, done studies of what is going on there with ISIS, you find out this administration, yeah, they are sending planes up, but a majority of the ordnances aren't dropped. Apparently, according to one source, even though they see trucks carrying weapons to ISIS, they are not allowed to take the trucks out. If they see supplies going to ISIS, they are not allowed to stop them. They are not allowed to crater the road they are using. This administration has rules of engagement in place that don't allow the United States to actually defend ourselves against ISIS. Is it any wonder that it was reported that the radical Islamist terrorists in the Middle East have no fear of this administration or of America because they see how ridiculous the restrictions are that we put on ourselves, our fighting people? They fear, more, Israel because Israel will take legitimate actions to win. There is an article from AWR Hawkins, 5 January 2016, which reads, ``A January 4 White House executive order fact sheet previews the executive gun controls Obama will announce Tuesday. ``The five most offensive aspects of those controls: ``One, the main policy would not have stopped any recent mass shootings,'' which would indicate--since that appears to be the fact, that nothing he has proposed would change the mass shootings--then, obviously, they are more concerned about either, A, putting on a show or, B, curtailing law-abiding citizens more than actually stopping the mass shootings. ``Two, 225 years of precedent destroyed without any legislative due process.'' Some say, ``Yes. But we already have background checks. So the President is not changing that.'' The law is very clear as to what a gun dealer is. He is somebody who is in the business of selling guns. This administration is now saying, ``Hey, if you sell one gun, that can mean being in the business,'' and that has never been the law. This President is unilaterally attempting to change the law so that, if an uncle wants to sell to his nephew, then this President would try to be a wedge there. We are not going to prosecute nearly the gun violations like the Bush administration did, but, yes, we will come after that uncle and get between the uncle and the nephew. We are going to be as big an impediment to law-abiding citizens as possible in the way this administration is approaching this; whereas, we are turning a blind eye to so much of the criminal activity, which is the way it appears. This article from TheBlaze, ``Obama's Executive Action on Guns Changes Privacy Rules Between Doctor and Patient,'' talks about how it will push doctors to report patients they believe may have a problem with the proper use of guns. It is putting a wedge between doctors and patients. Another article here is from Stephen Gutowski: ``Obama Executive Order May Require Those Selling Even a Single Firearm to Become Licensed Dealers.'' That is not the law. This President is changing the law without there being the congressional passage of a law that he would sign. Another article is from John Lott, dated January 5. Dr. Lott knows the gun laws and knows the gun facts. This is from the National Review. Dr. Lott points out, if you really want to fix things, don't charge gun buyers for the background checks. Fix the system so it stops falsely flagging the law-abiding people. This article also points out that 99 percent of the flags turn out to be improper flags. Three, stop using background checks as de facto registration, which appears to be what they are actually trying to do. The article from Kelly Riddell, dated July 23, 2014, points out ``Obama's Empty Tough Talk: Gun Prosecutions Plummet on His Watch,'' with the numbers and figures to back that up. By failing to prosecute gun violations while pressing for more gun laws, it makes one wonder if that is kind of akin to our servicemembers who are in harm's way. For example, in Afghanistan, in the 7\1/4\ years under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, I believe the number of precious American military lives lost was just over 500. Under Commander in Chief Obama, I believe it is at least three times that many or more than that. What is different? The war is supposed to have basically gone away. We ended it, according to the President. Yet, under his command, people got killed in multiples when the war was supposedly over. Our military members tell me it is the rules of engagement. We can't defend ourselves. We have a motorcyclist terrorist--a radical Jihadist--come blazing up toward a checkpoint, killing people. You realize, wow, we have a lieutenant that this administration, under Commander Obama, sent to Fort Leavenworth--to prison--for, apparently, giving the order to shoot an Afghan on a motorcycle because he was not slowing down as ordered, he was not yielding to the gunfire over his head. A good way to get Americans killed is to put them in prison if they try to defend themselves or those under their command. So it just leaves you with the question: Who is this administration really trying to protect? Are we trying to protect our own military members who are in harm's way? It doesn't appear so. Not enforcing the laws against criminals for their gun violations and, instead, demanding more and more control over law-abiding citizens in their use of weapons. Mr. Speaker, I know a lot of seniors who may not be able to tell you how much money is in their bank accounts; so, they have someone helping them with their bank accounts. But they can sure tell you when somebody is breaking into their homes and when they need a weapon. We were taught in my 4 years in the Army that a gun is a great equalizer. So if you are 85 years old and somebody is breaking into your home--someone who is strong and powerful and can break your body over his knee--a gun is a great equalizer. But under this President, if you are not managing your own account, look out. This administration is going to leave you unprotected against those intruders. It is time America started responding, Mr. Speaker. It is time this year that Americans made clear that we want an administration in America that is more concerned about the law-abiding people than it is with taking away the rights of law-abiding Americans. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this will be the last session before we enter Christmas. And, Mr. Speaker, I have noted from a couple of articles that have been in the news this week, this one from December 17, a story from Minnesota, the title: ``Parents Question Choice to Sing `Allahu Akbar' at Holiday Concert.'' It is intriguing that, in an age when groups are attacking our Judeo- Christian heritage, trying to rewrite our history, trying to prevent any mention of our Christian heritage--I am looking at the full face of Moses directly above me in front of me because we have, in this Chamber, profiles of people who were considered to be the greatest lawgivers of all time. And until recent years, Moses was considered the greatest lawgiver of all time. The Founders believed that. The Supreme Court now has relegated Moses to the ash heap of history. His revelation that he said came from God, that a man shall leave his father and mother, a woman leave their home, the two shall become one flesh. Jesus doubled down on that. He said not only is that what marriage is, what God joined together, let nobody pull apart. So we have relegated Moses to the ash heap. We have had the Supreme Court, for years now, saying, first, you can't have prayer in public, even though the Founders started each day of the Continental Congress with prayer; and although the Constitutional Convention didn't start each day with prayer, when they hit a brick wall and could go no further, Benjamin Franklin made his powerful speech about how they had begun each day with prayer, as he said, his exact words: ``In the beginning contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered.'' He went on to say: ``If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable an empire could rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that `except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' '' He said: I also firmly believe that without His--God's--concurring aid, we will succeed in our political building no better, than the Builders of Babel: We will be confounded by our local partial interests and we, ourselves, shall be bye words through time. So I know our heritage. They didn't have money to pay for a chaplain that they could all agree on to do the prayer every day. He pointed out in the debate that we agreed on a chaplain. We didn't agree on any specific person here to do the prayer for all the different denominations. But we don't have a treasurer. We don't have money. We can't hire a chaplain. And that is when Randolph made his motion. Okay, basically, they had hit a brick wall. They were making no progress. As Franklin had said, we have more noes than ayes on virtually every vote. So he moved that they recess--here it was the end of June--they recess and reconvene to celebrate the country's birthday in early July, and worship together. So they did. That one passed. They reconvened to worship God at the Reformed Calvinistic Church there in Philadelphia. You can go online, Mr. Speaker, and find what is reported to be the prayer that he gave. It had a powerful influence. And when they reconvened, there was a new spirit. They were able to come together and end up arriving at the Great Compromise. Founder after Founder, including Washington himself, pointed out that clearly God's hand was upon them in the preparation of the Constitution, and then, ultimately, resulting in the Bill of Rights. The first right within the Bill of Rights was basically to make clear that government would never interfere with religion. Basically, we have come to a place after all these years where the United States Supreme Court has said not only can you not have the Judeo-Christian God as part of any government--the same God that the Founders were giving credit to and praying to--but now this year the Supreme Court took the ultimate step of saying: Forget Moses. Forget Jesus. We are the new God and here is what we pronounce in place of Moses and Jesus and our founding principles. So this is a big year. I know the President says we are not a Christian nation, and I won't argue that point with him. I won't debate him. I think he is right. I know where we started, and I know every time, according to my staff, I mention God here where--in this Capitol, God's name has been invoked from the very beginning of this Capitol and before this Capitol and when it was in Philadelphia and when the first Congress was sworn in and President George Washington was sworn in at Federal Hall in New York City. It was his idea to bring his Bible and put his hand on the Bible, his idea to add the words ``so help me God.'' It was all their idea that the first thing they would do as a Congress together, after being sworn in, was to walk down, basically, Wall Street to St. Paul's Chapel there in New York and dedicate this country there in 1789 to God Almighty. I won't debate the President saying we are not a Christian nation, but the Bible has been quoted over our history in this Chamber more than any other book as a reason for or against legislation passing. It is a part of our heritage, to a much lesser extent in more recent years, as the Supreme Court--at least the five majority in the Supreme Court becoming our God instead of the God that was acknowledged by Ben Franklin, George Washington, basically every President. Mr. Speaker, we have a job to represent our constituents. We have an oath to the Constitution. I know we take that seriously. Part of our job in representing our constituents is to educate people on the issues and what has been important and what has been our strength, what has been our weaknesses. If you don't know our history, then, as the saying goes, those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it. It is important to know history. It is important to note the official words of the United States' highest magistrate, our President. Jefferson was asked once as he rode his horse down Pennsylvania Avenue on a Sunday morning--he had a big Bible in his hand, it was reported. I have had this verified by the Congressional Research Service. When Jefferson was President for those 8 years, when he was in Washington, not only did he condone the church service, the largest Christian church service in Washington that occurred just down the hall, but he participated. He would even have the Marine Band come and play the hymns on many occasions for the Christian church service. As he rode down this one occasion, he was asked, ``Mr. President, where are you going?'' He said, ``I am going to church up in the Capitol.'' The statement was made, ``Mr. President, you don't believe everything they do.'' Because he had questions about some of the miracles reported in the Bible. But it was reported that his response was, ``Sir, I am the highest elected magistrate in this country. It is imperative that I set the proper example.'' Now, I asked the Congressional Research Service is it true what has been attributed to the person people claim to be the father of the Constitution, James Madison, that when he was President for his 8 years, that he also condoned and participated in church services just down the hall here every Sunday he was in Washington? The Congressional Research Service, a bipartisan, nonpartisan service, reported, yes, but he was different from Jefferson. Jefferson normally rode a horse down Pennsylvania Avenue whereas Madison would normally come to church up here in the Capitol in a coach drawn by horses rather than on horseback. So, Mr. Speaker, as we take the traditional Christmas recess, no matter what your religious preference is or no preference at all, it is a fact this is a Christmas recess. Although this was not a statement at Christmastime, the commander of our military in 1778, George Washington, made this order as commander of our military. Some say this is really the reason God blessed their efforts, is because of