Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend, but my problem is, having had so many provisions explained, for example, oh, this won't affect seniors by cutting $700 billion out of Medicare, and, gee, if you will just renew the PATRIOT Act, section 215, gosh, you have got to be a terrorist before we get any of your personal information, your data-- there have just been so many explanations and promises that have been made. With regard to section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, that was over two administrations. But there have been so many representations on what an administration--particularly this administration--believes something means that allowed activity far beyond that, that even if this administration or the prior administration says this is what something means, I am sorry, the judge completely hasn't left me, the chief justice completely hasn't left me, and so I care more about what the language says on its face than what somebody tells me they think it will mean or how they will apply it. Again, you know, we were told things about ObamaCare and the way it would be interpreted and carried out, the PATRIOT Act, the way it would be interpreted and carried out. It turns out it simply was not the case. It is still why I am concerned over the part of section 215, even though I have been assured, oh, no, it really doesn't mean anything. But it says not only can they gather the data of people associated with terrorists or involved in international terrorism, but it has this little two-letter disjunctive, the ``or,'' clandestine intelligence activities. Nobody will explain where that is defined in writing because until it is defined adequately in writing, that can mean anything anybody wants it to mean. It is just too vague, allows too much arbitrariness and capriciousness. So I am not as concerned about what people tell me something says or means because I know when you put words in a bill, at some point some judge somewhere is going to say, you know what those words actually say; they mean exactly what they say. So I am concerned about the power that is given to the President. I am concerned about the ability of the President to cut deals, and if he happens to forget to give us notice, as he happened to do with regard to the five terrorists that were released from Guantanamo, then I don't see this body stepping up and stopping him. I know we absolutely pledged we were going to on the illegal, unconstitutional amnesty he did, but then we decided, well, we will just trust the judge in Texas that his ruling will be upheld all the way to the Supreme Court. So we gave up on that fight as a body. But I just have not seen anything from the House and Senate, either when it was under total Democratic control or now, that indicates we are going to be able to step up and stop the President if there is a violation of the law or a violation of personal commitments that were made. Because of that, I was not comfortable voting for TPA. I could not vote for it. I voted against TAA because it would facilitate TPA. I do have to make a parenthetical note here. It is interesting, we are assured that TPA is going to create this massive number of jobs, but we have to--absolutely have to--pass TAA, which creates additional welfare because there are going to be so many Americans that lose their jobs as a result of TPA. So it is going to create all these American jobs, but we have got to have TAA so we can cover all the American jobs that are lost that go overseas, when the fact is: You want a free trade agreement, you want to blow the doors off the barriers in the world to American goods and services? Let's cut the biggest tariff that any nation in the world puts on its own goods and services called a corporate tax. Let's cut it, if not eliminate it, at least get it below that of China. And the cuts to the prices will be so astounding that the doors will come down. They will have to come down, because our goods will not only be the best in the world, but they will be the best prices in the world. So we want real free trade. You are not going to get it by cutting a deal with countries that manipulate their currencies. Those were excellent points that some across the aisle made. If you are talking about free trade with countries that manipulate their own currencies, you are not going to get free trade with countries that manipulate their own currency because they can always maneuver around you and make their product better. So this didn't address the manipulative nature of some nations' currencies. Without that, you are not going to have a free trade deal. I would like to be an optimist and say that this bill that President Obama pushed so hard--historically hard for his administration--to get passed, I would like to be the optimist, as so many of my colleagues are, and say, but the reason President Obama was pushing for this so hard is this will really curtail his ability to make agreements without our agreement. I would like to think that he worked that hard to curtail his own power, but the realist, the old judge in me comes back and has to say, the verdict is he pushed for this TPA because it was going to give him a lot more power than he has now. I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Mr. GOHMERT. My friend has observed all the goings-on very closely. The President has acted extraordinarily in reaching out to Congress, trying to push through this trade bill. I am curious whether the gentleman from Kentucky, my friend, thinks maybe this, for the first time, is an effort by the President reaching out to make the Republican Party, Republican leadership look good. Or what kind of motivation do you think most likely caused him to reach out more than he has, as I recall, on a bill?

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it seems so often in this body we tend not to learn from mistakes. We passed a bill--I guess part of a bill--that the Senate sent, referred to as the TPA, but it is all about a trade agreement that will provide a structure in which the President can negotiate and dock other agreements into it. Since the TAA did not pass, then it can't, apparently, go directly to conference unless we pass an amendment to allow it to go to conference or find some other way to effectuate a conference on agreement. Mr. Speaker, I can only surmise that, since the Speaker, himself, moved to reconsider, then there is something afoot in order to keep it from dying, as it should have, since both the TPA and the TAA did not pass. The TPA, I read it. It has got some good aspects to it, but it is not, in and of itself, free trade. As a judge in a district court--our highest level trial court in Texas--so many times, I would be the fact finder without a jury. So often, you would sit and listen to the evidence, and you would wonder why someone would take the action he did. There has got to be some motivating factor. You consider all of the possibilities. We had a very rare visit from President Obama to the Capitol, trying to push people to vote for the TPA--this trade agreement--and the TAA. It was great to see him come out to the Congressional Baseball Game last night. It is not something he does regularly. So, Mr. Speaker, I am left to wonder. I mean, we have not seen this President push this hard on very many bills over the last 6\1/2\ years, and I am left wondering: Why would President Obama push so hard to pass this trade agreement structure that allows him to negotiate so many deals with so many different countries? One possibility is he did it because he knew that Speaker Boehner was pushing to pass it, and it is possible that he really wanted to make Speaker Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the leader down in the Senate, look good. That is a possibility. I don't think it is terribly probable. In weighing all of the evidence, it would seem to me that it is far more probable that the TPA will give this President far more power to fundamentally transform America in his remaining year and a half or so as President. That is what it appears to be to me. Now, one of our Republicans speaking, whom I have tremendous respect and admiration for, commented that we are not a nation that sits on the sidelines. I agree that that used to be true, but we have basically sat on the sidelines as Christians and Jews are being persecuted and killed around the world in greater numbers than ever before. We have sat on the sidelines in Nigeria as precious little African girls are kidnapped and brutally, sexually assaulted day after day, month after month. Then we see an article. According to the article, actually, this administration communicated to Nigeria that, if they will change their laws to provide for same-sex marriage and possibly for abortions to be paid for, then the United States would not continue to sit on the sidelines, that we would actually help them stop radical Islamists. Of course, they didn't use the term ``radical Islamists,'' but that is what they are. They would stop them, the radical Islamists, from continuing to kill and persecute Christians the way they are doing in Nigeria. I have talked to some folks who have been on a recent trip to eastern Africa and who have met and even prayed with leaders in east Africa. I was going to be on the trip, but, apparently, the Speaker feels, if you oppose him, then you are not allowed to travel, that those rewards are saved for people who vote as he tells them to. I will tell you what: if that is the price of speaking truth to power, it is still a great country. The people who went on that trip indicated that leaders in eastern Africa had indicated that the United States administration, the Obama administration, was telling them, in essence, what the article said happened in Nigeria, which is that, if you will change your laws to allow for same-sex marriage, though it is totally against their spiritual beliefs as Christians or as Muslims, then we would help them with things like radical Islam, but, otherwise, we are not going to help them. So I appreciate hearing a Republican say the United States is not a nation that sits on the sidelines, but this administration does. It sits on the sidelines and uses power to fundamentally transform this country and other countries. We have seen that. I see my very dear friend from Kentucky (Mr. Massie) here on the floor, and I would like to yield to him for his comments and thoughts.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Chair, this amendment has nothing to do with being anti-immigrant. In fact, the gentleman's comments play into that accusation. This is entirely incorrect and inappropriate. In fact, it reminds me of a comment a President made from right up there at that podium that no illegal aliens would get ObamaCare. Somebody thought that was not true and said so. It turns out it was not true. They have gotten it. I went home and talked to a number of people that were in and around Walmart this weekend--immigrants, people that are here legally, and they can't find work and they need help. They did everything to come here legally and properly--Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Anglo Americans--and they just need help. I would submit, if we are going to be true to the oath we took to our Constitution and the laws which uphold our Constitution, we need to be about helping those that are under our care, those who have come legally. I support the gentleman's amendment, and I appreciate him doing it. It is a pro-immigrant amendment for immigrants that will come legally, and there are plenty of those here.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there is so much going on these days, and I would just like to take up a very important issue that is going on right now. There was an interview by our President that was discussed in the L.A. Times, an article by Christi Parsons and Michael Memoli, and I saw part of the interview on television. The headline of this story is ``Obama Raises Possibility of Allowing U.N. Vote on Palestinian Statehood.'' Their subheadline says, ``Obama makes veiled threat about Palestinian statehood in an interview.'' The article says, ``President Obama took a step toward a tougher line with Israel in an interview released Tuesday, raising the possibility that the U.S. will allow a United Nations vote on issues related to the Palestinians if the two sides make no meaningful movement toward peace.'' In an interview with an Israeli television station, Obama noted that his administration has ``up until this point'' quashed such efforts at the U.N., while insisting that the Israelis and Palestinians must negotiate a resolution; but he said it is a challenge for the U.S. to keep demanding that the Palestinians negotiate in good faith if no one believes the Israelis are doing the same. Further down, it says, ``Obama's critical tone toward Netanyahu, describing him as someone who is `predisposed' to `think perhaps that peace is naive', appeared to return to the tough language that marked administration statements earlier this spring around the time of the Israeli election. More recently, the White House had seemed to be trying to mend fences.'' Well, obviously, that is not the case now. I thought it might be important, Mr. Speaker, to take a look at some of the comments that have been made by folks who say they are leaders, and we know them to be leaders of the Palestinians because Mr. Obama is getting some terrible advice. I don't know who is advising him. Maybe he is still skipping those briefings, and who knows where it is coming from, but somebody needs-- somebody, and I hope, Mr. Speaker, somebody close to the President--to start advising him on the position of the Palestinians. They cannot make their position more clear. Prime Minister Netanyahu stood right here at the second level and made the statement, in essence, that, if Israel lays down its arms, there is no Israel; if the Palestinians lay down their arms, there will be peace. They will not do so, and they continue to teach their children about how evil and horrible these Jews are, these Israelis are, that they need to be wiped off the map. They continue to name streets and holidays for those who would kill innocent Israeli children, innocent Israeli moms and dads as they sit having coffee. Oh, they think that is wonderful; let's make them heroes because they killed innocent Israelis. Yet this President continues to want to help the Palestinians have a big spot in Israel, a massive spot, which Israel has already seen makes their nation indefensible, while the President seems not to be getting the message of their position: they want to wipe Israel off the map. Some quotes, this is from Yasser Arafat, the previous PLO leader. He said: ``We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.'' Now, the current Palestinian President has made clear--and his statement is: ``We cannot compromise on Jerusalem.'' They are taking all of Jerusalem. Also, this quote, that they would never recognize a Jewish state. The quote is: ``First of all, let me make something clear about the story of the Jewish state,'' he told Dream 2 TV on October 23, 2011. He is quoted: ``They started talking to me about the Jewish state only 2 years ago, discussing it with me at every opportunity, every forum I went to--Jewish or non-Jewish--asking: `What do you think about the Jewish state?' I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I will never recognize the Jewishness of the state, or a `Jewish state.' '' Another quote: ``Hamas kidnapped--or rather, captured--a soldier and managed to keep him for 5 years, and that is a good thing.'' Another quote from President Abbas: ``In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli--civilian or soldier--on our lands.'' Of course, their lands, they anticipate getting all of Israel. They intend to wipe the Israelis off the map. ``Whoever wants resistance, whoever wants jihad, the direction for jihad is well-known and clear.'' This is Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the Palestinian Minister for Religious Affairs. He said, ``Those who send young people to Syria or elsewhere to die for a misdirected cause must stop and understand that Jerusalem is still waiting. Jerusalem is the direction, Jerusalem is the address.'' Another quote--Hamas, a group designated by the State Department and European Union as a foreign terrorist organization. They, of course, are well respected in the area the Palestinians are occupying. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian diplomat's chief negotiator, said, ``Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will never be a terrorist organization.'' Well, we know the facts dictate otherwise. We keep coming back to this point, Mr. Speaker. As long as the leaders of the Palestinians continue to say that terrorist organizations are peaceful, in their view, even though they want to kill Israelis, wipe them off the map, and as long as they continue to say they will never recognize an Israeli state, a Jewish state, they will never allow them to exist, they will continue to push to wipe them off the map, how in the world can the President of the United States act like he is a friend to Israel, yet say we want to accommodate their getting a vote that will make Israel indefensible to people that want to destroy them? Here are some more quotes. The following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, which aired on Al- Aqsa TV on May 11 of 2011. He said: ``The Jews are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians--and the Islamic nation behind them--will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang.'' ``All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews.'' Here is another: ``In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.'' Here is another from this Hamas member and cleric: ``When Palestine is liberated and its people return to it, and the entire region, with the grace of Allah, will have turned into the United States of Islam, the land of Palestine will become the capital of the Islamic Caliphate, and all these countries will turn into states within the Caliphate.'' Another great quote from these wonderful leaders, another leader said: ``I swear that if we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning.'' Those are the people that the President of the United States thinks are being extremely reasonable, and he considers that Netanyahu, in wanting to keep a country in which they can live without being wiped off the map, is being unreasonable. Netanyahu has made very clear, they want peace; but how can they sit down with people who will not even acknowledge they have a right to exist? That is not a precondition. That is a condition for wiping them off the map as a threat to mankind if they are not willing to recognize that genocide is inappropriate. They are war criminal wannabes. When people make clear that they are going to commit murder or genocide, how long do you have to wait before it is okay to stop them? Well, the President has made clear it may be time to move out of the way so that these Palestinians that want to obliterate Israel can have their will. One thought came back to mind. Back in my days as a felony judge, when you have somebody who is driving a car and people say, ``Hey, we just need a ride to this location. Once we get there, we are going to murder some people, but we don't need anything from you. We just need a ride,'' the person that drove that car, knowing that those people made those comments about wanting to kill people when they get to that location, they are also guilty of murder. I am not accusing anybody. I am raising questions. If the United States says, ``Here, Palestinian terrorist groups, we want to provide you the vehicle to have a powerful place right in the middle, a huge section of Israel. We want to give you that place, and you have made clear, we know you have made clear, once you are there, you are going to wipe out Israel,'' does that make the United States' leaders that facilitate that, does that make them accessories? I am just asking. Mr. Speaker, you can advise the Parliamentarian, I am not accusing anybody. I am just asking the question. The President needs to be advised by somebody that people are threatening murder, genocide, and those are not the people whose side we should be on trying to accommodate to reach that goal. It is a difficult time, and it is a scary time. Many of us believe what Scripture says, to whom much is given, of them much is required. I have mentioned a number of times the elderly West African gentleman who advised me when I was over there with Mercy Ships: We were so excited when you elected your first Black President, but we have continued since then to see America get weaker, and you have got to go back to Washington and tell your friends there that, when America gets weaker, we suffer. Then we see the stories of to whom much is given. This United States of America, that our leaders in this administration, according to articles, a Catholic Bishop in Nigeria, that this administration is saying: We are not going to help you stop Boko Haram, these radical Islamists; we are going to let them keep killing innocent Christians, kidnapping, and sexually raping, abusing Christian girls. But, if you will change your laws and accommodate same sex marriage and pay for abortion, then we will be willing to come help. I was advised by some other Members of Congress who got back from a trip to East Africa, where they were told by leaders in East African nations the same thing that they are being told by the people in this administration: Oh, yeah, we will help you with radical Islam, but only if you change your laws to violate your strongly held Christian beliefs that same-sex marriage is wrong. And also, start providing abortions, also violating your strongly held religious beliefs. Only if you will violate your Christian beliefs will we be willing to come help you. If there is a God as the Bible talks about, there will be a price to this Nation for acting in such a way. I have a dear friend--I think the world of him--a man named Sean Hannity. I don't usually get to see his program live. Again, last night in the wee hours I was watching a replay of Sean's program, and he was talking about, once again, a terrorist with ties to a mosque in the Boston area. Of course, I had done some research on this and found research that had been done by others. I found an article by Ryan Mauro back from December 2013. I know when I was questioning the Director of the FBI, Director Mueller, before our Judiciary Committee, I was incredulous that the Russians, of all people, could advise the United States twice that the older Tsarnaev had been radicalized long before he ever killed people and maimed people during the Boston Marathon. We had been advised twice. When we took no action the first time, then they advised the FBI that the older Tsarnaev had been radicalized, and you need to check into it. And the best I can find out is the FBI interviewed Tsarnaev, and he said he wasn't a terrorist--imagine that-- and they talked to his mother and she said her son was not a terrorist. And I challenged him and said, in effect: You didn't even go to the Boston mosque where Tsarnaev attended to find out, to investigate if he had been radicalized? And he challenged me. He said that wasn't true. I said: What part wasn't true? And he said: We did go to the mosque there. I didn't hear the little tag-on line he put after that until I heard a replay. My staff had to say: You apparently didn't hear what he said after he said ``We did go to the mosque.'' So I had to listen to the replay. What he said: ``We did go to the mosque in our outreach program.'' In the outreach program. We talked about that before. It took years before the FBI finally suspended their partnership with CAIR after, years before, the FBI had found evidence that was utilized in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorist prosecution case in American history. CAIR was named as an unindicted coconspirator. They tried to have their name removed from the pleadings, but the Federal judges at the district level and at the United States Court of Appeals both said there is plenty of evidence to support CAIR being a coconspirator supporting terrorism. So no, we are not going to strike their names from the pleadings. There were other names that were challenging as well. So I was surprised it took years for the FBI to decide to suspend their outreach program, their partnership with CAIR. And yet, according to Director Mueller, they continued that outreach program to that mosque. But I did challenge him with one final question. I held up these documents here, the Articles of Organization. This is with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that they got these Articles of Organization. And it is organizing a group called the Islamic Society of Boston, which established the mosque in Boston that Tsarnaev attended, that the latest terrorist attended. My friend, Sean Hannity, was asking the question about this mosque because he was shocked, like I was previously, as to why there had not been more investigation. This article from 2013 pretty well tells the tale: ``Clarion Project: Islamic Society of Boston.'' It says: ``The Islamic Society of Boston's teachings are largely based on Islamists like Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi and Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood cleric who influenced Osama bin Laden, as reported in 2008 that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami `are the prominent belief systems. The popular web sites used by members, and recommended by mosque leaders, are mostly fundamentalist, and rabidly homophobic.' '' So we already knew that. Osama bin Laden had said that the writings of Qutb, particularly the booklet ``Milestones,'' helped radicalized him. If our FBI training materials had not been purged, as have our intelligence training materials and other training materials, if they had not been purged of material that CAIR found offensive--CAIR being the entity that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and a U.S. District Court said there is plenty of evidence to support their being coconspirators in terrorism. They found some language offensive and so there were--well they classified it. I thought it was ridiculous, and I won't say an approximate amount. They found many pages to be offensive to them, this coconspirator in terrorism, according to the pleadings in the Holy Land Foundation trial, and so they were removed. As one intelligence officer told me: We blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy. They don't even know. Our FBI should go into the mosque and talk to people there. They should have asked: Well, look, do you know Tsarnaev? Was he reading Qutb--well, they call him an Egyptian martyr, but he was a terrorist. He promoted terrorism, and he wrote this booklet that has helped radicalize people. But if you know what radicals believe, then you are able to ask the questions and get to the bottom. And so you are not just going to the mosque to sit down and pat each other on the back and have some food together. You are actually investigating whether somebody is going to kill people at the Boston Marathon in the future so you can save their lives. But they didn't know enough to do that because they are not properly trained anymore because CAIR gets offended when we try to properly train them. This article goes on and says: ``Their writings and teachings were fanatical.'' This is from Sheikh Ahmed Mansour in 2013. He is talking about the Islamic Society of Boston's teachings in the mosque. He said: ``The writings and teachings were fanatical. I left and refused to go back to pray. I left Egypt to escape the Muslim Brotherhood, but I had found it there.'' The Muslim Brotherhood advises this administration. And for the incompetent people that say: ``Well, Gohmert never gives names; he just says they advise the President,'' they don't know how many times I have given names. Mohamed Elibiary from Plano was on the top advisory group for Homeland Security. Imam Magid, the president of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, or ADAMS--I am sure John Adams would appreciate that--he was president of that. He was part of a group that was named as a coconspirator in the terrorist prosecution trial of the Holy Land Foundation. He advised the President regularly. He gave him advice, according to the media. He gave advice to the President about his speech back in 2011, where the President inaccurately said everybody agrees to going back to the pre- 1967 boundaries. No, they didn't. If you are Imam Magid, and you are part of what was named as a coconspirator in terrorism, maybe you think that, but certainly the parties didn't agree to that. Anyway, this article goes on: ``In 2004, the Islamic Society of Boston Web site had a section titled: `40 Recommendations for the Muslim Home.' It said to `hang up the whip where the members of the household can see it,' and that children are to be `hit' if they refuse to pray once they are 10 years old. ``The section also said regarding wife beating, `Hitting is not the way to discipline; it is not to be resorted to except when all other means are exhausted or when it is needed to force someone to do obligatory acts of obedience,' '' which apparently include of a sexual nature. The article says: ``One of the founders of the Islamic Society of Boston is Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who was its first president.'' I insert here that I asked Director Mueller: Were you aware that Alamoudi is the one that started this mosque that Tsarnaev attended? And he said: No, he was not. But he sure knew who Alamoudi was. Because the FBI gathered the evidence, whether they wanted to or not, that put him in prison. Actually, I think the British gathered the evidence that was so overwhelming that there wasn't much choice; he had to be prosecuted. Yes, he had helped the Clinton administration, he had been some help to the Bush administration, according to Alamoudi. Anyway, he gets arrested out at Dulles Airport and is doing I believe 23 years in prison for supporting terrorism. But the article points out: ``He was convicted on terrorism-related charges in 2004 and has admitted to being a secret Muslim Brotherhood operative. He wrote from his prison cell, `I am, I hope, still a member of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the USA.' He was last paid a speaking fee by the Islamic Society of Boston in 2000, the same year he publicly expressed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. ``Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi has been on the ISB board of trustees. Tax filings for 1998-2000 include his name under a list of `officers, directors, trustees, and key employees.' ``In 2002, Qaradawi helped ISB--the Islamic Society of Boston-- fundraise via videotape because the U.S. would not grant him entry. His name also appeared on the Islamic Society of Boston's Web site until March 2001. The Islamic Society of Boston originally denied having any connection to Qaradawi and later claimed that the inclusion of his name on the tax forms was an error. ``The ISB has hosted Islamic speakers like Salah Soltan and Yasir Qadhi. In March 2010, Imam Abdullah Faarooq said that Aafia Siddiqui, a young woman arrested for her al Qaeda ties, was innocent, and 'You must grab on to this rope, grab on to the typewriter, grab on to the shovel, grab on to the gun and the sword, don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job.' ``ISB has donated `thousands' of dollars to the Holy Land Foundation, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity later shut down for financing Hamas. It also donated to the Benevolence International Foundation, later identified as al Qaeda front. ``Imam Sheikh Basyouny Nehela, was has served the Islamic Society of Boston for at least 10 years, is also a board member of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American society. ``In 1994, Hamas fundraiser Mohammed El-Mezain addressed the Muslim Arab Youth Association. He spoke after an individual that was introduced as a leader of the `Hamas mosque military wing.' An FBI report documented the speaker saying: `I have been told to restrict or restrain what I say . . . I hope no one is recording me or taking any pictures, as none are allowed . . . because I'm going to speak the truth to you. It's simple. Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all. Exterminate them. No peace ever.' '' These are the Muslim Brothers that the President gets advice from. It is time to stop this organization. It is time to listen to our friends in Israel and do not, at all costs, facilitate the destruction or the attempted destruction of Israel by our enemies and their enemies. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we have had a lot in the news recently about questions being asked of people running for President. It has been interesting. In taking that issue up, though, it is important to look at some of the current news. Here is an article on May 17 by Bill Sanderson of the New York Post. It says: ``Saudi Arabia to buy nuclear bombs from Pakistan.'' It says: Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club by buying ``off- the-shelf'' atomic weapons from Pakistan, U.S. officials told a London newspaper. Wow. Well, that was something that we weren't expecting back when President Bush went into Iraq when he made that call that some day, Saudi Arabia and others in the Middle East would become so nervous about the chaos created in the Middle East that they would determine: We may need to get nuclear weapons ourselves. In the past, we have always been comforted by the fact that the United States would keep peace in the Middle East. They wouldn't let anything get out of hand. They would keep other Middle Eastern countries, especially radical Islamist countries, from having nukes. This administration has shown it is not capable of preventing nukes from proliferation in the Middle East, so therefore, our allies our getting quite nervous. Here is an article from today by a brilliant prosecutor of the original bomber of the World Trade Center in 1993, Andrew McCarthy. It is dated today, May 18. The title of his article in National Review says: ``The Iraq Question is the Iran Question--At Least It Should Be.'' He goes on to point to the question that is being asked of some Republican Presidential candidates. Obviously, the mainstream media, those that donate to the Clinton foundation, and those kind of folks--those that would take a hostile position against Republicans in debates, those who act as mediators or emcees in a debate would actually speak on behalf of the Democrat--they are not asking this question of Democrats, but it is a legitimate question. This is what Andrew McCarthy brings up. He says: ``Was it a mistake to invade, knowing what we know now?'' He is talking about Iraq. Mr. McCarthy says: It is a very fair point that the question should not be asked solely of Republicans--Hillary Clinton and other Democrats who supported the war should be grilled, too. He says further down: ``Many of us who supported the Iraq war based that support on the principles enunciated in the Bush doctrine.'' Then he sets out his take on the Bush doctrine. I think it is well set out. It says: ``Attack the jihadists wherever they operate and make rogue states understand that if they support the terrorists we will treat them as enemies. In that calculation, Iraq was an enemy regardless of whether it had weapons of mass destruction. It''--talking about Iraq-- ``obviously was not the worst such enemy--Iran was. And it obviously was a potentially more dangerous enemy if it had weapons of mass destruction that could have been shared with jihadists. Iraq, nevertheless, was surely in the camp of states that, using Bush's `with us or against us' metric, was against us.'' Then we have an article here from IJReview: ``U.S. Special Forces Just Took Out a Top ISIS Leader--And Captured His Sex Slavery-Condoning Wife,'' by Justen Charters. It says: ``While airstrikes continue to hammer ISIS positions, it turns out that that is not the only thing the jihadists need to worry about. U.S. Special Forces appear to be doing more than just training `rebels,' they're now engaging the enemy. And, they just put down a top Islamic State leader: Abu Sayyaf. ``USA Today reported further on the operation, which will be hurting the terrorists' bankroll and morale.'' It goes out to set out something from USA Today. That is such an intriguing story, Mr. Speaker. I find it very intriguing because I can't remember how many times, but it was many times that the President and other members of this administration said: There will be no boots on the ground in Syria in this area--no boots on the ground. We were told that over and over, which is really perplexing because we all trust the same people that told us, If you like your insurance, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep him--all these things--that they are not going to persecute people of religious beliefs, then they persecuted them. Who would have thought that this administration would say there will be no boots on the ground and then put boots on the ground? Now, it could have been, in fairness to the administration, that they hovered and were able to lift up the wife of the ISIS leader without actually getting boots on the ground, or it is quite possible they didn't wear boots. Maybe they were wearing moccasins or something like that; maybe they went barefoot, and that would explain why those in the administration would say: We will never put boots on the ground; no boots are going to be on the ground. Maybe they really weren't wearing boots. I know boots have come a long way since I was in the Army, and I never did understand why we had to wear those black boots that you had to spit-shine to shine them up. It made no sense to me. I like the new boots the military is wearing now much better; but maybe they have got some other shoes they have figured out so they don't have to actually put boots on the ground. In any event, what happened in the Middle East is most intriguing. Then we have a story today from Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch has now gotten documentation as a result of a court order on May 15. They have been able to get more documentation than Congress has been able to get because they are fighting this administration in court, and they are getting court orders to force the issues. The only way you will get information out of this transparent Obama administration is if you bring them out kicking and screaming with the documents, under threat of what a judge can order and do; that is obvious because, as a Member of Congress asking for the documents that were provided in discovery in 2008 to the convicted terrorists in the Holy Land Foundation trial, I got on a Web site one time. I asked for the boxes of documents that the Justice Department gave to the terrorists. I understand Attorney General Holder was saying there may be classification issues, but I keep coming back to the point they gave them to terrorists. Surely, you can give them to Members of Congress, but that also points to a problem that is ongoing in this administration. They keep helping the wrong people. In Egypt, we have been told by the administration: Gee, President Morsi was elected in a very questionable election, and there were allegations of a great deal of fraud. But I was told by Egyptians that it was made clear to the opponent of Morsi that, if he raised any issues about fraud in the election, the Muslim Brothers would burn the country down, and he chose not to contest what was some apparent fraud in the election. Morsi allegedly got 13 million votes or so, and despite the fact-- well, at least reported by many news organizations--there were over 30 million Egyptians out of their 90 million or so in the country that went to the streets peaceably. It was the largest demonstration, peaceable or otherwise, in the history of the world, from the best I can find out. They went to the streets. They demanded a nonradical Islamist President. They demanded the peaceable ouster of Morsi, who they believed had committed treason and who they understood had basically torn up, figuratively, the constitution that the U.S. Government was helpful advising in, but somehow, our advisers did not persist in making sure they had a provision for a peaceful impeachment of the President of Egypt. They had no way to get him out. These moderate Muslims--and I have talked to a number of them that were there demonstrating--these secularists, Christians, Jews, and the Coptic Pope himself told me how moved he was to have so many people from so many walks being an encouragement: We don't want you persecuted in our country of Egypt anymore. It is not right. Naturally, what would the Obama administration do? They would demand that the man that was figuratively shredding the constitution in Egypt, that was persecuting Christians, that was weaponizing the Sinai, which was building the radical Islamism organization within Egypt, this administration was giving them weapons, wanted to help them any way they could, which leads to the question that I have been asked by moderate Arab Muslim leaders in the Middle East: Why does this administration keep helping the Muslim Brothers? Do you not understand they are at war with you? Well, it should have been clear, but this administration was helping the wrong side. It didn't stop with pushing for the ouster of this country's ally in Egypt, Mubarak. This administration decided to oust Qadhafi, a dictator with blood on his hands from the eighties and nineties. After 2003, after the Bush administration ordered the taking out of Saddam Hussein, Qadhafi got scared, opened up his weapons, says he will not pursue nukes; he will do whatever the United States tells him with regard to his weapons. As some in Israel have told me, he was really helping with information against terrorists more than anybody but maybe us; yet this administration undertook a bombing effort against Qadhafi. Now, we find out confirmation from documents that have been acquired by Judicial Watch that this administration was actually helping with weapons, at least that is the way it appears; that is what we have been hearing all along. Some have said even in my trip to Libya with friends Steve King and Michelle Bachmann, if it weren't for the Obama administration bombing Qadhafi, they could not have gotten him out of office, and he would still be helping us find and kill terrorists. Now, Libya is in chaos. There are Muslim Brothers doing the best they can to put Egypt in chaos. Syria is now in chaos. Iran is taking over more and more, including, just last September, this President referred to the success story in Yemen. Now, Iran is the power player in Yemen, not the United States. The Obama administration in Yemen basically has been whipped by Iran. This is scary stuff, when you look at what has happened in the Middle East since this administration took over. The story from Judicial Watch dated May 18, it is pretty timely, includes information about the documentation that was ordered by the United States District Court and has now been obtained, even though the administration blacked out a lot of information that apparently would be embarrassing to it. The story says: ``Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified 'Secret' documents from the Department of Defense and the Department of State revealing that the DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked `Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman,' and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as The Blind Sheikh''--that is the one that Andrew McCarthy had prosecuted as lead prosecutor--``and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. Government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria. ``The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders `on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. Government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.' ``A Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA, dated