their commitment and dedication. This is an order of George Washington to the troops at Valley Forge. This is George Washington's order, Mr. Speaker. I will read it verbatim: The Commander in Chief directs that divine service be performed every Sunday at eleven o'clock in each brigade which has chaplains. Those brigades which have none will attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that officers of all ranks will, by their attendance, set an example for their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian. Those are George Washington's words as commander of our military. Well, John Adams, without whom it is unlikely we would have arrived at the place we did with the Declaration--he is the one that directed Thomas Jefferson to do the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. He was critical in holding things together. Even though he only won one term as President, he was Vice President for two terms. He was very important in arriving at our Constitution. John Adams on October 11, 1798, said this to the First Brigade, Third Division, of Militia of Massachusetts: We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. This is from a Founder that knew how the Constitution was forged, made a difference in our country's beginning. He says our Constitution is not fit as a governing document for any but a moral and religious people. So over the years we have been taken down the road away from being a moral and religious people. Franklin Roosevelt started many social programs. He made a lot of decisions, I think, that were dramatic mistakes. The man deserves credit for leading this Nation through a time of war, mistakes being made. He got us through a war and helped with Winston Churchill and other leaders to keep freedom alive so that it would be present in our lifetime, even as we see our freedoms being taken by government the further we go along. Exactly 2 weeks after the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a day he said in this very Chamber from right up here at this level--he had a marble podium and not this wooden one--but he said that was a day that would live in infamy. Exactly 2 weeks later, December 21, 1941, this was Franklin Roosevelt's message to our Nation: Sincere and faithful men and women are asking themselves this Christmas: How can we light our trees? How can we give our gifts? How can we meet and worship with love and with uplifted spirit and heart in a world at war, a world of fighting and suffering, and death? How can we pause even for a day, even for Christmas day, in our urgent labor of arming a decent humanity against the enemies which beset it? Parenthetically, Mr. Speaker, he didn't mean holiday. He meant what he said, Christmas day. Roosevelt goes on: How can we, as men and women, put the world aside in peaceful years to rejoice in the birth of Christ? Looking into the days to come, I have set aside a day of prayer and in that proclamation I have said: The year 1941 has brought upon our Nation a war of aggression by powers dominated by arrogant rulers whose selfish purpose is to destroy free institutions. They would thereby take from the freedom-loving peoples of the Earth the hard-won liberties gained over many centuries. The new year of 1942 calls for the courage. Our strength, as the strength of all men everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us. Therefore, I do hereby appoint the first day of the year 1942 as a day of prayer, of asking forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, of consecrations to the task of the present and of asking God's help in days to come. We need His guidance that this people may be humble in spirit, but strong in the conviction of the right, steadfast to endure sacrifice, and brave to achieve a victory of liberty and peace. Franklin Roosevelt says our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas day signifies against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them. We set our fate in human love and in God's care for us in all men everywhere. A year later, on Christmas Eve, Franklin Roosevelt said: To you who serve in uniform, I also send a message of cheer that you are in the thoughts of your families and friends at home and that Christmas prayers follow you wherever you may be. To all Americans, I say that loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is not enough, that we, as a Nation and as individuals, will please God best by showing regard for the laws of God. There is no better way of fostering goodwill toward men than by first fostering goodwill toward God. Then Franklin Roosevelt basically takes a quote from John 14:15 in saying: ``If we love Him, we will keep His Commandments. ``In sending Christmas greetings to the Armed Forces and merchant sailors of the United Nations, we include therein our pride in their bravery on the fighting fronts and on all the seas. ``It is significant that tomorrow--Christmas Day--our plants and factories will be stilled. This is not true of the other holidays we have long been accustomed to celebrate. On all other holidays work goes on--gladly--for the winning of the war. So Christmas becomes the only holiday in all the year. ``I like to think that this is so because Christmas is a holy day. May all it stands for live and grow throughout the years.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, 5 years later exactly, Harry Truman nationally broadcast this address at the lighting of the National--not holiday tree but Christmas Tree--on the White House lawn. Again, Mr. Speaker, just as those who failed to learn from the mistakes of history are destined to repeat them, we can avoid the mistakes by looking at what strengthened America and what caused God to bless America. We won a war against evil fascism that is raising its head yet again. Just as Hitler colluded with radical Islam, agreed with some of his fascist ideas against Jews, against Christians, there is so much ignorance. Some people try to say Hitler was a Christian. It is the farthest thing from it. These are Harry Truman's words, December 1947 on Christmas Eve: ``My fellow countrymen: We are met on the South Lawn of the White House. Above the barren treetops rises the towering shaft of the Washington Monument. The scene is peaceful and tranquil. The shadows deepen, and the holy night falls gently over the National Capital, as we gather around our Christmas tree. ``Down the ages, from the first Christmas through all the years of 19 centuries, mankind, in its weary pilgrimage through a changing world, has been cheered and strengthened by the message of Christmas. ``The angels sang for joy at the first Christmas in a faraway Bethlehem. Their song has echoed through the corridors of time and will continue to sustain the heart of man through eternity. ``Let us not forget that the first Christmas was a homeless one. A humble man and woman had gone up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, to Bethlehem. There is a sense of desolation in St. Luke's brief chronicle that Mary `brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.' ``For many of our brethren in Europe and Asia, this too will be a homeless Christmas. There can be little happiness for those who will keep another Christmas in poverty and exile and in separation from their loved ones. ``As we prepare to celebrate our Christmas this year in a land of plenty, we would be heartless, indeed, if we were indifferent to the plight of less fortunate peoples overseas. ``We must not forget that our Revolutionary fathers also knew a Christmas of suffering and desolation. Washington wrote from Valley Forge 2 days before Christmas in 1777: `We have this day no less than 2,873 men in camp unfit for duty because they are barefooted and otherwise naked.' ``We can be thankful that our people have risen today, as did our forefathers in Washington's time, to our obligation and our opportunity. ``At this point in the world's history, the words of St. Paul have greater significance than ever before. He said, `And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.' ``Let us then put our trust in the unerring star which guided the Wise Men to the manger of Bethlehem. Let us hearken again to the angel choir singing, `Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill toward men.' ``With hope for the future and with faith in God, I wish all my countrymen a very Merry Christmas.'' A year later, Harry Truman, as President of the United States, officially said: ``For of all the days of the year, Christmas is the family day. Christmas began that way. ``The moving event of the first Christmas was the bringing forth of the first born in the stable in Bethlehem. There began, in humble surroundings, the home life of the Holy Family, glorified in song and story and in the hearts of men down through the centuries. The great joys and mysteries of that event have forever sanctified and enriched all home life. ``The hallowed associations of Christmas draw all hearts toward home. With one accord, we receive with joy and reverence the message of the first Christmas: `Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill to men.' ``What could be more appropriate than for all of us to dedicate ourselves to the cause of peace on this holy night. As a Nation, we have a history of little more than a century and a half. But the religion which came to the world, heralded by the song of the angels, has endured for 19 centuries. It will continue to endure. It remains today the world's best hope for peace if the world will accept its fundamental teaching: that all men are brothers.'' Then he quotes from Scripture: ``God that made the world and all things therein hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the Earth.'' Then Truman says: ``In the spirit of that message from the Acts of the Apostles, I wish all of you a Merry Christmas.'' I know, Mr. Speaker, there are people that go nuts when we talk about these official pronouncements by government officials as part of their government duty, but it is part of our history. For those who go ballistic when this part of our history, that led us to being the greatest nation in the history of the world--more assets for individuals; a country where the number one health problem for the Nation's poor is obesity; a country where we have sacrificed our greatest treasure, American lives, for other people's freedom without a demand for imperialism, without a demand that they convert to our government's leadership--that is why they speak French in France, Japanese in Japan, and German in Germany. Dwight Eisenhower, who knew something about fighting, said this 7 years after the last statement I read from Harry Truman. This was his official pronouncement. President Eisenhower said: ``This evening's ceremony here at the White House is one of many thousands in America's traditional celebration of the birth, almost 2,000 years ago, of the Prince of Peace. ``For us, this Christmas is truly a sense of goodwill--and our first peaceful one since 1949. Our hopes are bright, even though the world still stands divided in two antagonistic parts. ``More precisely than in any other way, prayer places freedom and communism in opposition, one to the other. The Communist can find no reserve of strength in prayer because his doctrine of materialism and statism denies the dignity of man and, consequently, the existence of God. ``But in America, George Washington long ago rejected exclusive dependence upon mere materialistic values. In the bitter and critical winter at Valley Forge, when the cause of liberty was so near defeat, his recourse was sincere and earnest prayer. From it, he received new hope and new strength of purpose out of which grew the freedom in which we celebrate this Christmas season. ``As religious faith is the foundation of free government, so is prayer an indispensable part of that faith. ``Would it not be fitting for each of us to speak in prayer to the Father of all men and women on this Earth, of whatever nation, and of every race and creed--to ask that He--God--help us and teach us and strengthen us and receive our thanks? ``Should we not pray that He help us?'' He always capitalized ``He'' when he spoke of God. ``Should we not pray that He receive our thanks? For certainly, we are grateful for the opportunity given us to use our strength and our faith to meet the problems of this hour. And on this Christmas Eve, all hearts in America are filled with special thanks to God that the blood of those we love no longer spills on battlefields abroad. May He--God-- receive the thanks of each of us for this, His greatest bounty--and our supplication that peace on Earth may live with us, always.'' So the leader of our fight against fascism, world domination of hate in World War II, Dwight Eisenhower, made those rather profound words. But, Mr. Speaker, we see through our history when our Nation was deeply troubled--whether it was Washington, whether it was Lincoln, whether it was Franklin Roosevelt in World War II, Eisenhower in the Korean war, Kennedy during Vietnam--all of our Presidents have known up to this point that our greatest hope comes through prayer to God. I am not speaking these words and reading our historic statements by Presidents--by our leaders--to try to convert anybody, but just so our history is understood, as our way continues to grow darker, critical violence is escalating again, racial divides are growing deeper when I thought we had--we have--we have come so far. We need to turn, according to our former leaders, historically--what they said is: Turn to God. This is not to convert anybody. It is simply so that this record of where Presidents, leaders, and Americans used to turn be part of the Record today. So John Kennedy's words, as President, December 17, 1962--at this time, there were only advisers in Vietnam--at the official lighting of the National Christmas Tree. It was still a Christmas tree for John Kennedy: ``With the lighting of this tree, which is an old ceremony in Washington and one which has been among the most important responsibilities of a good many Presidents of the United States, we initiate, in a formal way, the Christmas season. ``We mark the festival of Christmas, which is the most sacred and hopeful day in our civilization. For nearly 2,000 years, the message of Christmas, the message of peace and goodwill towards all men, has been the guiding star of our endeavors. ``I had a meeting which included some of our representatives from far-off countries in Africa and Asia. They were returning to their posts for the Christmas holidays. ``Talking with them afterwards, I was struck by the fact that in the far off continents Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, as well as Christians, paused from their labors on the 25th day of December to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace. There could be no more striking proof that Christmas is truly the universal holiday of all men. It is the day when all of us dedicate our thoughts to others; when all are reminded that mercy and compassion are the enduring virtues; when all show, by small deeds and large and by acts, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. ``It is the day when we remind ourselves that man can and must live in peace with his neighbors and that it is the peacemakers who are truly blessed. In this year of 1962 we greet each other at Christmas with some special sense of the blessings of peace. This has been a year of peril when the peace has been sorely threatened. But it has been a year when peril was faced and when reason ruled. As a result, we may talk, at this Christmas, just a little bit more confidently of peace on Earth, good will to men. As a result, the hopes of the American people are perhaps a little higher. We have much yet to do. We still need to ask that God bless everyone.'' Of course, each President has made pronouncements of a similar nature various times. This was Jimmy Carter, President Carter, December 15, 1977, at what he described as the Christmas Pageant of Peace Ceremony on the White House Ellipse: ``Christmas has a special meaning for those of us who are Christians, those of us who believe in Christ, those of us who know that almost 2,000 years ago, the Son of Peace was born to give us a vision of perfection, a vision of humility, a vision of unselfishness, a vision of compassion, a vision of love.'' President Carter in 1978 said: ``Rosalyn and I send our warmest wishes to our fellow citizens who celebrate the birth of Christ and who rejoice with us in the coming of the peace He symbolizes. ``We welcome this opportunity to offer our thanks to those who have given us their encouragement and prayers. ``We also join in this season's traditional expression of appreciation to God for His blessings in the past year, and we ask for His continuing guidance and protection as we face the challenges of 1979.'' President George W. Bush, President Clinton, President George W. Bush, and President Obama have delivered Christmas messages, and President Obama his holiday messages. I would like to conclude at this time with President Reagan's message, as he says on the observance of Christmas, December 19, 1988, his last Christmas message as President: ``The themes of Christmas and of coming home for the holidays have long been intertwined in song and story. There is a profound irony and lesson in this, because Christmas celebrates the coming of a savior who was born without a home. ``There was no room at the inn for the Holy Family. Weary of travel, a young Mary close to childbirth and her carpenter husband Joseph found but the rude shelter of a stable. There was born the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace--an event on which all history would turn. Jesus would again be without a home, and more than once; on the flight to Egypt and during His public ministry, when he said, `The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head.' ``From His very infancy, on, our Redeemer was reminding us that from then on we would never lack a home in Him. Like the shepherds whom the angel of the Lord appeared on the first Christmas Day, we could always say: `Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us.' ``As we come home with gladness to family and friends this Christmas, let us also remember our neighbors who cannot go home themselves. Our compassion and concern this Christmas and all year long will mean much to the hospitalized, the homeless, the convalescent, the orphaned--and will surely lead us on our way to the joy and peace of Bethlehem and the Christ child who bids us come. For it is only in finding and living the internal meaning of the nativity that we can be truly happy, truly at peace, truly home.'' He concludes, as I will--President Reagan: ``Merry Christmas, and God bless you.'' 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, here is an article just in Politico by Burgess Everett. It is today. It concludes with a quote from Senator Charles Schumer of New York: `` `Sen. McConnell wants to see the Senate work,' Schumer said. 'But the good news for us is, to make it work, he has to do basically our agenda.' '' That is what we have been telling people for so long, Mr. Speaker, that people across America say: We would like to see you guys in Washington work together. We would like to see government not shut down, that you guys work together and get things done. But as we explained repeatedly--and now it has been confirmed by Senator Schumer--there is only one way that some folks here in this Capitol building will reach an agreement with Republicans. Normally, that is if we do exactly their agenda. I go back to the spring of 2011, when Republicans resumed the majority in the House of Representatives. There was a CR that was going to expire. The Government would run out of money at midnight. As I recall, it was a Friday. It appeared to me--and I have said since then that it certainly appeared that Harry Reid believed and the White House believed the conventional wisdom here in Washington--that, if the Democrats could force a shutdown, then their massive friends in the mainstream media would blame Republicans and that would be their best shot at regaining a majority in the House and keeping it in the Senate. So, basically, to avoid a shutdown at midnight, although our Speaker at the time, Speaker Boehner, gathered us together late that evening and said, ``Look, we have gotten $29 billion in cuts. I know we said it would be $100 billion originally and then $60 billion, but we have $29 billion,'' it turns out we didn't get those, that we may have spent more money. In essence, it appears that the Speaker had to basically cave to what Harry Reid wanted in order to avoid a shutdown in the spring of 2011. That continued to occur. We would come up on deadlines. The Senate would not pass any of the appropriations bills, would sit back and say: We are not going to do our work. We are not going to comply with our constitutional responsibility. We are going to sit back. We are going to wait, get bills from the House, and then demand our agenda. If they don't give us our agenda, then we will shut things down. Our friends in the mainstream media will blame Republicans. Then we will get the majority back in the House. Finally, in September of 2013, we gave Harry Reid basically everything he wanted and he still shut the government down. Just as conventional wisdom had indicated, the mainstream media blamed Republicans. In fact, the mainstream media mantra was so overwhelming that even Speaker Boehner got confused or maybe--I guess maybe he did blame Republicans because we didn't totally capitulate on everything Harry Reid wanted. We gave him most everything he wanted. The last thing we did was appoint--this is at 1:10 a.m. on the morning of October 1 of 2013--we approved the appointment of conferees. Harry Reid wouldn't even approve conferees so we could have a deal worked out by 8 a.m. and nobody would miss work. He wouldn't even do that. He didn't want a deal worked out. He wanted a shutdown. They had already contracted to bring barriers to shut down open air memorials so people couldn't even walk down the sidewalk. Apparently, the people in this administration believed, if we can jerk around World War II veterans, then Republicans will get blamed for that, too. So they violated the law. They spent more in shutting things down than they would normally spend in keeping them open. That violates the law as it exists. They shut down things that there was totally no reason to shut down. They brought in more Park Service people to help shut them down than are normally ever out there. All of that was to try to make people blame Republicans when it was clearly the calloused, intentional desire to inflict harm on people, including World War II veterans, by some people within this administration. But America didn't fall for it, and they didn't give Democrats back the majority in the House. In fact, they gave Republicans the majority in the Senate. Today we get this story quoting Senator Schumer, a Democrat from New York: The good news for us is, to make it work, Senator McConnell has to do basically our agenda. Then we find out a story today from Carolyn May: ``Senior officials rejected a proposal to incorporate social media screenings in the vetting process of foreign visa applicants in 2011.'' Four years ago this administration said: We are going to continue our effort to blind ourselves of our ability to see our enemy and to know who our enemy is. That started back in 2009, when this administration came into town. Basically, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a coconspirator named in the Holy Land Foundation trial for supporting terrorism, has an open door and they answered their phones at the White House anytime they called and complained. They wanted documents purged so our FBI agents, our intelligence officials, our State Department people, could not be adequately trained on what radical Islamists believe. This administration still will not even recognize that such a thing as radical Islam exists. Not one person in the administration that is elected that is making these decisions or that has been confirmed by the Senate has an advanced degree in Islamic studies and especially not advanced degrees from the University of Baghdad in Islamic studies, as one of the world's most renowned experts on Islam does. That world-renowned expert on Islam with a Ph.D. from the University of Baghdad in Islamic studies makes very clear that the Islamic State is Islam. His name is al-Baghdadi. He is the head of the Islamic State. As the very learned Carolyn Glick has pointed out, the failure of any administration, Republican or Democrat, to recognize that radical Islam is a part of Islam is performing a huge disfavor for moderate Muslims who want to stand up against radical Islam. But, by this administration's saying there is no pluralism in Islam-- it is all good, and there are no bad people who are claiming to be and who actually are Islamic--it does a great disservice to moderate Muslims who would like to stand up and take it on. There have been wonderful friends of the United States who have. President el-Sisi in Egypt has, and others have. For some reason, this administration chooses to alienate those who are Muslim who would stand up against radical Islam, as if they don't have enough problems as it is. It was a friend in intelligence, here in the U.S. Government, who made that statement that I used a moment ago--``We have blinded ourselves of our ability to see our enemy''--and that continues. If this administration had not made that decision in 2011 to not look at social media, they could have seen that Malik, which is, surely, not her real name, had pledged her allegiance to radical Islam. It is kind of tough to recognize when somebody pledges one's allegiance to radical Islam if one won't even recognize that there is such a thing as radical Islam. This article from Joseph Kolb reads: ``A proposal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States has ignited a bitter debate in Washington, but more than 10 times that number of people from the embattled country have quietly come to America since 2012, according to figures obtained by FoxNews.com. ``Some 102,313 Syrians were granted admission to the United States as legal permanent residents or through programs including work, study and tourist visas from 2012 through August of this year, a period which roughly coincides with the devastating civil war that still engulfs the Middle Eastern country. Experts say any fears that terrorists might infiltrate the proposed wave of refugees from the United Nations-run camps should be dwarfed by the potential danger already here. `` `The sheer number of people arriving on all kinds of visas and with green cards, and possibly U.S. citizenship, makes it impossible for our counterterrorism authorities to keep track of them all, much less prevent them from carrying out attacks or belatedly try to deport them,' said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies. `` `I think it's reasonable to assume that the U.S. Government ran the minimum intelligence traces required at the time of entry.' '' We know now, as of 2011, they wouldn't even bother to look to see if someone who was wishing to come in had made statements on social media or had even had his picture taken with known terrorists. Of course, we had a great, valiant patriot in the person of Phil Haney, in his working for the Department of Homeland Security, who was cited for his brilliance in finding over 300 of 400 people who were looked at, on whom he had entered data, and who should have been added to the terrorist watch list from an organization called Tablighi Jamaat. Since there are, apparently, ties with people in that organization to this administration--perhaps it is CAIR--they complained, and he ended up being chastised and put off, away from the ability to enter data. His investigation into Tablighi Jamaat and potential radicals within that organization was shut down, not by his superior--his superior recognized his importance--but by people way up the chain. If that investigation