September 12, 2012, the very day after the Benghazi attack, details that the attack on the compound had been carefully planned by the'' Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman'' to `kill as many Americans as possible.' The document was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Obama White House National Security Council. The heavily redacted Defense Department `information report' says that the attack on the Benghazi facility `was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman.' The group subscribes to `al Qaeda ideologies.' '' Now, that was part of the message of September 12, 2012. Now, it is understandable why President Obama would not have gotten this message because, clearly, he had to get a good night's sleep because he was going to a campaign event in Las Vegas on September 12. He surely didn't have time to review this material in pursuit of his campaign. Here he was, just less than 2 months away from election day. It is understandable that he would not get the information and would not know that this was not about a video; it was about a carefully planned attack by subscribers to al Qaeda. The Defense Intelligence Agency knew that, and that message was sent to Hillary Clinton. It was sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it was sent to those who were not out campaigning in Las Vegas at the White House. The article goes on: ``The attack was planned 10 or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye''--also lists him as Alaliby--``in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.'' This is quoting from the DIA report. It says: `` `A violent radical . . . the leader of BCOAR is Abdul Baset,' '' also called Azuz. `` `Azuz was sent by Zawari' ''--the leader of al Qaeda, that is--`` `to set up al Qaeda bases in Libya.' The group's headquarters were set up with the approval of a `member of the Muslim Brotherhood movement . . . where they have large caches of weapons. Some of those caches are disguised by feeding troughs for livestock. They have SA-7 and SA-2\3/4\ MANPADS . . . they train almost every day focusing on religious lessons and scriptures, including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology.' '' Mr. Speaker, I am very confused by that. I don't understand how these Muslim Brothers, these jihadists, could be studying scripture, and this is quoting from the Defense Intelligence Agency report, when it says they are focused on religious lessons and scriptures, including three lessons a day of jihadist ideology because this Defense Intelligence Agency reports they are studying religious lessons and scripture, claiming to be Islamists. That couldn't possibly be because this administration has made clear these people are not religious. They are not Islamists. They have nothing to do with Islam. These people are just ne'er-do-wells. I don't understand why the Defense Intelligence Agency would report that they were studying religious lessons when they are not religious at all, according to this administration. Mr. Speaker, I take you back to that so-called Arab Spring, when this administration was helping the Muslim Brothers, and I stood right here on this floor and pointed out: Look, we know that there are al Qaeda in these rebels. We don't know what percentage; we don't now how many, but we know there is some al Qaeda in these rebels that this administration is helping. We should wait and not keep militarily supporting people that we know include al Qaeda until we find out more. But this administration went ahead. As this story says: ``The Defense Department reported the group maintained written documents in `a small rectangular room, approximately 12 meters by 6 meters . . . that contain information on all of the al Qaeda activity in Libya' ''--wow, al Qaeda ties. Anyway, ``The DOD documents also contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria.'' An October 2012 report also is confirming: ``Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles''--which word is we helped get there--``were shipped from the Port of Benghazi, Libya, to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late August 2012 were sniper rifles, RPGs, and 125-millimeter and 155-millimeter howitzers missiles.'' Anyway, it goes on. The DIA report said ``the opposition in Syria was driven by al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups: `the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,' '' which this administration wants to keep calling vetted moderate Syrian rebels, when their own report says they have got al Qaeda ties. As this says: ``The deterioration of the situation has dire consequences on the Iraqi situation,'' and it goes on to set those out. I think the big question that should be forcefully put to former President George W. Bush and anybody who is running for President the next time, they ought to be asked this question: If you had known before we went into Iraq, going after the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, who had killed hundreds of thousands of people, including Kurds, with chemical weapons and other weapons, and you knew he could be ousted, and after a surge, the war could be won; but then that, after your victory in Iraq, following the surge, you would be followed as President with an administration that was too incompetent to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq, and so you end up having--that administration is going to have to leave and actually commit other acts that will help create absolute chaos in the Middle East; and you are going to be followed by this administration that will help the Muslim Brothers that your Muslim allies in the Middle East say, The Muslims Brothers are at war with you, yet this administration that follows you will keep helping America's enemies, and that, because of the creation of chaos by this succeeding administration, Iran will be pursuing nuclear weapons; and that the succeeding administration will be so incompetent and clueless as to what is happening in the Middle East, they think it is okay to let them keep enriching uranium, pursuing nukes, and it gets so bad that this next administration will even cause our allies like Saudi Arabia, to go buy nukes; and then we end up with this subsequent administration that helps the Muslim Brothers create more chaos than we could have imagined, knowing all of that, would you go into Iraq? That is a question. But it is really a tough question. How in the world would President George W. Bush have known that he would be followed by such incompetence that would help our enemies and would just create chaos across the entire Middle East such that our friends would be in conferences with people like me going: We don't understand America anymore. You keep helping your enemies. We don't get it. We thought we were your friends, but you are helping the people at war with you. I mean, how could President George W. Bush be expected to anticipate that that is the kind of thing that would follow his administration and completely destroy the situation in the Middle East and in Iraq and in the Sinai and in Gaza and in Libya, in Lebanon, in Syria, a massive migration into Jordan. Jordanian pilots now to the point they would be burned alive. Christians raped, persecuted, killed in all kinds of horrendous ways. Jews ostracized, killed. Who would have ever dreamed that we would have an administration come in and take the success after the surge and turn it into the chaos it is today? So I will be interested, Mr. Speaker, in the days ahead, as people seek to lead this country, to find out which leaders would have gone ahead into Iraq, knowing the chaos they would create in the subsequent administration. With that, 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 would never question the heart or motivation of my friend Al Green. I know his heart to be bigger than most in Washington. It is just an honor to serve with you. There is so much that has gone on this week. One of the things that has happened here in Washington and continues to happen today is a tribute, memorial to law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty--doing what?--serving and protecting. After the horrors and evil of 9/11/2001, it was encouraging to me to see so many people, once again, come to appreciate that the vast majority of law enforcement, the vast majority of first responders, they are serving and trying to protect for the good of others and willing to lay down their lives. As Jesus said: No greater love is this than a man lay down his life for his friends. We have seen that in the hundreds of people--I think 273 lost their lives over this past year. Over 40 have lost their lives this year in the line of duty. Just like in any walk of life, there are bad apples, people who don't have the best motivation; but I would humbly submit, I believe with all my heart that, when it comes to law enforcement, the percentage of those who are not properly motivated is far, far less than in the general population. We do owe them so much. Some people say: Oh, well, we ought to just live and let live. They say: I am a Christian. I believe in living and letting live. If you note, if you believe the Bible, Jesus was commenting, of course, his ultimate point was that we will be judged for what is in our heart by our Father in heaven. He said, if you say ``raca,'' which was an offense back in that day, then you will answer to the courts. He understood, in an orderly society, you need a government; you need governing officials to which people will be responsible if they violate the law. That was also true in Romans 13, anticipating, in an orderly society, you need a government with a sword to punish those who do evil. That is why 13:4 says: If you do you evil, be afraid, because God doesn't give the sword in vain. I know some people in the country start freaking out when I quote the most quoted book in the history of the country, as quoted here in the House of Representatives and in the Senate floor. It is part of our history. The Bible is the most quoted book in congressional history-- was, is, and I hope will be in the future. We owe so much to the police who risk their lives. Right out of law school, I was an assistant DA for three counties in east Texas. Very early on, I went with law enforcement to execute a warrant, and the individual, the subject of the warrant for arrest, had made clear that, when he saw any law enforcement officers, he was going to start shooting; he would kill any law enforcement officer that came out there. I don't forget the feelings that all of us had, even though some were very seasoned law officers, when you are approaching a dangerous building--in this case, a home--where somebody in there is threatening to kill anybody like you, you do have a little hair stand up on the back of your neck. You do realize you are putting your life at risk in trying to maintain order and civility by approaching somebody that is a threat to society. That was quite a lesson, that these law officers--whether they are new, whether they have been working for a long time--they are constantly in a situation where they don't know if, 10 minutes later, they may be dead in the service of their community, but they are serving anyway. We do owe them so much for what they do and what they risk on our behalf, so we are just grateful to all law enforcement officers willing to serve and protect all of us. We have a report here back in February, and this is an article from The Hill entitled: ``FBI investigating ISIS suspects in all 50 States.'' The article is quoting FBI Director James Comey, that he revealed Wednesday his agency is investigating suspected supporters of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in every State across the United States. Down further in the article, it said, ``Earlier this month, Comey said the FBI was investigating ISIS supporters in every State except Alaska.'' At the time of this article, at the end of February, he was saying: We are investigating ISIS suspects in all 50 States. Director Comey said: ``We have investigations of people in various stages of radicalization in all 50 States.'' He said: ``This isn't a New York phenomenon or a Washington phenomenon. This is in all 50 States and in ways that are very hard to see.'' He said: ``ISIL in particular is putting out a siren song with their slick propaganda through social media.'' He said: ``The message `resonates with troubled souls, people seeking meaning in some horribly misguided way,' '' and that ``those people exist in every State.'' His pronouncement in February should have been a siren song for Americans to understand there are people who live among us who want to destroy us and our way of life. Then it was rather interesting--that was February 25. Less than 2 months later, there was an article put out, Judicial Watch indicated that an ISIS camp was just a few miles from Texas, that Mexican authorities confirmed that. The article said: ``ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas, according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector. ``The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around 8 miles from the U.S. border in an area known an `Anapra,' situated just west of Cuidad Juarez in the Mexican State of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Cuidad Juarez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States.'' So, anyway, after this article came out in April, I quoted from that, brought it up on the floor and-- Let's see. This article was 2 days later from FOX News: ``Islamic State fighters are operating training bases near the U.S. southern border and are being aided by violent drug cartels to smuggle terrorists into States like Texas, a report published Tuesday by a watchdog group claims.'' So, anyway, I brought that up. And this report seems to get even more legs after the Federal Government, though, denying that any such thing like that was occurring, apparently sent FBI officials to Mexico to meet with their counterterrorism experts, seemed to give some credence that there is something to be concerned about in the way of training of violent radical Islamists across our United States border. So the irony here is pretty profound. People all across the United States of America just accepted when the FBI Director says, you know, there are ISIS suspects in every State in the Union. People said: Wow, that is amazing. Man, they are here? I saw a headline of a survey just moments ago on FOX News saying, 6 out of 10 Americans believe that there are terrorists in their community. So how ironic that even the far left that turns a blind eye to radical Islam could be so accepting that, yes, there are radical Islamist terrorists in every State in the Union. And when Judicial Watch and Louie Gohmert quote from their material, quote other things going on to point out that there is a report that there is an ISIS camp across our border, the left went nuts, saying how crazy Judicial Watch was, how crazy I am for even mentioning this. There couldn't possibly be an ISIS camp in Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I hope you see the irony here. They are saying, yes, we believe there are radical Islamist terrorists in every State in the United States, but there couldn't possibly be ISIS across the border where the drug cartels are. And I haven't gotten a good explanation. Do they have so much faith and trust in the drug cartels' integrity that they would never associate with radical Islamists? Is that what they are saying by their cynicism about ISIS being in Mexico? Because it is a bit intriguing. But then again, some on the far left are educated way beyond their means--their mental capacity, at least--and so they have information; they just can't process it effectively. Because anyone who can readily accept when the FBI Director says there is ISIS in every State in the Union and we are investigating in every State in the Union radical Islamists--he doesn't use those terms because this administration doesn't want to offend any radical Islamists that want to kill us. So we don't use that term if you are in this administration, but I use the term because it is accurate. They are radical Islamists. So, anyway, it is just a great irony here. Then this is an AP story from this week: ``Minnesota men accused of trying to join Islamic State ordered held, but may have other options.'' And that is because U.S. District Judge Michael Davis, who wears a dark robe to match his intellect--he is the same guy that previously-- this is also a May 12 article by Patrick Poole. This is the same judge, Michael J. Davis, chief judge of the district of Minnesota-- This article from Patrick Poole says: ``A terror `deradicalization' program--established in the `Ground Zero' of terror recruitment, Minnesota's Twin Cities--has already failed after just a few months. ``The program was established after a Federal court released 19-year- old terror suspect Abdullahi Yusuf to a halfway house earlier this year. Federal prosecutors opposed Yusuf's release, but were overruled by'' this big-hearted, caring ``Federal judge''--at least big-hearted and caring about radical Islam, not so much about victims of radical Islam. But Michael J. Davis cares deeply about those who want to kill us. So as the article says: ``Remarkably, Judge Davis said today in a separate case of six men charged with trying to join the Islamic State that he would be willing to consider `less restrictive options' than detaining the men--just a day after Yusuf's re-arrest.'' That is because he decided that he was smarter and more capable than anybody else in America. He could deradicalize people who want to kill Americans by just sending them through this program that he had helped with or proved: Gee, we are going to get you reading good material that really helps you see the wonder and glory of this country. And then, of course, I, Judge Michael J. Davis, will be a hero to all of my leftist friends because I cared more for the criminal radical Islamists than I did for the victims. And the left loves that kind of thing. ``Last May, Yusuf was arrested in Minneapolis airport while on his way of Syria by way of Turkey to join the Islamic State. One of his accomplices, Abdi Nur, did make it to Syria, and he now serves as an effective recruiter for the terror group. ``Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the program with an article titled, `A Test Case for ``Deradicalization.' '' ``The path of reform for Abdullahi Yusuf, a U.S. teenager who tried to become a radical Islamic soldier, passes through writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. readings of the U.S. Constitution, and discussions about life and literature with a fellow Somali-American named Ahmed Amin. ``Mr. Yusuf's attempt to travel to the Middle East last year helped lead authorities to six Minnesota men who were charged last month in connection with a plan to join Islamic State abroad. The 19-year-old has become a test case for whether Americans lured by Islamic extremism can be deradicalized.'' Oh, I think they can, but I sure wouldn't trust them to Judge Michael J. Davis, if that is what we want. But see here again, this is once again pointing out the ingenuity of the Founders in creating three branches. We have the executive branch that is supposed to carry out the laws that the Congress, elected by the people, pass. We have two Houses of Congress to make it more difficult to pass laws. They wanted some obstacles and problems to passing legislation too quickly. And then we have the judicial branch that will handle criminal cases, handle civil cases, handle review of actions to ensure their constitutionality. And then we also have this part of the judicial branch, like five of the Justices on the Supreme Court that decided that they wanted to micromanage enemy combatants at Guantanamo. I thought it would have been a good idea to let them live over at the Supreme Court if they want to micromanage them. But then, also, this judge like Michael J. Davis in Minnesota who decides, actually, he is not just judiciary; he is clairvoyant. He is a rehabilitative agent. He is everything to everybody, just the kind of judge you want. God in a robe. So, anyway, he put Mr. Yusuf through these reading materials. And I wonder, though, if he was a bit surprised when Yusuf was arrested because he is not following the program, and he is not reformed. But even that does not prevent God in a robe from saying: You know what? But these new terrorists that you have arrested, they are just a little misguided. I hate to have them in jail because if they are in jail, then the American people will be protected, but they won't be able to come to see how wonderful people like I am. So I want them to develop warm and loving, fuzzy feelings for people on the left, like me. So I want to find some way we don't have to keep them in jail. Anyway, there is another article about that. But it is just amazing to me when people exceed the bounds of their job in government because they think they are wiser than the Founders. They think they are wiser than anyone that has gone on before. We hear people in recent days on the issue of marriage talking in terms of how much smarter and how much more we know today than the ignoramuses of the past. And the ignorance that displays is pretty astounding. Solomon, for those who believe the Bible, Solomon, considered to be-- until he got sidetracked by having too many wives and concubines--was considered to be the wisest man in the world. And Solomon, credited for writing some of the things in the Old Testament--the Old Testament, as we call it--but in what we call Ecclesiastes, he points out, there is nothing new under the Sun. You think socialism, communism is a new idea? It is not new. It has been around forever. And every time it has been tried, it leads to totalitarianism. It leads to the loss of freedom, and then it fails because, as Margaret Thatcher once said, eventually you find out--well, you run out of other people's money to spend. It doesn't work. It won't work. Now, that