had continued, it appears pretty clear there would have been people alive today in San Bernardino who are dead. ``Numbers obtained from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show 60,010 Syrian visa holders have entered the U.S. since 2012, including 16,245 this year through August. Additional numbers provided by a Congressional source showed another 42,303 Syrians were granted citizenship or green cards during the same period. `` `It is highly unlikely that the 102,313 Syrians who were admitted over the past three years were effectively vetted,' said spokesman Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. `Even in countries where we have a strong diplomatic presence, the sheer volume of background checks being carried out precludes the kind of thorough vetting that is necessary.' '' We know also, from Mark Krikorian's research, that it costs 12 times more to bring Syrian refugees here to the United States than it does to keep them alive and keep them functioning somewhere in the area of Syria. So it is pretty arrogant for the United States to claim we need to bring these Syrian refugees to the United States even though we could, actually, help and keep alive and keep functioning 11 more people in addition to the ones we brought here if we were to just help them where they are. We also had this report yesterday: ``Chattanooga shooting a `terror attack,' FBI Director James Comey says.'' ``The semantic dance of whether or not to call the July mass shooting in Chattanooga a `terrorist' attack appears to be winding down. ``FBI Director James Comey twice called the deadly Chattanooga shooting that killed four Marines and one sailor a 'terror attack' during a press conference with NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton on Wednesday. Bratton and Comey spoke after addressing the NYPD Shield Conference in New York City. `` `We've investigated Chattanooga as a terror attack from the beginning,' Comey said. `The Chattanooga killer was inspired by a foreign terror organization. It's hard to entangle which particular source . . . there are lots of competing poisons out there.' ``That response came as Comey was asked to clarify an earlier statement in which he linked the root cause of the July 16 rampage by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Kuwait, to the recent Islamic terrorist attack in San Bernardino. `` `San Bernardino, as with Chattanooga, another terror attack we've dealt with in recent times . . .' Comey began the answer to a question about the December 2 terror attack in California. ``Abdulazeez, 24, was fatally shot by police after opening fire at a military recruiting center and then driving to a reserve center, where he killed five.'' Mr. Speaker, it is absolutely heartbreaking to know that people like him are in this country, that they have got information out there on social media that indicates their terrorist affiliations, and that this administration, number one, will not recognize that there is something called radical Islam and, number two, won't allow their people, who work for them, to check to see if there is such information about people who are seeking to come into this country who will ultimately kill Americans. Then this story yesterday from Judicial Watch: ``Team led by Middle Eastern Woman Caught Surveilling U.S. Facility on Mexican Border.'' ``A Middle Eastern woman was caught surveilling a U.S. port of entry on the Mexican border holding a sketchbook with Arabic writing and drawings of the facility and its security system, federal law enforcement sources tell Judicial Watch. ``The woman has been identified as 23-year-old Leila Abdelrazaq, according to a Customs and Border Patrol report . . . Abdelrazaq appeared to have two accomplices, a 31-year-old man named Gabriel Schivone and a 28-year-old woman named Leslie Mcafee. CBP agents noticed the trio `observing the facilities' at the Port of Mariposa in Nogales, Arizona on December 2. Schivone was first noticed inside the entrance of the pedestrian area while the two women stood outside by the entry door, the CBP document states. ``When Federal officers asked Abdelrazaq why she was drawing sketches of the facilities she `stated because she's never been to the border,' according to the CBP report . . . `During the inspection of the Abdelrazaq sketching book, CBPOs noticed the book contained writings in English and Arabic language . . . There were drawings of what appeared to be a vehicle primary inspection area and an additional drawing of pedestrian turnstile gate depicting video surveillance cameras above the gate.' The report proceeds to reveal that the drawings were `partial and incomplete.' ``This distressing information comes on the heels of two separate-- and equally alarming--incidents in the same vicinity. A few weeks ago Judicial Watch reported that five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in Amado, an Arizona town situated about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks, alarming Border Patrol officials enough to call the Department of Homeland Security for backup. DHS officially denies this ever occurred, but law enforcement and other sources have confirmed . . . that the two men carrying the cylinders were believed to be taken into custody by the FBI. ``Of interesting note is that only three of the men's names were entered in the Border Patrol's E3 reporting system, which is used by the agency to track apprehensions, detention hearings and removals of illegal immigrants. E3 also collects and transmits biographic and biometric data including fingerprints for identification and verification . . . The other two men were listed as `unknown subjects,' which is unheard of, according to a Judicial Watch federal law enforcement source. `In all my years I've never seen that before,' a veteran federal law enforcement agent told Judicial Watch.'' Anyway, there just continues to be more and more bad news from the border. When I read the article today, I thought: Nogales, Arizona. I read a story before about Nogales. Obviously, this is indicating--with the Arabic language, with the sketches of the entrance by people from the Middle East--very curious behavior from these Middle Eastern folks. I went back through articles I had, and this is where I had seen the name Nogales, Arizona. This is an article from December 27, 2013: ``John Dodson, the federal agent who blew the lid off the Justice Department's `Fast and Furious' gun-walking scandal, claims the FBI had ties to the men who killed U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, in 2010, near Nogales, Arizona. In fact, Dodson says the Mexican bandits who gunned down Terry were working for FBI operatives and had been sent to the border to do a `drug rip-off' using intelligence gathered by the DEA. Dodson, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he doesn't think the FBI was part of the rip-off crew, but the agency was `directing the rip crew.' '' The point here, I think, that is important is that we know that this administration was pushing legitimate gun dealers in the United States to sell to people who shouldn't have been allowed to get guns so that they could end up going to drug cartels, and they could, supposedly, follow the weapons. We know that one of those weapons this administration pushed to be sold ended up in the hands of drug cartels who killed, apparently, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010. So we know there is violent drug cartel activity in the Nogales, Arizona, area. Now, this interesting report says that apparently there is not just drug cartel activity in that area, there is also Middle Eastern activity surveilling the entry areas. I think it is also important to remember what this administration did, as reported by Sharyl Attkisson, at the time with CBS News, before they decided they didn't want someone working at CBS who was exposing something that was such a big problem as Fast and Furious. In Sharyl Attkisson's article of December 7, 2011, she points out communications within this administration, after this administration pushed gun dealers to sell to people they shouldn't have, so that guns could go to drug cartels in Mexico. They then, according to communications as reported by Sharyl Attkisson, in emails that were gained, to use the fact that long guns were being sold to people that shouldn't have been and that those were being used in crimes, they wanted to use that to pass more gun control legislation or rules to take law-abiding citizens' Second Amendment rights away from them. Absolutely astounding. Also, there is an article yesterday in the National Review entitled, ``Increasing the Number of Guest Worker Visas Will Hurt America's Most Vulnerable Workers,'' by Ian Smith. It states: ``Pro-labor advocates are criticizing a new addition to the Senate's omnibus spending bill, a provision they say will quadruple the number of H-2B visas for unskilled guest workers, for a total of more than 250,000.'' Most of the people I know who are Republicans want to bring down the extremely high unemployment level for African Americans and other minorities. Yet, this administration has pushed so hard something they wanted. They want more people coming in and taking jobs, lowering the wages of American citizens and American workers, taking entry-level jobs away from those we should be pushing off welfare into jobs and working. I know an awful lot of people that would love to work and would love to have those jobs. Here is another article from December 15, 2015, entitled: ``White House Opens Door to CAIR Rep, Ignores Muslim Reformers.'' This is the problem, Mr. Speaker, in this administration. This administration is allowing the foxes to set up and give advice on how to run the henhouse. Unfortunately, the henhouse contains law-abiding American citizens who are put at risk by this administration's refusal to acknowledge that Islam is pluralistic, just like Christianity is. There are extremes at different ends, but there is a radical Islam that wants to destroy this country. There are others more moderate. Like, those in the Muslim Brotherhood, they want to take over the United States. But as they have indicated: We are making so much progress in taking over the United States without violence. We will have to use it at some point, but let's not use violence as long as we are making so much progress. That seems to be the theme of the Muslim Brotherhood right now in America. This administration continues to be complicit in helping people that were named in the prosecution of support for terrorist activity, which convictions were obtained with the idea that we can go after the rest of these named conspirators later. The trouble is, after the conviction, within a month and a half, this administration takes over; and they not only refused to prosecute the coconspirators, they bring them in as their advisers. Is there any wonder there are not more Americans being killed? 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, as we consider this week what Congress will fund through September 30 of next year and what we will not fund, the San Bernardino shooting, the radical Islamist terrorist attack there, has awakened a lot of people across the country. There is an article from December 2, 2015, by Ashley Pratte. The question is: Is ISIS contained or covered up? That is the title. ``With the recent terrorist attacks in Paris carried out by ISIS, Americans are on high alert--and rightfully so. Just hours prior to the attacks Obama said that ISIS was `contained.' Americans everywhere are baffled by Obama's continued ignorance and lack of strategy when it comes to destroying the Islamic State. ``Yesterday, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stated on The Lead with Jake Tapper that the White House knowingly ignored a 2012 report about the rise of ISIS because they didn't mesh well with the re-election `narrative.' ``Now it is all starting to make sense. Of course the President believes ISIS is contained, he has been willingly and knowingly ignoring reports about the serious threats that ISIS poses to America and to the world since it wouldn't help him get re-elected. ``The scary thing is that these aren't the first reports we have heard from former Obama intelligence officials regarding the White House ignoring their reports on ISIS. This September The Daily Beast published an exclusive story by Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef, claiming that over 50 spies say ISIS intelligence was cooked. These 50 intelligence analysts formally filed a complaint that their reports on ISIS were being `inappropriately' altered by senior officials. ``These are very powerful words. If there truly is a `cancer' at the highest level of command, Americans have a lot to be concerned about when it comes to national defense and security. According to the Daily Beast, the accusations being made suggest that a significant amount of people tracking the inner workings of ISIS think that their reports are being altered to fit a public narrative--echoing the sentiments of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. ``It is disturbing to think that our military and intelligence officials aren't being listened to by the Obama administration simply because it doesn't fit their narrative. Just yesterday lawmakers on Capitol Hill heard from the chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, that ISIS is not contained, contradicting President Obama's statements. We now have to question whether or not intelligence reports are still being ignored because of their inconvenience to the administration and because of the looming election year. ``Sadly, these reports from top military and intelligence officials aren't surprising. Americans have noticed for a while that Obama's statements on ISIS show how little he knows about the threat they pose or that he is deliberately ignoring the facts. A new CBS poll indicates that only 23% of Americans think Obama has a clear strategy for defeating ISIS, which shows just how little confidence Americans have in their commander-in-chief. ``On Monday, just weeks after the Paris attacks, Obama made mind- boggling remarks at a climate change summit in Paris, where he made it a point to mention that he will beat ISIS by fighting climate change. ``Let's be honest, ISIS was never a `jayvee' team, it was never `contained,' and it certainly won't be defeated by resolving to end climate change, but it was a good narrative for the Obama administration spin to quell the fear of the American public. However, this narrative stands in stark contrast with the real narrative, the one being told by military and senior intelligence officials--the one being ignored.'' And we have from the Center for Immigration Studies, Mr. Speaker, an ``Analysis of the `Visa Waiver Program Improvement Act of 2015,' '' this out December 14, 2015. It reviews the House bill drafted to tighten up the Visa Waiver Program, and it has been reported that this may be included in the omnibus--we will find out tonight--2016 spending bill as a kind of political replacement for the bill passed in November to tighten up the refugee screening. This article goes on from the Center for Immigration Studies that: ``One key provision makes it out-of-bounds for people who have visited--or who are natives of--Syria or Iraq, or state sponsors of terror to use the VWP. Another major provision tightens up requirements and certifications by countries to live by the conditions of the participation--including use of fraud-resistant passports and strict timeframes for reporting of lost or stolen documents. ``Dan Cadman, a Center fellow and author of the analysis, said, `Congress has at least decided to tackle many of the gaps and problems with the VWP, which has represented for some time the `soft underbelly of homeland security'; but there can be no doubt that the U.S. vetting for refugees and asylum seekers still represents a major national security risk, and remains an unaddressed problem.' ``One major problem with the bill is the exception to several requirements that has been carved out for countries in the Schengen visa-free zone, which covers nearly all of northern, western, and central Europe, including hotbeds of terrorist activities in France and Belgium. Cadman writes that `this exception is the caveat that undoes the intent of the rule.' '' So, Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that we have got a lot more work to do here to prevent this President's administration from continuing to allow people into this country without our ability to actually vet them and check them. There are indications that members of the Visa Waiver Program may only check one in three documents that are provided to them because they just don't have time. Well, just when Americans thought we were unsafe, unsecure, that this administration won't face up to the threat that radical Islam is, that most all of the country understands we are up against except the administration--they won't mention the words radical Islam--and just when people think they are starting to maybe make the point and get the point across to this administration, we have the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who stands up for the terrorists. He stands up for people who want to come into this country and do us harm. This is an article from Politico, of all places, and the title reads: ``DHS chief: `Legal limits' on scrutinizing immigrants' Web postings.'' The article reads: `` `We are dealing with private communications and things for which there is an expectation of privacy,' Jeh Johnson says in an interview.'' Mr. Speaker, that is very interesting. I am glad that the Secretary of Homeland Security understands that the Supreme Court says there is a right to privacy somewhere within the shadow of the penumbra of the Constitution--that is, the Bill of Rights. Yet he doesn't understand those constitutional protections are not afforded to people who want to come into the United States. They are in another country. I can't imagine this in anybody's definition of our U.S. Constitution. No Americans in other countries are entitled to U.S. constitutional protections over there, and they are people who are applying to come in. There is social media out there, and there are really sharp folks in Homeland Security and in the Justice Department who are not under the direct thumb of the administration who know how to access it; they know how to check things; they can use search engines and can check to see what contacts and what pictures are out there. Are they pictured with a terrorist somewhere? Of course, that might get our friend Senator McCain in trouble; but, nonetheless, there is a lot of social media that can be checked. Here we have an article today, December 15, by Seung Min Kim: ``Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday there are `certain legal limits' that constrain federal officials from scrutinizing the social media histories of foreigners trying to enter the United States--a new debate that has flared in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, California terrorist attack. ``His comments, in an interview with POLITICO, mark the first time the Homeland Security chief weighed in on the merits of reviewing social media in immigration cases. According to recent news reports, Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter in the California massacre, had posted extremist views yet still obtained a visa to the United States. `` `You have to keep in mind--and this is again, not a comment on any particular case--that social media, Facebook, and the like can involve public statements, public postings, it can involve friending, and it can involve private communications,' Johnson said from his office at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in northwest Washington. `` `We are dealing with private communications and things for which there is an expectation of privacy, and you're dealing with U.S. persons,' Johnson continued. `There are certain legal limits to what we can do.' '' Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that people who are trying to come into this country are not U.S. persons and that social media ought to be used by Homeland Security to find out what kind of lengths people will take who want to come into this country. If they had not marginalized one of the best people working for Homeland Security and had not gone after him and attacked him, they would have learned--and I am talking about my friend Phil Haney, who was very adept at using social media to see if they had questions about somebody--what kind of contacts are out there on the Internet? What pictures were made with whom? What is posted where about this person? It is also important to have somebody like him who has spent time in the Middle East, who knows the language, who knows and understands moderate Islam, who understands radical Islam, who understands who the players are and who the imams are who are teaching radical Islam, who knows the groups that are teaching radical Islam. If Phil Haney had been allowed to continue the investigation into Tablighi Jamaat, then he would have seen the ties that these shooters had. He would have found Ms. Malik's social posting. One of the things he says would have tipped him off right away is that ``Tashfeen Malik'' is a boy's name, and he is a bit of a hero in radical Islamic circles. If you know that, which I didn't and he does, then you pull that person aside for additional screening. You pull that application and ask, ``Why do you have a boy's name? You certainly weren't given that.'' His example is it would be like a woman from America who was trying to get into another country with the name ``George Washington.'' Really? That is your real name? It would raise flags and questions and would cause you to do further checking. People at Homeland Security have seen, if you become a whistleblower and if you blow the whistle on the Obama administration's and Homeland Security's deleting of documents and on their refusing to investigate radical Islam, then they will convene a grand jury to make your life a living hell until you retire, and that is only if they can't find some little ``something'' to indict you of after they have looked everywhere and through everything. The people at Homeland Security have seen what happens to people who are honest, who are honorable, who are trying to warn of contacts this administration has with people who have ties to radical Islam. I know there are people out there who say, ``I wish you would use names.'' Why doesn't somebody in the mainstream media go get the pleadings from the Holy Land Foundation trial in the Federal court of the Northern District of Texas, and you will see a list of names. If there were somebody who were worthy of a Pulitzer anymore, he would take those names and compare them against the people who have access to the White House and the groups that have access to the White House and to the State Department and to the Justice Department and to intelligence agencies. They would find that CAIR, just blocks away from here--I can see their building from my window, and they can see mine--is on the list. Yet, it is CAIR that has--I don't know if they have got a red phone or what they have got over to the White House; but when they get bothered or when, maybe, they don't like a Koranic scripture or something that is being quoted in training material, they can just call the White House and tell them to get rid of it, and they do. They can call the Justice Department, for, after all, CAIR and the FBI were outreach partners. Finally, in 2009, after they were implicated as partners, coconspirators in funding terrorism, the FBI finally, in 2009, had to send them a letter, saying, basically, We had better suspend our relationship as partners, because there was all this evidence at the Holy Land Foundation trial that, actually, you are a supporter, and you are a coconspirator; so we are going to have to put that on hold for a bit. But this administration picked right back up. CAIR was certainly heard from out in California immediately after the shootings. Anyway, this article goes on. It reads: ``Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have seized on reports that Malik passed a trio of background checks during her fiancee visa application process in 2014 despite publishing social media posts that were openly supportive of violent jihadism.'' Anyway, congratulations to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Americans can sleep well because Secretary Johnson is setting us up to have another Tashfeen Malik shoot more people because we are not going to, under this administration, check their social media to see if they have pledged allegiance to ISIS. This is from Todd Bensman, December 10, PJ Media: ``America is Talking About the Wrong Refugee Problem.'' I would submit it is a legitimate problem we have been talking about, but this article points out a problem that, certainly, I and many of my Republican friends have been pointing to. The article reads: ``A few weeks ago, the fangs came out when news broke that the Paris attackers were `refugees' who had entered the European continent among thousands of immigrants. Elected Republicans and conservative pundits challenged the American plan to resettle Syrian refugees, and still are. ``But their bite is off mark. ``As many as six of the Paris attackers and their leader were not resettled refugees of the sort President Obama wants to import into the country (three attackers still have not been publicly identified). ``These terrorists entered Europe with illegal immigrant asylum seekers, of the sort who routinely show up at the U.S.-Mexico border.'' Mr. Speaker, I am still hearing from friends on the U.S.-Mexico border who know and who say we are continuing to have people from countries where radical Islam is a major problem--in the Middle East and in North Africa--show up at the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of them are caught. The article points out: ``Illegal immigrant asylum seekers don't give the host nation a choice. They show up uninvited, smuggled, and often unknowable. They insist on being taken in anyway, pointing to our generous laws and traditions. ``At least three of the Paris terrorists--including main attack planner Abdelhamid Abaaoud--were what we would call Special Interest Aliens (SIAs). They infiltrated over the common European external . . . border at Greece, just like Syrians show up at the U.S.-Mexico border, camouflaged among many other illegal immigrants. Europe's SIAs from Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, and many other Islamic nations are moved along their land and sea routes with the ubiquitous aid of human smugglers, just as they are to the U.S.