is different from socialized medicine, like ObamaCare is taking us toward, government control. I have friends on the Republican side of the aisle who say, Louie, we won't have to worry. ObamaCare is going to fall of its own weight. The problem is government health care, socialized medicine, it never falls of its own weight. Socialism does. It can't survive because when you are paying people to not work the same amount you are paying people to work, eventually you destroy the society. And we are in the process of doing that here in America, paying people to do things that are destructive to their well-being. We ought to be incentivizing good conduct, not rewarding conduct destructive to the individual and to the Nation. But we continue down this path that has not been working for 50 years, so hopefully people are going to eventually get the message. But amidst this, this same week, I have a Wall Street Journal article, ``Deadly Mexican Cartel Rises as New Threat.'' It should be noted--Carlos the Jackal, probably the most notorious, famous assassin--had commented that he believed the only way to really bring down the United States would be for socialists and Islamists to join forces, and that could be the successful force to bring down the United States. Interesting observation from an anarchist like Carlos the Jackal. Interesting. Anyway, Mr. Speaker, this article talks about the rise of the Mexican cartel and it says this in the second page of the article: ``The New Generation cartel is perhaps Mexico's most audacious and vicious criminal enterprise, after the government captured or killed most leaders of the Zetas gang based in northeastern Mexico, say officials and security analysts. Like the Zetas, originally formed by Army deserters, the New Generation gang favors paramilitary methods and has received tactical training from Mexican and foreign mercenaries, these people say, including the use of rocket-propelled grenades against the helicopter.'' So, let's see, Mr. Speaker, this columnist said the helicopter incident was a declaration of war. The coming months are going to be very hard in Jalisco. You have got violence building on our southern border, but don't worry. Our Justice Department has been very helpful. We can't get documents because the Justice Department becomes an Injustice Department quite often in obfuscating--hiding documents, hiding the truth, preventing people from getting at the truth--and won't provide the documents to me that they provided to convicted terrorism supporters in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Oh, they sent me a couple Web sites I could visit. That was very nice and gracious of them. But basically they were covering up their tracks, being the most muddy--not transparent--Justice Department in my lifetime. That includes going back to the lack of transparency under J. Edgar Hoover when he became too enthralled with his power and began using FBI agents to investigate people not for information to introduce in court but just to use, apparently, to persuade them to do what the FBI director wanted. Information like that is dangerous, and the Founders knew that. Then there is another Wall Street article from May 14: ``FBI Says Texas Man Lied About Links to Syria.'' Imagine that, Mr. Speaker. They catch somebody who they have evidence to show he has got links to terrorism in Syria, and, lo and behold, they found out not only does he have links to terrorism but he may have actually lied to the FBI. Imagine that. The article points out that ``Bilal Abood, 37 years old, of Mesquite, Texas, was arrested Thursday after a 2-year game of cat and mouse with Federal agents, who questioned him repeatedly before and after he allegedly traveled to Syria in 2013.'' But anyway let's see. It says: ``A week later, agents interviewed him again and he admitted he planned to go to Syria to fight with the Free Syrian Army, according to the complaint. Unlike terror groups, such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, the moderate FSA''--Free Syrian Army--``has received backing from the United States.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, they received backing from this administration is what the bottom line is, not from all of us here because some of us have been saying that this administration is providing weapons to the Islamic State. They were providing weapons to the so-called vetted moderate Free Syrian Army. Remarkably weapons that the Obama administration was providing to the vetted moderate Syrian Army kept ending up in Islamic State hands. And they were, Oh, gee, they raided, they took this stuff, they took the weapons, send us more. Well, the Obama administration wised up about 4 months. They suspended weapons shipment to the vetted moderate Free Syrian Army. But then, not to worry, they eventually started back sending weapons to the vetted moderate Free Syrian Army even after their leaders were saying, Yeah, we may disagree with the Islamic State on the leader, Assad, the leader in Syria, but we are brothers, and we do line up on most issues. So, Mr. Speaker, it is important to note terrorism is alive and well in the world, and this administration has done very little to stop it, has turned a blind eye to it, and we have got to do all we can to help them wake up and smell the gunpowder coming from radical Islamists. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and pleasure to follow my friend and fellow former judge from Texas when he talks about praying. I know him to be a praying man. I also know his heart to be a big heart. We can disagree on issues, but he is a brother, as a Christian, and he is a very good friend, and I appreciate his perspective very much.

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been quite an eventful week. We have taken up many things, and I couldn't be more proud of my friend from Texas, Chairman Thornberry. He has done tremendous work on the National Defense Authorization and is to be applauded for trying to prevent the military from being weakened further than the sequester has already made it. One of the bills that we took up and passed today was the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, and I am anal enough I will get these bills and read them, so that is what I did. Amazingly, the first paragraph--of course, this bill came to us from the Senate as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, and many of us had concerns about it, but I didn't realize that the actual title of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act was--and this is the opening paragraph of the bill: Resolved, That the bill from the House of Representatives, H.R. 1191, entitled ``An act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to ensure that emergency services volunteers are not taken into account as employees under the shared responsibility requirements contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,'' do pass with the following. That is what it is. It is an IRS bill to adjust the Affordable Care Act, and it is hard for me to use those words ``Affordable Care Act'' because it is anything but affordable. It has cost people their insurance, their doctors, their health, their health insurance. It is laughable to call it affordable. Nonetheless, this is a bill to attempt to amend the Affordable Care Act; and, Mr. Speaker, you might wonder, wait a minute, I thought you said this was the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act--well, exactly. It is an IRS bill to fix this exception for emergency services volunteers that they not be considered under the Affordable Care Act. Then we go to the Senate bill. This is like the Affordable Care Act because they take a House bill that is intended for one purpose, delete, beginning with line 1, page 1, delete everything in it, and then make it the Iran Nuclear Review Act--talk about democracy in action, really impressive. They strip out everything to do with making the ObamaCare bill better and, instead, replace it with the Iran Nuclear Review Act. There were a few dozen of us that had major concerns about it. First of all, we had already heard that this bill was going to turn the Constitution upside down. The constitutional requirements for a treaty--what is a treaty? It is an agreement between one country and another. The President has authority to negotiate those agreements. Then, under the Constitution, if we still care about the Constitution, then that treaty has to go before the Senate and get two- thirds of the votes of the Senators; otherwise, that treaty means nothing, and it is not binding. It doesn't matter what the President or the executive branch or the Secretary of State call that agreement, that treaty; it is a treaty between one country and another. For purposes of the Constitution, it should go before the Senate for ratification. But Congress has gotten so used to this President just ignoring it, so used to the Justice Department saying: We don't care what you are requesting. We are not going to give you any of those documents or any of the information. We have gotten so used to that, we said, okay, we will pass a bill that will force the administration to let Congress know what is going on, even though we are going to flip the Constitution upside down and go from requiring, as the Constitution does, a vote of 67 Senators in order to ratify a treaty, or agreement, with a foreign country, and we are going to go with requiring 67 Senators to vote it down, completely reversing the constitutional requirement, but we will make it better because we will add a requirement that the House has to have two-thirds vote, get 290 votes, to vote it down, but at least this way, Congress gets to be a player and gets to know what is going on. What is it that is in this bill that will teach the executive branch a lesson about why you don't mess with Congress? It is in here, and it is actually at page 8. It is entitled--number 5, on page 8--``Limitation on actions during congressional reconsideration of a joint resolution of disapproval.'' So here we are, the President supposedly under this bill will send the agreement that he wants Congress to see, kind of like the trade act that they classified and we hadn't gotten all of it, but we are going to vote on it anyway, it makes no sense; but for those of us that are anal enough to want to read these things before we pass them, this has got to have enough teeth that it will teach the President a lesson if he dares to betray us and not give us what we need in order to make a proper determination. The structure is both the House and Senate under this bill, this Affordable Care Act bill--now Iran Nuclear Review Act--we get the chance to strike that down if we can come up with two-thirds votes in both the House and the Senate. What happens, what is the meat, what is the real teeth in this bill that will teach the President and the entire State Department a lesson if they mess with us and we vote in the House and the Senate two-thirds to disapprove it? Well, here it is. If a joint resolution of disapproval passes both Houses of Congress and the President vetoes such joint resolution--wow, people forgot that even though we are going to give ourselves the opportunity to vote with two-thirds to strike it down, if he vetoes that, here is the real punishing aspect for the President who many of us believe has been violating the law by loosening sanctions that were put in place by Congress. You are not supposed to be able to change the law unilaterally when Congress and another President has passed and signed law into being, but the sanctions are there, duly passed, signed into law. Well, this says, here it is, this will teach him a lesson. If the disapproval passes both Houses of Congress and the President vetoes such joint resolution--here it is, ``the President may not waive, suspend, reduce, provide relief from, or otherwise limit the application of statutory sanctions with respect to Iran under any provision of law or refrain from applying any such sanctions pursuant to an agreement described in subsection (a)''--here it is--for a period of 10 days. If the President has been violating the law, as some of us believe, by lifting sanctions that he doesn't have authority to lift and we come along and the House and Senate disapprove the treaty with Iran and he vetoes that treaty--here is the lesson--he can't illegally lift sanctions against Iran for 10 whole days--10 calendar days. It says 10 calendar days. Man, that is going to teach him a lesson. This is a powerful bill that will teach the President that you don't mess with Congress. If you loosen the sanctions that the law put in place, why, we will pass another bill that says you can't do it for 10 whole days, and that is what we did here. Now, on page 9, we have got ``the effect of congressional action with respect to nuclear agreements with Iran.'' It is a sense of Congress. B says: ``It is a sense of Congress that these negotiations are a critically important matter of national security and foreign policy for the United States and its closest allies.'' Then C: ``This section does not require a vote by Congress for the agreement to commence.'' That is helpful. Anyway, that ``these negotiations are a critically important matter of national security and foreign policy for the United States and its closest allies'' is interesting. I don't really agree with that because the way I see this agreement, Mr. Speaker, is it has been drug out for months and, apparently, for years. I know friends at Judicial Watch have tried to get what are supposed to be public documents--those are the travel logs for Valerie Jarrett--so we can find out when she first started flying over to Iran to start negotiations and open up the dialogue with Iran. It would be nice to know. Most of us on both sides of the aisle staunchly agree that Israel is a very dear friend and ally. What this negotiation has meant is that-- and Israel understands this--if President Obama and John Kerry and Wendy Sherman, who is the lady who gave North Korea nukes, are negotiating with Iran and are telling the world, ``Oh, we have got a deal. We are nearly at a deal. We have almost got one worked out'' and Iran is saying, ``We have got no deal. We haven't agreed to any of that. That is not true,'' then it doesn't matter what Iran is saying. If the United States' leaders are saying, ``We are getting close to a deal, and we have almost got a deal,'' if Israel does the right thing by Israel and attacks Iran's nuclear capability and takes it out as best they can without our best bunker buster and without our best planes to deliver it--they would probably need two or three sorties to take out four--if they actually do the self-defense process of hitting Iran, then this administration would be able to unite the world against Israel--call them warmongers, call them all kinds of things--because, ``Oh, gee, we almost had a deal with Iran. Yes, they have been dragging this out for 2 years or so, but we nearly had a deal. Oh, don't pay any attention to Iran's saying we didn't have a deal. We were so close to having a deal. Therefore, Israel is a bunch of warmongers. Therefore, the whole world and the U.N. should punish them.'' That is what Israel, I believe, understands that this deal means regardless of whether a deal is ever reached, and I wouldn't put it past this administration to agree to keep dragging it out and dragging it out for the rest of this President's administration. It is, certainly, in Iran's interests because they are continuing to enrich uranium, and nothing has slowed them down. As we know now, they are not even letting anybody at the IAEA examine all of their facilities. Forget the openness that this administration says they are going to get. I think the bottom line of this bill that we passed today and that the Senate passed also is that we are going to ignore the President's and the executive branch's illegal actions in lifting the sanctions they are not entitled to lift if he will be kind enough to allow Congress to think about the sanctions some more and if he will give us information on how things are going in Iran. I mean, there is a requirement here for 30 days within which they have got to give us notice unless they think that is not enough time, and then they would give us 60-days notice. They have to give us a semiannual report. Every 6 months, we will find out what is going on. The thing that concerns me, of course--one of many things--is that I have been asking for the documents that the Justice Department gave to people who were convicted of supporting terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation trial. The conviction occurred in November 2008. As part of the discovery in that prosecution, they were given massive numbers of documents from the FBI and from the Justice Department that they had obtained about radical Islam here in the United States. They gave it to the convicted terrorists. We now know they are convicted of supporting terrorism, and they got all of those documents. When Eric Holder tells me in a hearing, basically, that there may be some classification issues, you gave them to terrorists, for heaven's sake. Don't you think you can afford to give them to Members of Congress so we can see what the evidence was that you had? For heaven's sake. They have not given us the information on that. They have obfuscated about the Fast and Furious evidence. They have covered up evidence in the administration about the IRS conspiracy to prevent conservative groups from raising money like the liberal groups were so that the Republicans would have a better chance in the 2012 election. Now, this bill says we haven't been able to trust them on any of these other things, but we are going to trust them on this. We are going to trust Iran to let us have a full review of everything they are doing even though they have never done that before, and we are going to trust this administration for the first time in 6\1/2\ years to start giving us full information about what is going on. Some might think that is a little foolhardy, and I would be one of those. Here at the bottom of page 17: ``If the President, in his own determination, decides he is able to make the certification required,'' then he will do that. Nice. Real nice. Page 18 is another sense of Congress: ``The United States sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place'' under an agreement. Of course, that is unless the President wants to ignore this like he has been ignoring the sanctions already; but you can't forget that language on page 8. By golly, if he vetoes a bill, disapproving and if he can't lift sanctions, he has got to quit doing that illegal stuff for 10 full days. Now, it does say at the bottom of page 18: ``The President should determine the agreement in no way compromises the commitment of the United States to Israel's security.'' It says he ``should'' do that, but it doesn't say he ``shall'' or he ``must.'' The good news is on page 19: Expedited Consideration of Legislation. ``In the event,'' as it says here, ``the President does not submit a certification with all of the information that is required,'' like he has ignored on lots of other things we have requested or at least the executive branch has, then we are going to introduce legislation--it says right here--``within 60 calendar days'' of his not following the law. It is going to go quickly to the House floor and the Senate floor. That is on page 21. We are going to get it to the floor quickly. Page 22: ``Qualifying legislation shall be considered as read.'' So we are going to get here quickly, and we are going to waive points of order against whatever legislation it might be. It may be that, if we really get our spines stiffened and we pass legislation that extends that 10-day period where he can't lift sanctions like he has been doing, maybe we will extend that to 20 days and really show him that he can't mess with Congress. Yes, for the liberals who might someday read the transcript of this, Mr. Speaker, I am being sarcastic. Liberals have trouble understanding sarcasm sometimes, but this is a very, very deadly serious issue. Iran has shown they can't be trusted about anything. The Ayatollah cannot be trusted. For heaven's sake, Jimmy Carter decided the other Ayatollah--the first Ayatollah Khomeini--was a man of peace. He welcomed him for the first time in a century or so--well, not quite a century--to let a radical Islamist take over a country's military, and as a result, Americans have died in the last 35 years, 36 years, and I am afraid more will. It is ridiculous to play footsie with Iran. They only know one thing, and that is power. I read the statements by one of the Iranian military leaders who said they welcome war with America, and it clicked. I remember somebody in the Saddam Hussein regime saying the same thing and that, if we tried to do anything, it would be the mother of all wars. It was amazing because we moved faster and further than any military has ever moved in the history of the world. Mistakes were made, absolutely, but the American military could put Iran in its place very quickly--and should--before they get nuclear weapons and hundreds or thousands or millions of people die. There is one thing I want to mention, Mr. Speaker, before time runs out. We took up this week the USA FREEDOM Act. Actually, there are some very good things in here. Again, I just felt I have to read the bill. Sorry if that bothers some of my friends. For example, one of the things that was heralded as a great accomplishment, we found out from Snowden that the FISA courts had just not really issued constitutional orders or warrants--no specificity-- just an order saying, for example: Verizon, give the government every record on every caller you have in your records. Give it all to the government. I would submit that is unconstitutional, and when we found out the FISA court did it, it was outrageous to me. That is not probable caution. That is not specificity. There are all kinds of problems there, and this bill was going to try to address that. On page 35, one of the things that was heralded was--and it is a good idea--to create amicus curiae, which is a group of lawyers who will represent those people who have records that are being sought even though those people don't know that their records are being sought. It says in title IV, section 401, that the judges shall designate not fewer than five individuals to be eligible to serve as amicus curiae-- or friends of the court--to represent those interests. The trouble is--it says down here at the bottom of page 35--that the court shall appoint these lawyers and individuals who serve as amicus curiae to assist in any application if, in the opinion of the court, the government is presenting a novel or a significant interpretation of the law. That means they are not going to be there to protect the civil rights of people whose records are being obtained, as they were under the FISA orders previously, unconstitutionally, because the court can just decide, no, this is not a novel interpretation, so we are not going to take it up. Then, even if it is a novel or a significant interpretation, it says: ``unless the court issues a written finding that such appropriation is not appropriate.'' If you just look over at page 40, it tells you the government can discuss on an ex parte basis--that is without the other side's being present--to the court. So they can tell the court we don't want the amicus curiae here on this issue. That is just one of so many major, major loopholes. We found out in the summer of 2007 there were perhaps 3,000 cases with the national security letters--the IG determined this--where FBI agents just sent out national security letters, demanding records. There was no case; there was no probable cause; and it was a crime if the people from whom the records were sought revealed that to friends. We thought that would be tightened up a little bit. It still says in here that the only people who can authorize what basically is a warrant is the FBI Director himself or herself, or he can designate his deputy, but nobody lower than that other than any special agent in charge anywhere in the country, which was the problem that we ran into in 2007 with all of the abuses. There is still a lot of reason not to feel comfortable that people's rights are going to be protected in the FISA courts. I am not comfortable with the FISA courts anymore, but, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time to point this out. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Rules Committee for allowing Mr. Brooks' amendment to be in order. I want to also address these concerns about allowing people to join the military. I fought with my own leadership against a bill that would allow sequester, allow the gutting of our Defense Department. I said it was a mistake. I was told it would never happen. Well, it did. If both sides of the aisle want to find cuts in other programs so we can rebuild our military and let anybody that wants to join the military that is qualified, I am for it, but right now, we are gutting our military. We are telling people who have put their lives in harm's way for us that they are going to have to leave. This language basically can be taken up as judicial notice by the appellate courts to tell Judge Hanen in south Texas Federal court: You were wrong. We are lifting the injunction, the very injunction that our Republican leader said we were relying on in breaking our promise. We need this language removed, and then let's work on building the military back up.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pride to come before you in acknowledgement of the exceptional performance of the Marshall Christian Academy Guardians varsity boys basketball team, who recently claimed the 2015 Texas Christian Athletic League 1A state title. This achievement makes this the third consecutive season that the Guardians have dominated the state championship. Marshall Christian Academy began its playoff performance with an impressive display of athletic prowess. The Guardians' first game of the 2015 playoffs resulted in a win over Humble Christian School with an astounding score of 80-51. This victory gave the Guardians new energy and inspiration which would carry them victoriously through the two remaining playoff games. The second playoff game proved to be a difficult obstacle for the Guardians, who were challenged by their 2014 rivals and toughest opponents from Stephenville Faith High School. The score remained close until the final moments of the game. In the last minute of the game, the Guardians proved their commitment and skill by scoring and winning the game with a final score of 52-46. This hard-won victory earned the Guardians a spot in the final playoff game. The Guardians began the final playoff game confident in both the team's ability and as individual team members. The championship game pitted the Guardians against the San Antonio Sunnybrook Lions. Working together, the Guardians were able to effectively outscore the Lions, and ultimately, Marshall Christian completed the quest for a third straight state championship title with a score of 61-53. The skilled and committed players who worked so diligently to earn this esteemed honor were David Florence, Dylan Alford, Stephen Florence, Andrew Stokell, Ryan Stokell, Jordan Sammons, Dawson Rapsilver, Jairus Allen, Joshua Florence, William Hency, Matthew Stokell, and Caleb Beesinger. In addition to playing on the state champion team, four players were selected for the All-Tournament Team, and the Guardians were able to count the Tournament MVP within its ranks. Also, the team was honored to have three of its players selected for the All-Star Team. The coaches and staff who led this accomplished team to victory were Head Coach Jeff Arrington, Assistant Coach James Allen, Assistant Coach Robert Stokell, High School Principal Duane Shultz, Junior High School Principal Raymond Bade, along with Athletic Director and Elementary Principal Guy Barr III. The Guardians' success has been attributed to their exceptional ability to work as a cohesive unit, and through an incredible display of this teamwork combined with the team's experience and passion, the Guardians prevailed over their skilled opponents and ultimately finished the season with an outstanding record of 22-6. Please join me and all of the First District of Texas in congratulating the achievements of the Marshall Christian Academy Guardians. This exceptional illustration of teamwork and sportsmanship should be praised and emulated. It is a distinct honor to share the story and example of these outstanding young men, a story which 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, state championship titles are always an extraordinarily exciting accomplishment for athletes. But when that state championship is unprecedented, it takes on a new dimension. It is truly an honor to acknowledge the outstanding achievement of the history-making Lufkin High School Panthers soccer team. The Panthers completed their most impressive season yet by claiming the title of 2015 Class 5A State Soccer Champions, a victory which is also the first state soccer title claimed by a northeast Texas school of its size. After an unsteady start to their season with two back to back losses, the Panthers immediately recognized the challenging road ominously lying ahead of them. With renewed focus and zeal, the Panthers recovered from those losses and overcame stiff competition from their fellow east Texans to become the district champions. Due to their hard work and dedication, the Panthers then entered the playoffs with an exceptional win-streak of nineteen matches. Lufkin's first playoff match was to be a challenge for the team when the game lasted for nearly an hour before a goal was scored. The Panthers battled on to keep the score at 1-0, winning the game and advancing to the next round of the playoffs. Five hard-fought victories followed, and the Panthers then advanced to the championship game against Georgetown's undefeated East View High School. Even though the championship was played on East View's home field, the Panthers were undeterred due to the fact that they had never lost a game away from home. Dedicated fans from the ``Panther Nation'' arrived in exuberant force, driving the long distance to cheer on their home team. The team's skill and fans' encouragement were the necessary ingredients in the final match. Time and again the Panthers' defense was tested, and their offense was held back. This did not last, however, and the Panthers were finally able to overcome East View's defenses and score. When the game was over, the score stood as testament to the Panthers' dogged determination coupled with their tantalizing talent. The final score was Lufkin 3 and East View 1. The Lufkin Panthers had won the state championship. Congratulations should be extended to team members Terry Mark, Sammy Villegas, Rodrigo Vargas, Cristian Julian, Cesar Camacho, Jesus Cisneros, Bradley Slusher, Alexis Roque, Omar Zamarripa, Javy Montes, Kacy Bennett, Javier Patlan, Chris Marquez, Dorian Bravo, Cristhian Pineda, Luis Lopez, Jake Williams, Joel Rodriguez, Gustavo Garcia, Ivan Hernadez, Omar Roque, and Miguel Gonzales. The staff and faculty who led and inspired the Panthers to victory consists of Lufkin High School Principal Mark Smith, Lufkin ISD Superintendent Dr. LaTonya Goffney, Head Coach Russell Shaw, Assistant Coach David McPherson, Assistant Coach Eliazar Caldera, Trainer Forestt Bridges, Trainer Sarah Hartman, Student Trainer Edgar Medellin, Student Manager Coltone Radke, and Student Manager Jessie Santoyo. It is a privilege to highlight this landmark achievement of East Texas' own Lufkin High School Panthers soccer team. The Panthers not only made history by capturing the title of 2015 Class 5A State Soccer Champions, but they brought Panther pride to their team, their school, the Lufkin community, the First Congressional District of Texas, and the entire State of Texas. The Lufkin Panthers' story of commitment and success is now recorded 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, this has been an interesting week, with all the activity here on the Hill. The Prime Minister of Japan came and spoke. He did a very admirable job. There has been a lot of activity across the street at the Supreme Court. It was rather interesting. If you look at the history of the Supreme Court, until 1810 or thereabouts, the Supreme Court did not have a courtroom here in the Capital--or anywhere, really--and they often had to borrow a room from the House and Senate in order to have oral arguments. They were thrilled on the Supreme Court in 1810 when the Senate Chamber on the second floor was open, what is now referred to as the Old Senate Chamber. The Senate moved up to that Chamber just straight down the hall out here, and the Old Senate Chamber downstairs was converted into a Supreme Court courtroom. The Justices were thrilled. They were thrilled that they finally had their own nice courtroom. Now, it is not much more than a museum room. People can tour that room. There were some important decisions that were considered down there, some very poor decisions that were made in that room and some very good decisions that were made in that room. One of them involved the Spanish ship the Amistad. It was a great movie. A guy who grew up in Longview, Texas, in my district, Matthew McConaughey, played the trial lawyer in the case. Anthony Hopkins did a great job playing John Quincy Adams, and I commend that movie to anyone that cares to see it. I don't think as many people saw it as have seen McConaughey's other movies. He didn't take off his shirt in this one. The basic story can be found in the likes of history books,-- unfortunately, not many that you can find in any school in America these days. But it was a very important case in establishing propriety in America. There was a group of Africans who were captured by other Africans, taken to the coast of Africa, sold into slavery, put in chains, sailed across the sea to the Atlantic, to the Caribbean. There, this particular group of Africans was put on a Spanish ship called the Amistad. After they sailed, the Africans were able to get free, take over control of the ship. They didn't know anything about sailing a ship like that and ended up landing in the United States, on the United States coast. Immediately, the Spaniards began proclaiming that the Africans were their property. They were slaves. They were their property, as was the ship, and they wanted to take their ship. What they said were slaves, or were actually Africans, should have been free, but they wanted to go and leave with them. So there was a lawsuit. It took a while to find someone who could speak the Africans' native tongue. Their version was a little different. They were minding their own business. They were free Africans, and that is what they wanted to be. They are not anybody's property. But fellow Africans had sold them into slavery, and they just wanted to be free like they started. So the lawsuit went on. There were a couple of trials, some apparent improprieties in the process, but it made its way to the Supreme Court in the 1830s. By that time, John Quincy Adams had become the first son of a former President to be elected President. Someone told me it has happened since then, but he was the first son of a former President to be elected President. He had argued cases before the Supreme Court before, including just 2 or 3 years before he got elected President. In 1828, he was defeated, so he never got a second term. Two years after that, he did, for a President, what was fairly unthinkable. He ran for the House of Representatives. No President has ever run for Congress before or since John Quincy Adams. But he had an abiding sense that he had a calling, like William Wilberforce in England, with whom he had corresponded, that like Wilberforce was doing in England, trying to fight to bring an end to slavery there and all the injustice that came with it, he had a calling to do that in America. So he ran for the House of Representatives. He was elected nine times, beginning in 1830. So the little plaque where his desk was, just down the hall in the old House Chamber, says, 1831-1848. He had a massive stroke in 1848. But, over the course of his time in the House, he repeatedly filed bills to end slavery in America, to free specific slaves, and, at times, he made the Rules Committee furious because of the number of bills he filed. When he was recognized, in essence, he would give a hellfire brimstone sermon about the evils of slavery and how could we expect God to bless America when we were treating brothers and sisters the way slaves were treated. Well, he never got a win on any of his votes to end slavery, but in the 1830s, after the Amistad case made its way to the Supreme Court, he was eventually convinced to take over the case, to argue it before the Supreme Court. He had originally been reluctant, but decided that was something he should do, and so he did. He argued the case. Back in those days, there was no limit on length of oral argument, and so he went on and on, not as long as the 3 days Daniel Webster took in one case, but over 1 day and another, and of course they broke for lunch and in the evenings. But before the oral arguments ended, one of the Justices died, so that kind of throws a kink in oral argument. But on the last day in his argument, after having argued the law, tried to argue precedents, tried to argue the facts, he apparently didn't feel good about the Supreme Court's position. He didn't feel like they were with him. Mr. Speaker, if you can put yourself in the place of John Quincy Adams, knowing how wrong slavery was and how we could never reach our potential as a nation if we continued the course of slavery, and yet knowing if you are not up to the job in this case, arguing before these Justices, nine and then eight, and you don't do a good enough job, then the Africans will remain in chains, and most likely their children, grandchildren will wear chains because you didn't do a good enough job as the attorney, so the pressure was immense. You can find his oral argument online. We don't have days for that to all be recited. But you can find, toward the end of the oral argument-- and I don't have it here before me. I don't have it verbatim. But the process he used toward the end might be offensive to some judges now. If somebody had done it before me, as a judge, it might have been offensive to me. But he was desperate to convince the Justices to think carefully about what they were about to decide: whether free Africans, Africans that started as free Africans, should remain free Africans or whether they should be considered no more than property to the people that bought them from the Africans that sold them. So his argument turned, right at the end, to a recitation of Justices who had been on the Court and who were no longer alive, saying, in essence, you know: Where is Chief Justice John Marshall? Where is this Justice, that Justice? He called them by name. He knew them. Through his father, through himself, personally, he knew the Justices, all those that had passed away. Then he called every one of their names. He said: The solicitor general that last argued a case against me before this Court--this was back in the early twenties--where is he? He had passed away. And he went on naming the names of Justices who had been on the Supreme Court and died, and then came around and he said: Even the Justice that started this case, where is he? He is not with us. They have all gone to meet their Maker, their Judge. Then he said: The biggest thing about--the biggest question about their lives is, when they met their Maker, their Judge, did they hear the words, ``Well done, good and faithful servant?'' That was an argument before the Supreme Court. Like I said, that is not verbatim, but the question that he said was so critical about their lives was verbatim because he knew that came from Scripture that he believed with his heart, like the Apostle Paul is saying that he hoped that he would hear that, ``Well done, good and faithful servant.'' Now, he didn't go the extra step and insult the Justices by saying: Are you going to hear it if you die tonight? But the implication was very clear. And fortunately, not just for the Africans, but for people of conscience back in that day, the Supreme Court made a good decision, unlike what they did in the Dred Scott case, making an abysmal decision. But that was also heard and decided while the Supreme Court met in that same room that tourists--it is not as easy to go on the tour as it used to be throughout the Capitol, but you can see that courtroom where that occurred. The Supreme Court did the right thing. They decided the free Africans should be free Africans--a good decision--that they were not anyone's property, that they did not have to leave in shackles. They are free Africans. They were free people. This actually goes right back to the Declaration of Independence, and the Founders believed that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and that we were created equal. One of the great questions about those days was how even Thomas Jefferson, who had put in the Declaration of Independence, one of the longest grievances was actually King George having allowed slavery to exist in America, he, himself, had slaves. But you get the gist. They understood it really was not a good thing. It didn't end up in the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, but it held our country back, because any country that treats people like that is going to never reach their potential as a country. It is interesting, though, in our history, that if you go there in what's called Statuary Hall because all these statues have been placed in there now, but it was the House Chamber until the late 1850s, the place where they had church for the majority of the 1800s. Thomas Jefferson went to church in there most Sundays. The guy that coined the phrase in a letter to the Danbury Baptist, separation of church and state, there should be a wall of separation, he saw it as a one-way wall, that the government should not interfere with religion and religious beliefs, but he thought it would be perfectly fine for religion to participate in government, and had no problem. He even brought the Marine Band just down the hall to play hymns on many occasions on Sundays. For many years, it was the largest Christian church in Washington, D.C. Right down the hall, in the U.S. Capitol, in the House of Representatives, is where they met. James Madison, who gets so much credit in accumulating the provisions of the Constitution, he should know what the Constitution meant in the First Amendment that was to come. He saw no problem with coming to church in the U.S. Capitol each Sunday while he was President. Congressional Research Service, when I inquired, they indicated that usually when Jefferson came to church here in the Capitol each Sunday, he would normally ride his horse. Madison, when he came to church each Sunday here in the Capitol, he would normally come up here in a horse- drawn carriage. But that is part of our history. There was no way that any of those Founders were ever going to try to interfere with the religious beliefs of, especially, Christians in America. That would have been unfathomable to them. Yet that is the very thing that was being argued right across the street this week, that the government should be able to compel people with very strong religious beliefs, compel them to violate their most strongly held religious beliefs, and compel them basically to become slaves to the government and the nonbelief, the amoral beliefs of people who may be on the Supreme Court. Now, I bring this up because, as you look at the history of the Supreme Court, you find that when the Senate moved at the beginning of their term in the year 1860, as they started that Senate year, they started it down the hall in the current Chamber where they are. So in 1860, the Supreme Court moved up from the floor below to the beautiful old Senate Chamber, as it is called now, but it was actually