-Mexico border. ``This is perhaps the world's deadliest known case of terrorist border infiltration by SIAs. Abaaoud was a Belgium citizen before he went to Syria and became a notorious Islamic State operative. He knew he was on the radar of intelligence services, and couldn't come home the legal way unnoticed. So he traveled home as an illegal migrant under the cover of thousands of legitimate ones.'' Mr. Speaker, I know I have got people out there who have belittled me in the past when I have quoted from the FBI Director that we have people from radical Islamic areas who have camouflaged themselves. He had said that some of them actually changed their names to have Hispanic-sounding names and that they tried to blend in. That is what the FBI Director says. People can belittle me all day long, but when the FBI Director--in this case, the former FBI Director--said that while he was Director, then, when those points are made, somebody needs to talk about them whether the country is going to make fun of one or not. In an article, dated December 10, 2015, by Andrew McCarthy, titled, ``After Jihadist Mass Murder, the CAIR's Sharia Agenda Rolls On,'' he points out just how CAIR continues with their agenda and what those who have studied CAIR, its contacts, its relations, what they intend is civilization jihad. That is our civilization they care to take over. Now, my friend from the Department of Homeland Security, now retired so he can talk about things that aren't classified, discussed some of these things on Megan Kelly's show. He was actually investigating Tablighi Jamaat, which is one of many organizations that are under the overall radical Islamic movement. As he has pointed out, Tablighi Jamaat means ``society for spreading faith.'' It is an Islamic global proselytizing movement with followers in over 200 countries. Now, not everybody in Tablighi Jamaat is a terrorist. Not everybody in Tablighi Jamaat is a radical Islamist, but it should set off bells and whistles to wake people up when a relationship is seen. From the Middle East Quarterly in 2005, it states: ``After joining Tablighi Jamaat, groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a few local dawa (proselytism) missions, Tablighi officials invite star recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite them to undertake military training.'' Tablighi Jamaat links to terror include: 1995, Benazir Bhutto coup attempt; 2001, John Walker Lindh; 2001, Richard Reid, the shoe bomber; 2002, Jose Padilla; 2002, Portland Seven; 2002, Lackawanna Six; 2005, London Underground Bombing; 2006, airline bombing plot; 2008, Barcelona plot. Those are just some of the ties that Tablighi Jamaat has had with terrorism. Now, the al-Huda Institute is a global network of Islamist religious schools, with branches in Pakistan, Canada, and the United States. USA Today reported on December 12, 2015: ``Nosheen Ali Irfan, 54, who lives in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, said she sent both of her daughters to study in Al-Huda during summer 2014 but within five weeks became disgruntled by the teachings and discontinued the lessons. ``Irfan said her family has a religious background but the teachings at Al-Huda were `too radical' even for them . . . `If there is an environment Jihadis (Islamic warriors) would come to recruit, it would be these kinds of institutions,' she said.'' Al-Huda links to terror include Ali Asad Chandia, an al-Huda teacher in College Park, Maryland, who provided material support to a Pakistani terror group; 2012, four former students join ISIS in Syria; and in 2015, Tashfeen Malik, who was engaged in the San Bernardino attack. In San Bernardino, the investigation into groups affiliated with the Deobandi Islamic movement was stopped before it could have connected the dots, and that is where Phil Haney was going in. He was finding all these ties that Tablighi Jamaat individuals had with other known terrorists. In fact, he got a letter of commendation before Homeland Security realized, wow, he is finding people that have ties to this administration so we have got to stop him cold. Before they realized that, June 8, 2012, he was given a letter that said: ``On behalf of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), I commend your outstanding contributions while assigned to the National Training Center-Passenger (NTC-P). Your display of dedication and effort in the fight against terrorism has been exemplary. ``Your talents and professionalism have contributed to the continued achievements of the NTC-P. You played a key role by providing support to the CBP mission and the NTC-P lead role in defending and protecting our nation's borders.'' On further down, it says: ``Additionally, your expertise and experience has been invaluable while assigned to the Advanced Targeting Team (ATT). Your research on the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative has assisted in the identification of over 300 persons with possible connections to terrorism. The assistance you have provided in the development of this initiative has been key to the future success of the project.'' See, that was before they pulled him off and said no more looking into Tablighi Jamaat. You can't do it because you are messing with people you can't be messing with. Apparently, ties would come back to this administration. It is not hard to figure out. Just look at the Holy Land Foundation pleadings, look at who are listed as coconspirators in supporting terrorism, and look at whom this administration takes advice from. Tommy Nelson, a minister back in Denton, Texas, I have never met once, said: Yeah, God is in control, but just because he is in control doesn't mean he wants us to lean on our shovel and pray for a hole. Well, when this headline came out, Mr. Speaker, God isn't fixing this, despite prayers that God would fix it. I feel sure God is saying: Use what I have given you, and you can stop it yourself. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, for more than twenty five years, Marshall Christian Academy has been providing Christian based education to students whose families desire them to have a solid foundation in academics and athletics, while developing excellence and Christ- centered character. It is a great honor to recognize the Marshall Christian Academy Guardians on their most recent accomplishment, capturing the Texas Christian Athletic League Division II 6-man Football State Championship title. Marshall Christian Academy takes pride in working on the A, B, and Cs--attitude, behavior, and conduct, in both academics and athletics. The school website states, ``At Marshall Christian Academy, we play Six-Man Football to work in the character of Christ to our young men. God has blessed us with the opportunity to play the great game of football. Six-Man is an effective tool for developing young men in discipleship and training them in the game of life--how to play a game, how to be tough and how to represent Jesus Christ on and off the field.'' The team fought and overcame a number of obstacles before claiming the state title, proving once again they are champions in every sense of the word. Their season was riddled with lengthy travel, inclement weather, illnesses, and a devastating car accident which seriously injured two team members and claimed the life of a family member. But through it all, the Guardians relied on the power of prayer to persevere and emerge triumphant, resulting in a season culminating in their first ever state football championship with a 36-28 win over Annapolis Christian Academy. The Marshall Christian Academy Guardians achieving this landmark accomplishment include David Florence, Stephan Florence, William Hency, Ryan Stokell, Aslan Bell, Andrew Stokell, Dylan Alford, Hunter Cagle, Dazmond Lewis, Noah Heredia, Caleb Beesinger and Matthew Stokell. Congratulations should be extended to the dedicated faculty and staff members who so skillfully created the solid foundation of direction and motivation necessary to build a team of champions: Marshall Christian Academy Administrators Raymond Bade, Duane Schultz and Guy Barr III, along with the Guardians' athletic staff comprised of Head Coach Guy Barr III, along with Assistant Coaches Jeff Arrington, Tyrone Robinson and Robert Stokell. May God continue to bless their efforts so they may one day dedicate their drive and determination to help make this great country even stronger. My most enthusiastic and heartfelt congratulations to the Marshall Christian Academy Guardians, as their legacy is now recorded in the Congressional Record which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a great deal this week about what is proposed as a commonsense fix to our Second Amendment, and that is, okay, surely you can agree that anyone on the no-fly list should not be able to walk in and buy a gun. We have had friends across the aisle that pointed out, like the Times Square bomber, he could have gone in and bought a gun. I am told now that that is not actually the case, that he specifically could not have. The guy made a bomb. He was going to blow up New York Times Square. He didn't need a gun. He was going to blow people up. A lot of us, when we first hear, ``well, shouldn't that be a no- brainer?'' if you are on the no-fly list, you shouldn't be able to buy a gun. Then when you find out that the no-fly list is composed of names--and we can't even get a number, even a ballpark number. Is it 47,000? Is it 470,000? Is it 700,000? Is it over a million? When you find out you can't actually find any specific criteria for getting on the no-fly list, then you realize the no-fly list is basically anybody this administration says needs to be harassed or looked at further. As I was leaving London a year ago after speaking to some groups in London, a man that was head of that little area of whatever their TSA is there in the London airport came up and said: Congressman, I know who you are and I am really, really sorry, but apparently your Department of Homeland Security indicates you need to be thoroughly searched personally and your bags. Really sorry. Anyway, for those people that say no administration would ever be into political revenge, you can look at some of the groups that the IRS went after. In fact, a huge majority of rank-and-file Federal workers in Homeland Security and in the IRS, they would never dream of doing the kind of things that Lois Lerner and her hacks did. They used the power of government to go after political enemies. Nobody will ever be able to say specifically how much it helped President Obama in 2012 to prevent conservative groups from getting their tax status cleared through the IRS. They did prevent a lot of groups from being able to form. If you don't have the clearance from the IRS, then you can't bring contributions in together to organize and do like many of the unions do that get Federal money. These groups were not going to get Federal money. They were going to get contributions. The more we see the abuses within this administration, the clearer it is. Whether it was a Democrat or Republican administration, the last thing you would ever want to do is tell a President and administration that you just list anybody on a list; there is no requirement as to the specifics as why. You just put anybody on a list that you have concerns about, and they will never be able to buy a gun. You could keep them from flying if you want to. You just list them on the list. You don't have to tell Congress. You don't have to tell anybody else. Just put people you are not happy with on a list and say you have concerns about them, and they will never be able to buy a gun. Before we go ripping away people's constitutional Second Amendment right or any other right, which should be a right to get on a plane and fly unless you are a threat, we do not need to have an obscure process where nobody can identify the specifics that gets you on the no-fly list or, in this case, as people are proposing, the no-gun list. Just let an administration list them. We have got to do a lot more soul- searching in America. As we have seen, there are so many groups and individuals that were listed as unindicted, but coconspirators in the biggest terror financing trial in American history, the Holy Land Foundation trial. We found out that a group that called itself charitable and got clearance from the IRS and they don't really say where their money comes from, when the FBI drilled down and found out, saw where it was going, they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the five principals in the Holy Land Foundation trial were guilty of financing terrorism. There were many people, many groups listed as coconspirators. Some, like this Islamic Society of North America of which Imam Magid is past president, ISNA was trying--one of those groups, CAIR, they wanted their names off the unindicted list. If there were no evidence of any ties to the Holy Land Foundation's terrorist funding, then they should have gotten a judge. The judge would have signed the order. Both the district judge and the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals looked at the evidence and said there is plenty of evidence here to show that these groups, like the Islamic Society of North America, principals in these groups, they are affiliated with--there is evidence to show they are coconspirators with these terrorist financing people. So they would not allow their names to be removed from the pleadings. They remained in the pleadings. Unfortunately, for those of us who want justice in America, for those who would destroy our government, Eric Holder became Attorney General immediately after the conviction by the Bush administration in very late 2008. Under his guidance, they never pursued those people that the Federal district court and the Court of Appeals said there is plenty of evidence to support that these people are part of the terror financing network. They never pursued them. In fact, Imam Magid out at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society--ADAMS, they called themselves. The Secretary of Homeland Security was just out there last week and applauding their efforts and thanking Imam Magid as the White House has thanked Imam Magid. He has helped the President, we know, with at least one speech. That was the one the President delivered while Netanyahu was on the way over here and wrongly said that everybody involved, including Israel, had agreed to the pre-'67 borders. Since that was so factually wrong when the President stated it publicly, you can't help but feel like, since Imam Magid advised him on the speech, was there in the inner sanctum of the State Department, in that extremely secure setting when the President delivered his speech-- he was even asked for an interview about the speech immediately afterwards--you know that there were people with ties to people this administration shouldn't use as their advisers that this administration is using as advisers. Anyway, there is a reason that America has become extremely skeptical about what they are told. When this administration and my friends across the aisle start saying, ``Hey, we can trust this administration. Just let them list anybody they want to as they currently can on the no-fly list and they will never be able to buy a gun and that will stop terrorism,'' well, it wouldn't have stopped the pipe bombs that Farook and his fiancee--wife, whatever she was, terrorist, female companion-- had built and put together. Also, the President keeps pushing for better background checks. There was a great article from Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., December 3. Dr. Lott has had positions with the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice. He was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during '88 and '89. This guy is an expert when it comes to guns and gun laws. Dr. Lott had an article that made clear--it is dated December 3; there is a national review online--that there is nothing at all that President Obama or Loretta Lynch had proposed that would have stopped the 14 people being killed and 21 injured out in San Bernardino. In fact, there is nothing that this President proposed in the light of violence in Colorado that would have changed the shooting in Colorado. In fact, if you go back to the prior shooting in Colorado, we know that the gunman went by at least a couple of theaters that were closer to him because those were not gun-free zones and there were likely people in the theater who had guns who would have stopped the shooter before he killed and shot as many people as he did. When it comes to Oregon, they have very strict gun control laws. There is nothing the President or the Justice Department proposed that would have prevented the shooting at the community college in Oregon. Those are places where the gun laws are already as strict or stricter than what the President is asking be applied everywhere else. So it just seems disingenuous for anyone to say we need gun control laws like in California so that we can stop the violence when it didn't stop the very violence they are using as an excuse to take away people's Second Amendment rights. I would commend that great article by John Lott. When it comes to the Syrian refugees, most people in America have figured out this has to be stopped because we don't know who is coming in. I have mentioned it here on the floor before, Mr. Speaker, last week and previously, that we had information--I had information that ISIS had probably taken over areas where there were printing facilities so they could probably print passports that we would not be able to know were they legitimate or not. As this administration keeps saying, we need to bomb Assad out of existence, or at least try to take him out. Well, Assad is not very favorable toward giving this administration all of his criminal records and passport records about the people of Syria. We have no idea who these people are. God bless the Director of the FBI, Comey. He comes in more than once and says: Yes, we will vet them, but you have to understand, even though we will do the best vetting we possibly can, we have nothing to go on. With Iraqis, as he explained, we had fingerprints. We had fingerprints from IEDs. We had all kinds of information. We had the official records of the Iraqi Government that could help tell us whether somebody coming from Iraq was the person they said they were, or whether they were not. Were they a threat? Were they a danger? Even with all of that, we find out a couple of guys get to Kentucky and have been there a couple of years. One of them was certainly a terrorist whose fingerprints were on an IED that had been exploded in Iraq, and they didn't catch his fingerprints, even though they had them. If you can't catch a terrorist that you let into Kentucky, and you had his fingerprints and compared them, and it didn't show up initially, then how much worse will it be? How many more terrorists will you let into America from within the Syrian refugees? Then it has also been disclosed this week what many of us in America knew already. It was only common sense that people who have sworn they want to destroy our country, kill as many Americans and Jews and Israelis as possible, that they would use this refugee crisis not to get into Israel--because they are very protective, thank God--but to get into Western Europe and to get into the United States. Now we know those are the facts. Most Americans that I have talked to--I think in my telephone townhall, there was about 90 percent of the people in east Texas, of the thousands on the call, they indicated about 90 percent were concerned that we couldn't properly vet the Syrian refugees good enough, and that we needed to pause and hold up and wait until we had more information. That is just common sense. Then we also, there was an article from Mark Krikorian November 16. He pointed out, and I will quote from his article: ``The 5-year cost to American taxpayers of resettling a single Middle Eastern refugee in the United States is conservatively estimated to be more than $64,000 compared with U.N. figures that indicate it costs about $5,300 to provide for that same refugee for 5 years'' if he or she is in their native region. So for every person we arrogantly think, gee, we should bring that person into America, as Mark Krikorian points out, actually that is a bit immoral, because if we weren't so arrogant to think we need to get them into America, we could save 12 of them in their native region. They say, 3 to 4 million people coming out of Syria, out of that area, gee, they need to come to the United States, and yet Saudi Arabia has accommodations for 3 million. So many people have seen a photograph of the massive tent area there for 5 days out of 365. That is during the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, kitchen facilities, bathroom facilities. It just seems like if they would help take care of the 3 million, make those available, we could work something out to take care of the people that come in for 5 days in the Hajj, that that would be a better solution than this administration forcing Syrian refugees that could not be properly vetted into this country. Then I was told last night that actually the female terrorist in San Bernardino was using a name that certainly would not have been given to her at birth, and that if we had people that were allowed to study radical Islam, the tenets of its belief, as this one person said, she had a name that is actually a guy's name, and for anyone who has spent their adult life studying radical Islam, like this administration for 7 years, has not allowed the FBI, the intelligence agency, State Department, Justice Department. They purged their records of anything that offended terror and unindicted coconspirator to finance terrorism. So when this unindicted co-conspirator CAIR complained about anything, it was purged from this administration's training records. As this individual, this friend pointed out, when you spend so many of your years of your adulthood studying this, for her to have proper screening by somebody that had studied radical Islam, you would ask the question: When did you get this name? This clearly was not given to you at birth. He said it would be like an American going into Europe and someone there saying: Now, come on, your name is not George Washington. It wasn't given to you at birth. Where did you get it? When you start inquiring, then you find out the madrassas she had been to, the places she had been to, but you have to get to secondary screening, further questioning, which there should be red flags all over somebody's record like that. We have the information available that this administration didn't prevent it from being used to properly screen radical Islamists. But before you can properly screen radical Islamists, you have to admit that there is a thing called radical Islam. Carolyn Glick writes for the Jerusalem Post. She is a brilliant lady. She pointed out one of the problems with my friend, President George W. Bush's position that we are not at war with Islam, and then this administration's taking that and running with it to extremes, they fail to acknowledge that there is pluralism within Islam. Saying that ``If it is bad, it could not possibly be part of Islam,'' is ridiculous. What that does to moderate Muslims, who don't want radical Islamists governing them and cutting their hands off, horsewhipping them, whatever, stoning them to death, they would like to live in peace without worrying about a tyrannical, radical Islamist leader. We do them a disservice by not pointing out that radical Islam is an element of Islam, and it is a fact. Therefore, moderates are left to say nothing because if they say this is an element of Islam we have got to stand up against, then they come against the wrongheaded positions of the Obama administration. We actually can help moderate Muslims stand up, as some are starting to do, a few have been doing for a long time, stand up against radical Islam, and say--God blessing President al-Sisi in Egypt, as he stood and talked to a group of imams, said we have got to get control of our religious beliefs, our Islam back from the radicals. We have got to stand up against them. We help them. The al-Sisi regime administration over in Egypt, I have talked to some of them. I don't know if I am still the only Member of Congress that has met with their director of intelligence. We had a very informative meeting for a couple of hours. They don't understand why this administration appears to be helping radical Islam and standing against the moderates, like President al- Sisi, like the 30 million of the 90 million Egyptian people that went to the street a couple years ago. Wow, that was such a huge deal. There has never been a group that big, in the history of the world, go to the streets of their country and demand a peaceful regime change. But because the constitution that we helped Egypt with when Morsi was elected did not contain an impeachment provision, they had no other way to go. There was no other way to peaceably remove a president who was violating their own constitution over and over than to go to the streets, as they did. The Coptic Christian Pope there in Cairo has told me more than once how deeply moving it was to see moderate Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists go to the street as a part of that 30 million, and so many coming up to the Pope and saying: We are so sorry for the way you have been treated. Has this administration given any accolades whatsoever to the Egyptian people for passing a constitution with over 90 percent vote that in that constitution, a majority of the ones approving were Muslim, it says in the constitution that when the Muslim Brotherhood, radical Islam, they put Muslim Brotherhood on their terrorist watch list. This administration gets their advice. That administration in Egypt puts them on the terrorist watch list. They say when the Muslim Brotherhood or any other like-minded radical Islamist group burns down a church, we will rebuild it with government funds. It is incredible. The people of Egypt deserve at least an ``atta boy.'' What was this administration's response? We are going to hold up sending you any helicopters. We sent jets and helicopters and tanks to the Muslim Brotherhood when they were in control under Morsi, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood, this terrorist organization is not in control, we are not going to send you things. As President al-Sisi once asked me, does your President not understand? We use the Apache helicopters to keep the Suez Canal open. So it was quite a slap in the face to our friends in Egypt that are against radical Islam, our Muslim friends there, when this President didn't go, as I think 47 other leaders or so went. He didn't send the Vice President, didn't send the Ambassador, didn't send anybody from Washington to say: Congratulations, Egypt. Since moderate Muslims have been in control in Egypt, they have done something earthshaking: They dug another lane, a second lane to the Suez Canal. Countries all over the world went, wow, Egypt, that is enormous. It was embarrassing to me last year in Egypt as people were asking: Was your country really excited when we got this second lane dug to the Suez Canal? The mainstream media hardly reported anything about it. It was a big deal. It was a free people standing up and doing something monumental. Since it wasn't done by radical Islamists, this administration chose not to give it any credibility. Then we get the report now. Just hours ago, there was an article from Victoria Taft: ``After the latest Paris terror attack, French President Hollande swore he'd go after radical Muslims who pulled off the mass slayings. ``Now we're learning what he meant by that. ``As HotAir reports: `The French have kicked in the doors on 2,235 homes and taken 232 people into custody or placed them on house arrest.' In the sleepy French town of Lagny-sur-Marne just 18 miles from Paris . . . French police went to the local mosque where they found: The Salafist mosque . . . about 30 kilometers east of the French capital was closed down by police on the 2nd of December. In subsequent raids, the prefect for the Seine-and-Marne department said `7.62 millimeter ammunition for a Kalashnikov rifle and propaganda videos' had been seized, AFP reported. The locations of the raids were not given. Both ISIS and al Qaeda adhere to the radical Sunni Salafist Muslim teachings. Radicals used some mosques and other home-based un-permitted mosques to stockpile weapons.'' It was reported that, just in the last 15 days, the French have uncovered about a third of the illegal weapons they normally recover in an entire year just from these mosque areas and the homes that they have raided. Now, I have serious concerns when I see homes being raided in these numbers. The French do not have our protections under our Bill of Rights. They don't have nearly the protections we do. I don't want this many homes busted into. I don't want mosques raided unless there is probable cause to believe there is a problem or that they have committed a crime. You get warrants for those things. The same with the home, the same with somebody's Internet, and the same with their bank records. Yet this administration is using the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to do what nobody in American history--any administration--has done before, and that is to get