the Supreme Court chamber from 1860 to 1935. I think it was in 1931 the current Supreme Court building was built because before that, the Supreme Court got hand-me-downs for most everything. And, of course, after a decision like Dred Scott, they probably deserved nothing but hand-me-downs. But nonetheless, our only President to have been President and also be on the Supreme Court, William Howard Taft, because of his political ties, he was in a position to seek and get funding for a new building. He didn't get to be Chief Justice in the new building. But in a documentary that was done not too long ago--I was not aware--it pointed out that when the Justices of the Supreme Court were taken through this new Supreme Court building in 1935, showing them their new chambers, the new Court, many of them were appalled. They were shocked because it appeared to them to be a palace. They didn't even have a room for a while. Then they got the hand-me-down from the old, old Senate chamber. Then they got the old Senate. And now they are looking at a palace that they, as Justices, weren't supposed to have. The documentary pointed out that there were some Justices who didn't move into offices for a long time because they just felt it was inappropriate for Justices in the United States of America to be in a palace. Mr. Speaker, some may not be aware, but they are comfortable with the palace now, of course. But it was interesting that for a while, some of them felt that it looked too much like a palace, and it sent the wrong message. When I was a judge, when I was a chief justice, we had many programs on ethics to teach, you know, what the general feeling on ethics was, what the rules are. And generally, if there was a case in which it appeared a justice had already made a decision in advance, that was a judge or a justice who should, in order to remain ethical, recuse themselves or recuse him or herself. Well, we have two Justices, I read, that had performed marriage ceremonies for couples that were the same sex. There could be no more clearer evidence that a Justice had decided whether or not same-sex marriage was appropriate when such Justice was performing that. But one of the flaws in our Supreme Court justice system that only exists for the Supreme Court of the United States--no other court in the land has this problem--they have no one to whom anybody in America using the court system can appeal on ethical issues. Congress can impeach after the fact, if something is done inappropriately. But, for example, if someone made a motion to recuse me as a judge, then I could hear it. But then that could be appealed to another judge, and there were methods of appeal. But if you believe that a judge, or a Justice, in the Supreme Court's case, making their views very clear that they have very strong feelings for same-sex marriage and that they believe it is perfectly appropriate before the case comes before them, and yet they decide, I am not doing anything unethical, should stay on the Court--because they have come so far from those days when they didn't even have a courtroom for about 21 years to where they now have a lovely palace--there is no one else that they allow an appeal to. They could set up a panel to make decisions about ethical issues. But when you, as a Court, began replacing God with your own decisions, when you began to replace the laws of human nature with what you think the laws should be, then naturally, you are not going to set up a panel that second-guesses your decision on ethics because you are the be-all and end-all for such decisions. So it grieves me very much for our Court system to have Justices who have made their positions very clear, sit on a case as if they hadn't, decide a case as if they are fair and unbiased, and then say, this is justice in America. We have badly regressed. The days of humility for some Justices are gone. There was a time when Justices had such a sense of humility that they thought this was a palace they should not be in. Those days are gone. There was a time when Justices could be embarrassed about such a horrendous decision, like Dred Scott. I fear those days are gone as well. But they will make a decision, and they will decide either--I hope they decide that this is a decision for each State, that since the Constitution does not speak to the issue of marriage and the 10th Amendment makes very clear any power not specifically enumerated is reserved to the States and the people, that they will ensure that they are not the arbiters of morality in America any longer, at least not on this issue; that they will decide that they are not going to go so far as to condemn people who believe firmly in the teachings of the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, people who believe in the Commandments, that the man depicted as the only full face in this whole gallery above these doors, the man who was considered the greatest lawgiver of all time when this was decorated in this way, Moses--that is the same Moses that, if you go into the Supreme Court and you are looking at the Supreme Court, and you are seeing them struggling to become God in their decisions about religion, if you look up at the marble wall above you, to the right, you will see Moses depicted, holding the Ten Commandments and looking down. They will decide whether they are going to inject themselves and tell people what the Pilgrims heard in Europe, what Christians heard around the world who came to America so they would not be persecuted as Christians. They will tell America very clearly: We don't care what your religious views are. This Supreme Court is going to decide that we are going to prohibit the free exercise of religion because we are more important, and our views are more important than the clear language of the First Amendment when it says that the government will not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Well, we will find out. I hope and pray that the Supreme Court has a time of humility, their hearts are touched to the point that they will not decide that the Pope is an idiot, that they, as the popes of America, know what is best for the people, more than any religious leader in the country, that they will substitute their judgment for those of the Bible. It is kind of hard to get around Romans I, if you really believe the New Testament. Nonetheless, that decision is coming. Mr. Speaker, I am truly hopeful that Americans will realize the seriousness of this decision and the ultimate breakdown that it will be. And I hope we don't degenerate in this country into more violence. But we see what happens around this country when we get God--we don't even want God mentioned anywhere, even though, for this country's history, the Bible has been the most quoted book right here in this Chamber, the Chamber down the hall, the most quoted book ever in our government's history. So when I am talking like this on the floor, we usually get calls from people that are going berserk, how dare him mention God. Just in the last week or two, I have quoted from Abraham Lincoln, who wrote an official United States Government proclamation, begging, imploring the people to have a time of prayer, humility, and fasting. And in the proclamation, he makes clear that the problem at that point, as slavery was a huge problem, the Civil War was ongoing at the time of this proclamation. But he knew those were symptoms of what happens when you turn from the religious morality of the Bible. And he said, We have forgotten God. I hope the Supreme Court will not, once again, inject themselves as gods but that they will observe the true meaning of the First Amendment. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, the First District of Texas has been blessed as the birthplace of many remarkable individuals who have made notable contributions that have enriched lives well beyond the borders of Texas. One such example was born from a rather simple concept, yet grew into a worldwide movement. It is a great pleasure to stand in honor of the world famous collegiate drill team, the Kilgore College Rangerettes, as they celebrate their 75th anniversary this year. The Rangerettes have long been considered the personification of talent and precision, the standard of excellence which has sparked an estimated $8 billion industry and created more than fifty-thousand permanent jobs in the United States, according to one famed economist. The Rangerettes have inspired similar all-female dance drill teams, with an estimated 15,000 high school students and some 1,000 college students across the state of Texas taking part each year; while approximately 75,000 high school drill team members across the nation participate annually. The Rangerettes have been the impetus behind this major industry which has influenced lives and careers around the world. The precision dance team concept began in 1939, and came to fruition led by the incomparably talented Miss Gussie Nell Davis with their first halftime performance on September 15, 1940. The Rangerettes were originally intended to promote diversity among the student body at Kilgore College while also encouraging football fans to stay in their seats during halftime; but while effectively accomplishing these tasks, they also introduced something astoundingly innovative to the field of sports entertainment. This group of talented young women set into motion a revolutionary model for all future choreographed dance teams. Technical skill and absolute choreographed perfection, along with the incomparable high kick routines, characterized the Rangerettes' routines at their inception, and those words can still be used today to describe the captivating performances of these young women. The world renowned Rangerettes have toured the United States multiple times, performing for U.S. Presidential inaugurations, professional sports venues, nationally televised parades, collegiate bowl games, and even Indy 500 race events. They have been featured on television, in films, and in widely circulated magazines and newspapers. In addition to the notoriety they have experienced here in the United States, the Rangerettes have headlined several international tours which have allowed them to perform for massive numbers of enthusiastic fans on four continents and in countless cities worldwide. The commitment to preserving the legacy and rich heritage of the young women who have achieved the honor of being named a ``Rangerette'' does not end upon graduation, but is demonstrated through the continuing efforts of their Rangerettes Forever alumni organization. Rangerettes now and forever have enjoyed an accomplished and vibrant history of group performances and individual achievement, while bringing visibility and prestige to Kilgore College, east Texas and the State of Texas. It is a distinct privilege to honor this remarkable organization today since they have been so hard-working, motivational, & inspirational. Please join me in recognizing and congratulating the Kilgore College Rangerettes on their 75th anniversary, a milestone now recorded in this Congressional Record which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do want to commend my friend from California (Mr. Schiff) for what he is doing. I think it is a very noble thing to do when people are killed. Whether you want to call it a genocide or not, I just appreciate very much my friend Adam Schiff calling those names and giving them recognition after the hell on Earth they went through. It was a very noble endeavor. Mr. Speaker, what I came to the floor to talk about is the so-called deal that the administration is trying in every way they can to get Iran to even just say that they are okay with. Unfortunately, the Iranians have been dragging this out for years now. I read that Valerie Jarrett had been talking before with the Iranians before the deal--the negotiations, at least--ever surfaced. And we have reports that there was an informal negotiation taking place. It was denied back originally, and it turns out there were negotiations. So what this has done to Israel--our ally, our friends in Israel, the people that are actually our forward observers out there in the middle of the chaotic Middle East that this administration has helped make more chaotic--they are out there, and they are kind of like, as some people have referred to them, the miner's canary. When they are under attack, when they are struggling because of other countries, then we can anticipate the United States will be shortly behind it. Here is an article from The Wall Street Journal dated April 17, entitled, ``U.S. Suggests Compromise on Iran Sanctions,'' the byline, ``President Obama said Tehran could receive significant economic relief immediately after concluding a deal to curb its nuclear program.'' Isn't that great, though? We are now using the word ``curb'' their nuclear deal. At one time, it was to ``dismantle'' their nuclear efforts. At one time, it was going to be totally unacceptable for Iran--probably the biggest supporter of terrorism in the world. Certainly they have supported plenty of terrorism that has killed Americans. They have built and used and furnished IEDs that have killed and maimed so many thousands of Americans. But now we are down, at this point, to just curbing. If we can just curb them, apparently that will be satisfactory. And after the last so-called mutual agreement was announced, we had the leaders of Iran saying, We didn't agree to any of that. Now having been a former judge, having tried no telling how many cases, I know that if you have one side saying ``we have an agreement'' and the other side saying ``we never agreed to anything,'' and that is before any of the terms of the agreement are ever undertaken by either side, then you don't have an agreement. They teach you it is basic contracts. I know the President, in Chicago, was concentrating on the Constitution, but the fact is, under contract law, one of the contract 101 things they teach you is, you have to have a mutual meeting of the minds. If one side says, ``We haven't agreed to anything,'' and you don't have a document they signed, and you don't have a tape recording even of them saying, ``Yes, we agree to those things,'' you don't have a deal. You don't have an agreement. There is absolutely nothing enforceable. And the interesting thing about international law is, basically, if the most powerful country in the world is not willing to enforce something that it says is an agreement, then it doesn't matter whether you have got an agreement or not. I was very fortunate to have had, for a semester at Baylor Law School, a visiting dean of a Japanese law school who taught an international law course that I took. I did as well as you can do in that course. Our professor, the visiting dean, was such a brilliant guy. I did a paper on law of the sea and did very well with that. I loved to sit down and visit with the dean from Japan. After the conclusion of the course, I had my grade. I said: You know, Dean, I hope this is not inappropriate to say; but having taken your course, having studied diligently for your course, it seems to me that the bottom line with international law is that, really, international law is whatever the biggest, most powerful country says it is, if they are willing to use their power. And the dean said; Well, Mr. Gohmert, you did learn something in my course. Yes, you have got it. In international law, if nobody is willing to stand behind a deal and force another country to abide by the deal, you don't have a deal. You might as well not even have a written agreement in international law if somebody is not willing to enforce it. Under most people's definition of an act of war, if you would attack an embassy, then for purposes of most people's international law, you have committed an act of war. That embassy is considered to be sovereign. If you attack that embassy, you have attacked that country-- it is an act of war--which is what happened in 1979 in a place called Tehran, Iran. I was in the Army, stationed at Fort Benning at the time, so we obviously were paying close attention to an act of war against the United States. I think most people at Benning were put on alert, but nothing happened. An act of war was committed against the United States, but our failure to do anything but basically beg the Iranians to let our hostages come home was deemed as weakness and, as I understand, still is used from time to time today as part of the recruiting effort to show that Americans have no backbone. They are not going to stand up to radical Islamists. Radical Islamists can have their will because America is a toothless tiger, unwilling to enforce anything. Oh, sure. Somebody, to want to look tough, may send a boat to tag along behind a convoy, and we may send planes to blow up a tent or, like President Clinton did, blow up a camel from time to time. It seemed like there may have been an aspirin factory or something. Maybe there was something more serious, but that is not shock and awe, as we have shown some places before. So when they are recruiting, of course they use the toothless, feckless United States examples. Like after the USS Cole, I had a servicemember that told me recently he was there and they couldn't believe that anybody could attack a United States naval ship and basically we don't do anything. I understood from somebody in the Reagan administration that one of President Reagan's great regrets was after, I think it was, probably Iran behind the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut where we lost about 300 precious Marine lives, Congress made clear we are not funding anything else, and we pulled out. Another recruiting tool for radical Islamists. And even that example from Beirut, under such a great American President as Ronald Reagan, going back to 1979 when radical Islam first committed an act of war against the United States, that was in response to President Carter--at least, it followed his pronouncement that the Ayatollah Khomeini was a man of peace. They hit our Embassy. I know at first they were saying: Oh, the college students attacked. The college students have the hostages. And it seemed to me, as a member of the United States Army watching the news carefully from Fort Benning, that it seemed like they kept saying, you know, the students have the hostages. And I kept thinking if President Carter will just say: Okay. The students have the hostages. Then you get them back to us within 48 hours or even 72 hours; otherwise, you are going to see the entire power of the United States military coming at Iran. And heaven help you, if you harm our hostages at all, we may just wipe Tehran off the map if you do, and you as part of it. I really felt like they would probably release the hostages and say: See? See? The students had them. We talked them into releasing them. But rather quickly, they figured out that the Carter administration was not going to use the U.S. power and that all it was going to do was basically beg for the hostages to be released until they scaled back an effort to rescue the hostages that ended up being inadequate because the Carter administration didn't authorize enough helicopters. They needed six. General Boykin confirmed what I was told at Fort Benning, that they needed six to get to the staging area, crossing 500 miles or so of desert. Their helicopters had turbine engines. They expected that they might lose as many as 50 percent of their choppers. But they had to have six get to the staging area, meet the C-130 there and the other aircraft and get ready and then launch, because they knew where the hostages were. The Carter administration didn't allow enough helicopters so they could get there with six. They got there with five. And as General Boykin confirmed what I had heard before, when they got there with five, then they had to abort because they had to have a minimum of six to make it work. Perhaps the helicopter pilot got disoriented. The chopper leaned, the blades went through the C-130, and the people on the C-130 and the helicopter were killed. But it goes back to having a Commander in Chief that is not willing to do everything he can to use our power to save American lives and to send a message around the world: Don't mess with the United States. Don't mess with our Embassy. Don't mess with our Embassy workers, because if you do, there will be a powerful price to pay. Mr. Speaker, the message instead was: We got the power, but we don't have the backbone to use it. And that is being carried out. Of course, President Reagan used American power to send a message. President George H. W. Bush, after Kuwait was invaded by Iraq--I love the fact, as a former military member, that President George H. W. Bush was a former military member, and instead of trying to micromanage the freeing of Kuwait, instead of micromanaging, President Bush told the military leaders that the goal is to liberate Kuwait; you tell me what we've got to do. They told him how many people we would need in theater before we attack. You hit them hard with bombing, loosen them up, and the mission went incredibly well until Democrats in Congress started yelling, in essence, figuratively speaking, that President Bush needed to stop, stop, stop. Many in the media, stop, stop, stop, they are not fighting, they can't stand up against us, oh, please stop, you are being too brutal. So President Bush, because of the left, was persuaded not to go all the way to Baghdad at that time. Then later he was beat up by the left in 1992 for not going ahead and taking out Saddam when he had the chance. So it is an interesting place to work here. Mr. Speaker, I go through that history so we understand where we stand historically with radical Islam in the Middle East. They don't see us with the kind of fear that they should. Now, this article from The Wall Street Journal, dated April 27, by Carol E. Lee and Jay Solomon, says: ``President Barack Obama suggested on Friday that Iran could receive significant economic relief immediately after concluding a deal to curb its nuclear program, a gesture towards one of Tehran's key demands.'' It is really great. Tehran makes demands, the President follows right in line, and Secretary Kerry follows right in line as if he is going to be throwing medals over the White House fence that belonged to somebody else. It is great. They just follow right in line. Okay, Iran, please, we beg you. Do a deal with us. At least come out and announce with us we have a deal, and we will do anything you want. That is the way it is appearing not only to the radical Islamists of the world. It sure seems that they have our President wrapped around their little finger and that they can get anything they want. Well, Mr. Speaker, what should they think after the Taliban in Afghanistan was begged by the Obama administration to, gee, just sit down with us, we will buy you wonderful offices in Qatar, and we will give you international prominence. Heck, if you sit down, we will let murderers go of your Taliban leaders. Just sit down with us. That is all we are asking. It sent a pretty clear message. That gets around. They understand who they are dealing with. On page 3 of the 4-page article from The Wall Street Journal it says this: ``The Obama administration estimates Iran has between $100 billion and $140 billion of its oil revenue frozen in offshore accounts as a result of sanctions. U.S. officials said they expect Tehran to gain access to these funds in phases as part of a final deal. Iran could receive somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion upon signing the agreement, said congressional officials briefed by the administration.'' So, Mr. Speaker, that is from The Wall Street Journal. Then 2 days later, April 19, in an article by Jennifer Rubin, it says: ``Washington Post: Obama is prepared to give anything and everything for a deal.'' Then it goes on to say: ``Just days after releasing the Iran framework, Secretary of State John F. Kerry reaffirmed that the United States would insist on phased- in sanctions relief. Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei publicly rebuked that suggestion and declared he would insist on sanctions relief up front. On Friday, the President cleared up matters by hanging Kerry out to dry, pulling the rug out from under his dwindling band of supporters and telling the world that phased negotiations were up for grabs. ``The President declared: ``With respect to the issue of sanctions coming down--I don't want to get out ahead of John Kerry and my negotiators in terms of how to craft this. I would just make a general observation and that is that how sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there's a violation--there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that. Part of John's job and part of the Iranian negotiators' job and part of the P5+1's job is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.'' So going down the article, it said: ``This is a dramatic change in the administration's position and a foolish one. We know, as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Schultz have warned, snap-back sanctions are cumbersome and hugely ineffective. Sanctions once lifted are enormously difficult to reinstate after Western powers have commenced doing business. Inspections (not even of the go everywhere/anytime variety) are never foolproof and the parties contemplate a system designed for endless wrangling about whether violations have occurred. ``But wait. It gets worse. The Wall Street Journal reports: `The Obama administration estimates Iran has between $100 billion and $140 billion of its oil revenue frozen in offshore accounts as a result of sanctions' ''. . . ``The monies of course will be instantly available to fund terrorist activities.'' Well, Mr. Speaker, I guess that wouldn't be President Obama saying that because apparently he hadn't recognized that, but, okay. The article says: ``That would be a huge boost to Iran's economy, given up front and with no evidence of compliance. The monies of course will be instantly available to fund terrorist activities and Iranian surrogates in Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere. `` `Obama is willing to grant Iran access to funds that equate to about 10 percent of its GDP' ''--Iran's GDP--`` `just for signing a deal. That percentage boost is equivalent to a $1.7 trillion injection into the U.S. economy today (which is twice the dollar amount of the 2009 stimulus package).' '' That was explained by JINSA CEO Michael Makovsky. `` `This was a terrific present to Iran for its Army Day celebration on Saturday, when the regime showed off some of its weapons to slogans of ``Death to America,'' and ``Death to Israel.'' ' He adds, `Equally dismaying was Obama's minimization in the same press conference of Russia's announcement to sell S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries to Iran, which will make a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities much harder. Perhaps Obama was trying to save face by this Russian move, and/or perhaps he no longer opposes the Russian sale because it will make it harder for Israel to spoil the nuclear deal through military action.' ``If Israelis are expressing `shock and amazement Friday night at U.S. President Barack Obama's stated openness to Iran's demand for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions, and his defense of Russia's agreement to supply a sophisticated air defense system to Iran,' they should not be. The President will give the Iranians anything and everything to get his deal. `It's deeply troubling that President Obama declined to publicly reject Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's demand that all economic sanctions against Iran be lifted upon concluding a final nuclear agreement,' Senator Mark Kirk told Right Turn. `The President is clearly leaving open the door for significant sanctions relief to Iran up front to secure a controversial deal that will neither significantly nor permanently dismantle Iran's vast capabilities to make nuclear weapons.' ``The President who once declared the framework a `historic' deal has been forced to concede there is no deal. Now he is signaling the final deal will be much worse than he or his defenders ever suggested was possible. He promised to dismantle Iran's nuclear weapons program; now he is locking it in. He once insisted on robust inspections and gradual lifting of sanctions. Those will go by the wayside too. Ultimately, Congress, the 2016 Presidential candidates, our allies and the American people will need to explain that total appeasement--which is where this is leading--will not be acceptable. They will then have to devise the means for stopping Obama or immediately reversing his `diplomacy,' which is more like promising to make a ransom payment. Unfortunately for the Saudis, that likely means beginning an arms race as they seek a bomb of their own. It will be quite a legacy if Obama gets his way.'' Mr. Speaker, this President's foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa has created chaos. Then April 20, there is this article from the Washington Free Beacon: ``The State Department on Monday would not rule out giving Iran up to $50 billion as a so-called `signing bonus.' '' . . . ``Experts have said this multimillion dollar `signing bonus' option, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, could be the largest cash infusion to a terror-backing regime in recent memory.'' So they are getting access to money, the article points out. So then, Mr. Speaker, I want to take us back to March 2 from The Blaze, where they report on President Obama saying Netanyahu has been wrong on Iran. And they have this quote in the article, and it quotes from Reuters, this is a quote from Obama, reported by Reuters: `` `Netanyahu made all sorts of claims. This was going to be a terrible deal. This was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief,' Obama told Reuters in an interview Monday. `Iran would not abide by the agreement. None of that has come true.' '' That was March 2. Now here we are on April 22, and it turns out everything Prime Minister Netanyahu said has been true. So far, Mr. Speaker, everything that he has said that we have been able to get evidence on has been true. President Obama was wrong, Prime Minister Netanyahu was right, and knowing President Obama to be the big, courteous, and wonderful man he is, I am sure he will be sending an apology to Prime Minister Netanyahu very soon since he does owe him one. On March 2 he tells Reuters that Netanyahu was wrong on everything, and now just over a month later we find out he was right about everything. So I think that will be good news when the President admits to Israel they were right, I was wrong. By the way, what could we do with that $50 billion that they may let Iran have access to after all the damage, all the Americans Iran has funded killing and maiming. We could use some of that money. Wow, $50 billion. But one final article dated today from John Sexton, ``Iran Says It Will Refuse Access to IAEA Inspectors Anywhere' Nationwide.'' ``A spokesman for Iran's nuclear agency has once again rejected calls to grant IAEA access to military sites, continuing a war of words on the issue that began Sunday.'' The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, this President is putting the world in jeopardy. He is putting Israel in jeopardy. He is putting us in jeopardy. He is putting all of Israel's neighbors in jeopardy. It is time he woke up and smelled the baklava. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, several years ago, there was an author who wrote a book about millionaires in America; and it was amazing, most of the millionaires built a business, built a farm, and the number one most commonly driven vehicle by millionaires in America was a Ford F-150 truck. They were workers. There was a time in America when we looked around and we saw somebody work 16 hours a day, like my aunt and uncle did, and build together a farm and we were proud of them. Well, my Aunt Lilly died, and the FDIC dumped land out by her place before the land could be sold. So the IRS came in and eventually sold every acre of her land. The family was called in. Let's try to at least buy some of her assets from her home, her little modest home. I bought this music box from Aunt Lilly. It plays ``Amazing Grace.'' But she didn't get amazing grace. Her heirs didn't get amazing grace. They ran into the amazing greed of the United States Congress. Let's take the green-eyed monster and put it where it belongs and begin to feel good for people that have worked for what they own.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Georgia, Rob Woodall, so much. What clarity. We lost a good man when John Linder didn't run again, and we gained a good man when Rob Woodall ran for that seat. So it is a good day. Well, there is a matter of concern. Let me just say this: We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, there are some people these days that say it is not appropriate to mention God, that that has no place in government. Yet the very God that I speak of and those very words that I spoke are not from me; they are from 152 years ago. Abraham Lincoln didn't just say those words. He made that his Presidential proclamation. On March 30, 1863, he called for the Nation to have a national day--and these are his words--of ``humiliation, fasting, and prayer.'' So he made that official proclamation. Sometimes my office starts getting calls if I mention the three- letter word that some find to be such a heinous word to use on the House floor, even though it was one of the most used and most called- upon names, certainly, in our Congress for the first 150, 175 years or so. The Bible was the most quoted book for most of our history. So the problem is those people that will call and email irate about a Member of the United States Congress saying we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. That was Abraham Lincoln who said those words. And he didn't just say them; it was an official proclamation of the United States of America. So at this day and time it is more popular to issue executive orders, as if one person in our government were God, but Abraham Lincoln knew better. Two years later, he was assassinated. He could have done so much to bring this country together after the worst war the country had ever faced, yet his life was cut short 150 years ago. He was an extraordinary man. It was an extraordinary time. But he tells us with his written word that we have forgotten God. He said: We are too proud to pray to the God that made us. Some find that offensive. Some think the government should be god; that the government should tell people: You can see this doctor, but you can't see this doctor. This doctor may be able to heal you, but you can't see this doctor. Why? Because we are the government, and we are the new god. Seniors, look, we know you had plans for health care to last longer, but, sorry, you don't get as good health care as you did 5 years ago. In my own family, my dad is not going to get the same health care that my mother did, which kept her alive 15 more years after her tumor was discovered. As Dad told me last week: I am not going to be able to have the health care your mother got because of Medicare and all these cuts. I can't even have the option to do what we did for your mother. Well, that is what happens when the government becomes god. Unfortunately, if we were going to have the government become the god of the United States, it would be nice if the government were a little more truthful, a little more honest, a little more just. One of the major problems that has been revealed recently is the fact that the Department of Homeland Security has lied to a United States district judge in Texas. He was told that because he was going to issue an injunction, and was issuing an injunction, that there would be no 3- year amnesty provided that the President spoke into being, and after he spoke into being the new law overriding with his very oral words, the laws that were passed by the House and Senate, signed into law by other Presidents, disregard those. Then the Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson wrote memos-- memos--overriding laws that were worked on in subcommittee, committee, brought to the floor of the House, debated, fussed over, eventually voted on, and approved in the House; debated, fussed over, eventually passed in the Senate, signed into law by another President. We disregard that, because the government is god now. We don't need to pray to anybody except Washington these days. Well, some of us believe the government is not god. Nobody wants a dishonest god. And we have had too much of that from Washington. So with recent revelations about the Department of Homeland Security and its failures, many Americans have become gravely concerned that their actions and performance are causing additional misrepresentations, and that is why it was critically important that we have a thorough investigation of the Department of Homeland Security. I know there were misrepresentations by the prior Director of Homeland Security before our committee. I talked about those previously. But the American people deserve to be protected by their government-- not spied on, not lied to, not pay to have the Department of Homeland Security ignore the law. So there were 22 of us that just signed a letter going to the Comptroller General of the United States. Some pronounce it ``comptroller'' because that is how it is spelled. As my late English teacher mother told me many years ago, that may be the way it is spelled. If you look in the dictionary, which I was forced to do, then you will see that the number one pronunciation is ``controller,'' but because of usage--I don't know. I haven't looked recently. Maybe number one now is ``comptroller,'' but it didn't used to be. To the Comptroller General Dodaro, here is the letter that 22 of us sent yesterday: ``As you know, on November 20, 2014, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, issued a series of memoranda affecting federal immigration law. Included in the new DHS policy directives was an order to extend and expand the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as well as an order to establish a new program that provides work authorization permits to an estimated five million undocumented immigrants residing in the United States. This new program was termed, `Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents,' or DAPA. ``U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is the federal agency that adjudicates applications for immigration benefits. This agency's website claims a workforce of 19,000 people operating throughout 223 offices worldwide with an annual operating budget of $4 billion. This agency is very unique from many other agencies. According to its own FY16 USCIS Budget Request, 96.8% of the agency's annual operating budget comes from fees collected from applicants for most types of immigration benefits, from petitions to sponsor relatives or employees, to replacement green cards, to naturalization applications. These fee- based revenues appear to be considered `permanently appropriated' mandatory funds compared to annual discretionary appropriations which apply to federal agencies. As a result, this permanently appropriated mandatory spending allotment for USCIS falls outside the annual appropriations process. ``While Congress determines the categories of aliens that are to be admitted into the United States, it does not always set the fees USCIS charges or constructively control how USCIS allocates its resources. This fee-generated portion of its annual budget, translating to $3.874 billion in FY16, appears to be completely fungible. That is, this money, raised for one purpose can perhaps be used for other purposes. This arrangement creates the potential for USCIS to, in effect, create slush funds and skim off congressionally authorized fees imposed on legal immigrants and their sponsors in order to fund programs that may not be specifically authorized by Congress. Mr. Joseph Moore, the Chief Financial Officer of USCIS, testified in a Senate hearing on March 3, 2015, that the agency determines the fees it charges based on a practice known as activity-based costing. Thus, transaction fees are proportional to the amount of time and resources to fulfill that transaction. However, records indicate that USCIS has a carry-over balance from excess revenues at the end of FY14 of approximately $1.27 billion. Mr. Moore claimed that he seeks to maintain a rolling reserve balance of about $600 million to cover unexpected costs and surge activity. He further stated that funds from this account helped USCIS handle early spending in response to the executive actions. Eventually, new fees paid by illegal immigrant applicants are intended to replenish that account, plus cover all the new costs. What is not clear is why or how this agency has built up reserves of more than twice the amount it says it aims to keep for contingency requirements. This draws scrutiny as to how long this practice has occurred, for what reasons, what can or cannot be done with that money and, ultimately, how Congress can effectively conduct oversight. ``Experts refer to this arrangement where an agency can skim off, or `tax,' certain types of applications in order to fund others as `cross- subsidization.' Currently, fees from legal immigrants and their sponsors subsidize refugee and asylum applications, military naturalizations, the anti-fraud division, and other activities--with `other activities' being very broadly defined.'' So we go on and ask for the Comptroller General to audit the Department of Homeland Security because we haven't gotten truthful answers, and we haven't gotten complete answers. It appears we have a shadow government in existence that can go across the river and lease or purchase, spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars--we don't know--without any accountability to anybody. It moves toward being like a Kafka novel of just a completely unaccountable mammoth government that no individual can ever take on. That was never the intention of the Founders, nor those who have given their lives throughout the history of this, the greatest country in the history of the world. We are calling for an audit. We are asking the GAO to audit USCIS and find out critically needed answers. Homeland security agencies continue to be hindered by leadership that breaks the law and ignores the Constitution while using highly suspect spending practices. It has got to stop, and we have to know exactly what they are doing so that we can get them back with acting within the constitutional requisites. The Department of Homeland Security has been so obsessed, as directed by the President, with having open borders and bringing in illegal immigrants. As one border patrolman told me: We, in homeland security, are called logistics by the drug cartels, the gangs, all those people that bring in illegal aliens into the United States. Like the commercial that is widely seen on television, the logistics they are referring to are the fact that they can bring people into the United States illegally, the drug cartels and the gangs, for a huge, whopping fee. Once they get them in to the United States, they can count on Homeland Security to spend this money that many trying to do things the right way, the legal way, are paying to have their immigration, their visa application, expedited. We don't know where those expedited fees are going, but their visas, their applications are not really being expedited, so it would appear probably the Homeland Security Department is taking fees that are being paid for one thing by people wanting to do things the right way, the legal way, the constitutional way, and Homeland Security is subverting the law and the Constitution and spending it on people who keep coming in, pouring in naturally, illegally, because they are taken care of. Homeland Security will ship them around the country. All you have to do is come in, we will give you a hearing date some years in the future, ship you off, and don't worry about showing up for your