people's bank records, whether or not you want them to or not. They claim: We want to be able to watch so if somebody gets messed around by a bank, we can go after them. Well, when I was a judge, if you wanted to get bank records, you had to have probable cause that a crime was committed and probable cause that the person whose records you wanted had committed it; otherwise, I didn't sign a warrant because the Constitution didn't allow it. If I did sign a warrant, it had to be specific to place and time and what was being seized. But this administration gets your bank records--all they want-- through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They get all your medical records through ObamaCare requirements. They get all kinds of information about individuals. They get your phone logs, as they have been doing. Now, there is some question whether they still are or not. I have this article from Michele McPhee and Brian Ross. ABC News reports: ``ISIS May Have Passport Printing Machine, Blank Passports.'' I am glad they finally caught up with the news on that. I want to revisit an issue. Senator Grassley sent a letter to Secretary Jeh Johnson, February 3, 2014, so it will be going on 2 years in February. He included an email. Senator Grassley included a redacted copy of the email exchange. I have seen the unredacted email exchange. And even from the redacted email exchange, it is indicated that Secretary Napolitano had a hands-off list. Apparently, when there were indications Muslim leaders should be secondarily screened, pulled aside from their first stop, asked further questions, the indication is this guy is in a group, they say: Well, he is on the Secretary's hands-off list. Well, not only can we not get specifics of exactly why somebody is on the no-fly list or the terrorist watch list--just that this administration has a bad feeling about them--we can't find out just how you get on the hands-off list. That is another matter that requires some looking into. Then we find out this week that an ex-Guantanamo detainee now is an al Qaeda leader back in Yemen. And it talks about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, released a new video featuring former Guantanamo detainee Ibrahim al Qosi, whose name is also Sheikh Khubayb al Sudani. In 2010, he pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism before a military commission. It ended up that this administration transferred him to his home country of Sudan. Now he is back where he wanted to be, helping al Qaeda. We already knew he was a terrorist--he pled guilty--and this administration sent him back. The question still out there and remains: How many Americans will be killed because this administration decided closing Guantanamo is more important than saving American lives? They traded five murderous terrorists, coconspirators, for a guy who, all the indications are, deserted his American military post. I wonder how many American lives will be lost because of that. I have an article from KY3 saying that on Saturday, around 3:50 a.m., two men buying a large number of cell phones at Walmart in Lebanon set off a concern. `` `Somebody went in and bought 60 cell phones from Walmart. That's not normal for this area,' explained Laclede County Sheriff Wayne Merritt. ``After talking with the men, officers didn't have a legal reason to detain them so the men were allowed to leave, according to the Lebanon Police Department incident report.'' That is in Missouri. ``Sheriff Merritt said calling law enforcement officers was the right move.'' But, unfortunately, because of the statement of our Attorney General in recent days in the aftermath of the San Bernardino killings, she has made clear that, in the aftermath of all of those Americans being killed, specifically targeting Christians and Jews--apparently, there was a Muslim shot, but the targets were Jews and Christians, them telling one Jewish man before he was shot: Now you will never get to see Israel--targeting the Christians specifically, instead of going off on how clearly this was a hate crime, the Attorney General says her big concern is that people are not prejudiced against Muslims. It made it clear to people like the terrorists' neighbors that, if you see radical Islamists gathering and you are suspicious of--maybe they are making pipe bombs in the garage--and you call that in, there is a good chance that Attorney General Loretta Lynch is going to come after you for being biased and bigoted. What a ridiculous thing to say. Basically, she is saying, if you see something and say something and that something involves Muslims, then I am coming after you. What a ridiculous, terrible thing for the chief law enforcement officer of our country to say. Then, this article today from Liam Deacon, Breitbart News, ``Homeland Security Shut Down Investigation Into Farook And Malik Linked Islamist Group To Protect `Civil Liberties' of Potential Terrorists'': ``The Department of Homeland Security has been accused of deleting intelligence records relating to dangerous Islamists linked to terrorists Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, because they wanted to protect the `civil liberties' of members of the caliphate-supporting network. ``Phil Haney, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol analyst''--now retired--``says he was ordered to stop investigating Deobandi Islamist groups and his work on them was erased. He even says he was subjected to discipline when he attempted to blow the whistle. ``If he'd been allowed to continue his investigation, he claims Malik's visa application would have been flagged for greater scrutiny. ``He explained: `The administration was more concerned about the civil rights and liberties of foreign Islamic groups with terrorist ties than the safety and security of Americans.' ``Analyst Phil Haney told Fox News that he once worked as a researcher looking into potential terrorists in the Passenger Analysis Units at the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta, as well as at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center. ``Mr. Haney says that he had been identifying and tracking members of the al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat groups, offshoots of the radical Deobandi school of Islam, which was founded in British colonial India specifically to oppose western culture. ``Tablighi Jamaat is a Deobandi revivalist movement whose mandate is, according to its leading advocate Ebrahim Rangooni, to save the Muslim world `from the culture and civilization of the Jews and the Christians' . . . To this end, he has suggested cultivating `such hatred for their ways as human beings have to urine and excrement.' ``Tablighi Jamaat have been linked to 80 percent of all recent terrorist related crimes in France. ``Mr. Haney's work tracking the radical movement was considered so important that he says he was given an agency award for identifying potential terrorists, and he was asked to become part of the National Targeting Center, which works to connect the dots and build a bigger picture of terrorist activity. ``However, after more than six months of tracking the Deobandis, Homeland Security unexpectedly halted his investigation on the request of the State Department's Office of Civil Rights.'' Anyway, that is what happens. Phil Haney is one of the most patriotic, finest people ever known. He cares so deeply about this country. By the way, Mr. Speaker, his appearance decries his intellect and knowledge about radical Islam. So, he has done no telling how many secondary screenings in his time in the Middle East, his knowledge of the language, the culture, the moderate Islamic culture, the radical Islamic culture. He knows the teachings of the radicals and who they are. He has been able to get massive amounts of information that I would never have dreamed people would admit to him. I have been working with him for a number of years to try to get information to people in the administration who would protect the information, and instead, when they realized how much information he had of what others in Homeland Security had deleted, they thought was gone--Janet Napolitano talked about connecting the dots. She forgot to mention that they had been deleting dots like crazy. I knew that Phil's information was so damaging to this administration that, if it were not handled properly, they would destroy the man. So what happens after he gets an award for identifying so much information? He used the tech system. All he did was enter data. He would look even at social media, and if he found that somebody under consideration was in a photograph with somebody we knew to be a radical Islamist, he would enter that information. There is a massive amount of information out there in social media that this administration has not even availed themselves of. Previously, when our Embassy in Yemen was surrounded by Houthis, radical Islamist rebels, I got a call from a constituent whose son is over there and is isolated in a hotel and can't get to the Embassy. In talking to a friend who had a friend, it ends up some guy is going through a training or practice session. They set aside their hypothetical practice scenario and took on the real-life scenario of getting four Americans from a hotel in the capital of Yemen to the Embassy and trying to get more in the Embassy out. They used social media. They were able to find pictures being taken by Houthi radical Islamists at different places where they obviously were. So they knew which places to avoid. They were able, using people in place in Yemen, American assets, and using social media, were able to get those people from the hotel, get them to the Embassy and get them out, even though this administration would only pay for a commercial airline flight where they sat with some people who may have been part of the rebels that wanted to kill them. Not the best way to get people out of an Embassy, but they got out. I have heard again recently from my former constituent, and he is doing well. He is a good man. He is a patriot. He wants to help the country. So it should also be noted that although, in our country, the Attorney General is more concerned about prejudice against Muslims, the Euro Parliament president--this article by Dr. Thomas D. Williams, the 3rd of December, points out that the Euro Parliament president says Christians are not safe on our continent. In a high-level meeting on religious persecution in Brussels, the president of the European Parliament said that Europe cannot afford to continue ignoring the faith of Christians, who are ``clearly the most persecuted group'' in the world. In Wednesday's meeting, EP President Martin Schulz said that the persecution of Christians is undervalued and does not receive enough attention, which also has meant that ``it hasn't been properly addressed.'' I applaud the efforts of Glenn Beck trying to save Christians over in areas of radical Islam, because, as the European Parliament President says, radical Islamists' number 1 goal is not other Muslims; it's Christians and Jews. Yet, this administration's big focus is helping Muslims. Then we find out from the U.N. that actually they locate their refugee centers in urban areas where you rarely find many Christians. And we find out the reports, hear from people that say we are afraid to go into the U.N. refugee camps, because they are virtually all Muslim, and we are targeted, and we can't go there. We can't allow our families to go there. Yet, it is the U.N. refugee camps that this administration brings the refugees, and wants to bring refugees from. Glenn Beck, realizing that Christian refugees were being under- appreciated, undervalued by the Obama administration, has gone over and tried to do something about it. I applaud his efforts. So, Mr. Speaker, as we close out this week, the bill we just passed with regard to the Customs conference report, I just want to go back to January 29, 1961. In about over a month, it will be the 55-year anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's speech. It was a message to commemorate Roosevelt Day for Franklin Roosevelt. So, in his speech, he points out that 28 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt assumed the leadership of a stricken and demoralized Nation. Poverty, distress, economic stagnation, blanketed the land. He goes on in the speech, recognizing Franklin Roosevelt. And I would just like to read John F. Kennedy's words, because they are such a contrast to the current President's words, as he wants to take away people's Second Amendment rights. He wants to have the ability, since he controls, completely controls the no-fly list, nobody in Congress gets to know who he is putting on, why they are putting on, what criteria he is using to put them on. He gets exclusive control of who he wants to put on the no-fly list, he or his assignees. President Obama wants to restrict those rights. So, Mr. Speaker, I conclude today, and this week in the House, with the words of John F. Kennedy. President John F. Kennedy, January 29, 1961, part of his speech that day said: ``To meet these problems will require the efforts, not only of our leaders or of the Democratic Party, but the combined efforts of all of our people. No one has a right to feel that, having entrusted the task of government to new leaders in Washington, he can continue to pursue his private comforts unconcerned with America's challenges and dangers. For, if freedom is to survive and prosper, it will require the sacrifice, the effort, and the thoughtful attention of every citizen. ``In my own native State of Massachusetts, the battle for American freedom was begun by the thousands of farmers and tradesmen who made up the Minute Men, citizens who were ready to defend their liberty at a moment's notice.'' President Kennedy goes on with these words: ``Today, we need a Nation of Minute Men, citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.'' The words of John F. Kennedy, January 29, 1961. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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