hearings. How long can a country last doing these kinds of absurd governmental actions? It is insane. The book that will be written about the rise and fall of the United States will be very easy to write. These things are not new. They are very predictable that, when a country starts ignoring the law, then it becomes lawless, and it is not long before the people take up that position and the country becomes a terrible place to live. This country became the greatest country in the history of the world--more freedoms, more personal assets. Now, we see that being frittered away by a government that is being allowed to do so, and at the same time, the head of the government still may have around 50 percent approval rating. It is, once again, making very clear the old adage is true: democracy ensures a people are governed no better than they deserve. America, as at least 50 percent sits on their hands, they are okay with total disregard of the Constitution. One survey found there were more, I believe, college students that could name the Three Stooges but could not name the three branches of government, and they are eligible to vote. Well, if that is the way you educate the generations coming up to vote, then you will, once again, get the government you deserve. Well, because the Department of Homeland Security has been taking funds paid by people trying to do things legally, do them the right way, and subverting them for uses for those who are wanting to act illegally or have acted illegally. They haven't been able to pay enough attention to securing our homeland, which was originally their charter. I didn't think we needed a Department of Homeland Security. I thought it was another huge bureaucracy that was created before I got to Congress in the name of, Gee, let's help all these agencies work together. Well, it hasn't done that. It has just added another level of bureaucracy. We get this report. This is from The Washington Times, dated Tuesday, April 14, that: ``The Islamic State terror group is operating a camp in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, just eight miles from the U.S. border, Judicial Watch reported Tuesday. ``Citing sources that include a `Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector,' the conservative watchdog group reported that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is organizing only a few miles from El Paso, Texas, in the Anapra neighborhood of Juarez and in Puerto Palomas. ``Judicial Watch sources said `coyotes' working for the notorious Juarez Cartel are smuggling Islamic State terrorists across the U.S. border between the New Mexico cities of Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, as well as `through the porous border between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas.' `` `These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large- scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing,' Judicial Watch reported. ``Mexican intelligence sources say the Islamic State intends to exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, New Mexico. `` `The sources also say that ISIS has ``spotters'' located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed by the Bureau of Land Management)' ''--I would submit mismanaged--`` `to assist with terrorist border crossing operations,' Judicial Watch reported. `ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and Chaparral, NM.' '' There were some reports then that: Oh, Judicial Watch had it wrong. There is really nobody from ISIS in Mexico. There is no threat. Then this report came out today from our friends at Judicial Watch, April 16, 2015: ``Responding to Judicial Watch's report earlier this week of ISIS activity along the Mexican border, Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisors called a `special' meeting at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez. ``A high-level intelligence source, who must remain anonymous for safety reasons''--let me insert parenthetically, what that means is, if you don't get that--and I sure do because I have people tell me about problems in the executive branch and Homeland Security, Justice, and Intelligence. What we find is this administration has prosecuted more people they called whistleblowers than every administration put together in the history of the country. What I know is if you have information that exposes corruption or illegal or improper action by leaders in this administration, they are coming after you and calling you a whistleblower, and they will convene a grand jury, as they have done, and one is right now in Atlanta going on. They are coming after you if you can expose impropriety in this government, so that is why this says what it does in the article. ``The meeting was convened specifically to address a press strategy to deny Judicial Watch's accurate reporting and identify who is providing information to JW. FBI supervisory personnel met with Mexican Army officers and Mexican Federal Police officials, according to JW's intelligence source. The FBI liaison officers regularly assigned to Mexico were not present at the meeting and conspicuously absent were representatives from the Department of Homeland Security. It is not clear why DHS did not participate.'' Again, parenthetically to the article, since I have known of the sector of Homeland Security not being truthful in testifying before our Judiciary Committee, then if I were the FBI and I were trying to get to the bottom of something, the last people I would tell are people at Homeland Security at the top, I trust the ones I know at the bottom, but not the ones at the top. So perhaps the head of the FBI is realizing we have such big problems in Homeland Security. For example, when I complained to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, You have given a secret security clearance to a person who was a featured speaker about the Ayatollah Khomeini being the man of vision for the 20th century, a man that thinks the Holy Land Foundation, convicted of over 100 counts of supporting terrorism, was improperly prosecuted, who ended up tweeting last August that the caliphate was going to happen, so you might as well get used to it. Well, I wouldn't trust them either. The FBI apparently doesn't. Publicly, U.S. and Mexico have denied that Islamic terrorists are operating in the southern border region, but the rapid deployment of FBI brass in the aftermath of Judicial Watch's report seems to indicate otherwise. A Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal police inspector were among the sources that confirmed to Judicial Watch that ISIS is operating a camp just a few miles from El Paso, Texas. The base is around 8 miles from the United States border in an area known as Anapra, situated just west of Ciudad Juarez, in the Mexican State of Chihuahua. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juarez, in Puerto Palomas, targets the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming for easy access to the United States, the same knowledgeable sources confirm. During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and Federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as plans of Fort Bliss, the sprawling military installation that houses the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation. The administration can deny and they can say, Oh, this is these crazy people in Congress or Judicial Watch, when the truth is that the more time that goes on, the more we are proved right on everything Judicial Watch has been claiming, the things that we have been asserting, the things that we have been saying we have to wake up about because this is a time of danger. Mr. Speaker, going back to the original point, this is the danger that arises when government begins to think of itself as God and infallible, and it is time for those who think that to fall, it is time for the people to wake up and demand better because, the minute a majority of American people demand better government, they will get it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to address this. The bill we passed today is something that needed to be addressed. It was a problem that has been growing for about 16 years, or so. The cut that was put into law has been changed 17 times in the last 16 or so years. It made cuts to healthcare providers. We have caused some healthcare providers to retire early. It was $716 billion that ObamaCare took from Medicare in order to, supposedly, fund 30 million or so that we were told didn't have insurance. Now we have cost millions their health insurance policy they liked. And I say ``we.'' Not a single Republican voted for that bill. It has cost Americans, millions of Americans, the doctor that they wanted to use. We have seen promise after promise that was made about ObamaCare that was broken. It absolutely wasn't true. Then we find out that there were advisers around the White House who were advising all along: They are not going to be able to keep their insurance policy. They are not going to be able to keep their doctors. Maybe we want to change the way that kind of thing is said. It did major damage--and continues to do major damage--to health care. So, on top of that overlay, we had these ongoing cuts to the healthcare providers. If we didn't step in each year and temporarily pause them, it would have put so many healthcare providers out of business and made it extremely difficult for Americans to get the health care they need, even more than it already is, even more than ObamaCare has jeopardized. So something needed to be done. My friend, Dr. Mike Burgess, had pushed through a fix, a remedy, last year of 63 pages. It was very well thought out. He is a very bright, terrific doctor, a great Congressman, and a friend. We have spent a lot of time this week talking about the fix to the cuts to reimbursement for physicians. And the bill today, on the good side, provided a permanent fix. If this becomes law, if the Senate passes what we did, it stops the slow deletion of some healthcare providers' efforts and work. This provides a framework from which Medicare can be reformed for the future. It is valued at $175 billion. And the best estimate we have gotten is that $140 billion of the $175 billion is not offset with any cuts anywhere else. This would be a straight addition of $140 billion to our children's and grandchildren's enormous debt--what some refer to as ``intergenerational theft.'' It does have Henry Hyde language protecting against Federal funds being used for abortion. I have always thought the world of Henry Hyde and was honored to overlap with him 2 years. His work in standing for the unborn children, the most innocent among us, is just an extraordinary life's work that he did. I don't know that Federal funds for abortions for people on Medicare is as big an issue as some might think. Anyway, the Hyde language is in there. It puts it in the Tax Code. That is a big deal. Some of my Democratic friends were not big on that. There is also reauthorization for CHIP. There are the secure rural schools. Our rural schools, especially those in national parks, have been cheated for many years from the income that they were supposed to have by giving up land they couldn't tax any more, by giving up other sources of revenue from the land. They agreed to allow land to be used or become national forests, and they were to be reimbursed by proceeds from the sale of timber. But we have a Forest Service administration--not just this one; it has been going for a while--where production has either slowed dramatically or completely been eliminated, even though pine trees where I live are an entirely renewable resource. You plant them, and you are ready to harvest them in 15, 20 years. We are not talking sequoias. We are just talking a renewable resource. It is well managed in east Texas and other places around the country. But since production has stopped and we are buying so much lumber from other countries now, it is not good for America, not good for our trade imbalance, but it has been a Federal Government policy. And it has put schools in an extremely detrimental position, especially in rural areas, especially in areas where there have been national forests. So it is nice to have another bandaid, so to speak, to address that issue. It should have been in here. It should have been done before now. But, on the other side, getting back to $140 billion that is not offset by cuts anywhere else, adding it into the intergenerational theft--and it also concerns me, we had 212 Republicans today that voted for this SGR fix. It would have been so easy to have enough of an adjustment into this bill that we could add six more Republicans, and it would have been able to pass without any Republican leader begging for support from the Democrats, without coming to support from conservatives. With the vote on DHS funding, we saw 167 Republicans voted against it because it didn't keep our promise to stop the illegal, unconstitutional amnesty that DHS had done, as ordered by the President; and there were 75 Republicans, some of whom are very conservative, but they did vote with the Speaker on that bill and with the majority of Democrats to pass that funding. But I think that gives us an indication that out of the Republican Conference--the massive portion of the Republican Conference represents very conservative districts, and there are Republicans that, thank God, we have that are from more moderate areas, but somewhere between one- fourth and one-third, perhaps. It just seems like this bill today was one of those bills where we would be better off if we negotiated a deal among the Republicans and go through regular order. That is what we promised. You put us in the majority; we will go through regular order. We will have hearings on this entire bill. There will be open opportunities to discuss it, to amend it, to have legislative hearings, before you even do the votes on it in committee. We didn't do that. The bill was filed 2 days ago, on the 24th. We had a couple of days with this bill. That is not adequate for something this important. It does add some means testing for seniors. It appears very clear it is going to cause healthcare providers to have to add more clerical workers--people that don't do health care; they just do paperwork. So there will be more costs. So we didn't have a chance to adequately investigate the terminology of this bill and the long-term effects it will have on health care. It is kind of important. This also came 1 day after we voted for a budget that was important to get to the point where we could have reconciliation that let us deal with important issues like ObamaCare. We passed the budget easily, and we had a number of different budgets we could vote for. I thought Tom Price did a good job of marshalling the efforts on that. But the point is most of us were so focused on the budget through the vote yesterday that we really had one night to prepare on this SGR with the actual language that was filed on Tuesday. I was good with the 63 pages Dr. Burgess had used last year, but there were over 200 pages. I really don't know the long-term effects of what we did; and that is why, though I have been clamoring for an SGR fix, I couldn't vote for it. This isn't how we do things. We are supposed to first do no harm. We don't know what harm we may have done in that bill. We know we did some good, but we don't know what harm. We should have had some more time to analyze this and take the language back to our physicians, our healthcare providers, and say: You're the one doing this, you're the one trying to save lives, enhance lives, what will this do to you? What will this language do to you? Then come back and have the vote. So I appreciate the work for those that have been spending so much time on what is often referred to as the ``doctor fix.'' We definitely needed that as another fix. This is more permanent. We don't know what the Senate will do, and that is another one of our problems. There is some rather breathtaking news that has come out today about what the Obama administration has done in the way of damage to the nation of Israel--it sounds like this action was extremely petty--in an effort to slap Israel, without proper regard for the fact that they are the most important ally we have anywhere in the Middle East and one of the very most important allies we have in the world. It is just breathtaking what was done. Actually, to put this in perspective, this article, March 23, from Joel Pollak, says, ``Obama's Chief of Staff Fires up J Street: Israel's Occupation Must End.'' The article says: White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough earned raucous cheers from the leftwing activists gathered at J Street's fifth annual conference in Washington on Monday when he attacked Israel's occupation of the West Bank. ``An occupation that has lasted almost 50 years must end.'' J Street was founded to disrupt the close U.S.-Israel alliance and to serve as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel group. Well, that is interesting. If we use Mr. McDonough's rationale about the Israel occupation and how it must end, then that would mean that, at the turn of the 20th century, if he had been around clamoring for, on behalf of this President--were he President around the end of the 1800s--he would have been saying: it is time to end America's occupation of Texas. Had he been around in, say, 1823, speaking for President Obama back then, had he been President then, if he used this same reasoning, he would have been saying: it is time for the occupation of our Thirteen Colonies to stop, and we give all the land back to England. This is no time for the Thirteen Colonies to continue to occupy what we are calling the United States. It is time to give that back to England. It was theirs originally. The French had some at one time. There were differing claims, but basically time to quit occupying the United States and give this all back to England. It is time to give the West of the United States, you might have heard him say, if he had been around in the early 20th century, time to give back all the West to whoever had it before, whether it was Mexico, Spain, whoever may have been claiming it; we have been occupying it. That is not the way the world works. That is not the way the United States worked. Native American tribes were constantly taking each other on, different parts of the country, taking over others' land. That has gone on around the world. When you have a group of people living in the nation of Israel saying, We refuse to ever recognize Israel's right to exist, we want to wipe the Jewish people off the map, we want to wipe Israel off the map, then that is not a nation that you sit down with. Then when you have a nation like Iran, that is doing--they make clear, even as of last week, that the top leaders in Iran want death to America. Well, apparently, when this administration hears a religious fanatic that has killed American soldiers, killed American civilians, has really been at the lead of killing Americans wherever they could find them and have an opportunity to kill them and want to wipe Israel off the map, as the Little Satan, and wipe America off the map, as the Great Satan--they have continued to pursue nuclear weapons, and while this administration was rushing and continue to rush to talk to the leaders in Iran, it leaves some of us aghast at how blind the administration can be as to who is our friend and who is our enemy. It was Denis McDonough, this article talks about, speaking to the group, according to this article, that was founded to disrupt the close relationship between U.S. and Israel, and he fired them up, saying the occupation that lasted almost 50 years must end. It reminded me, oh, yeah, I remember another speech he gave, and this transcript is from the White House Web site. This was March 6 of 2011, and Denis McDonough, the same guy that thinks we need to run Israel out of the land of Israel, he said this--and I am quoting from the speech from the White House Web site. ``Thank you, Imam Magid, for your very kind introduction and welcome. I know that President Obama was very grateful that you led the prayer at last summer's Iftar dinner at the White House which, as the President noted, is a tradition stretching back more than two centuries to when Thomas Jefferson hosted the first Iftar at the White House. Thank you also for being one of our''--I might parenthetically interject here into Mr. McDonough's speech, glowing praise for Imam Magid, that actually this is Imam Magid who was president of the Islamic Society of North America. The Islamic Society of North America, a little background on them, they were named as a coconspirator to fund terrorism in the largest prosecution in the United States history for funding of terrorism--this was in a United States district court in Dallas--in short, referred to as the Holy Land Foundation trial. They were the main defendant, their principals. The list of unindicted coconspirators from that trial included the Council on American Islamic Relations, CAIR; the Islamic Society of North America, ISNA; and the North American Islamic Trust, NAIT. These coconspirators were not tried in the first round of prosecutions in Dallas under the Bush administration, but in November of 2008, all five defendants were convicted on a massive number of charges of supporting terrorism. The evidence utilized in the first round of the prosecutions, some that participated anticipate would be used in another trial against other named coconspirators if they were successful in getting the first convictions, which they did. However, before the convictions were finalized, there was an election. President Obama was elected President, and we got a new Attorney General, and they decided, despite what the evidence showed, despite what the courts had found, they are not going to prosecute the Islamic Society of North America and CAIR--CAIR has a very lovely building just down the street from us here. I can see CAIR from my window. In the case in Dallas, CAIR, NAIT, ISNA, they filed pleadings demanding that the judge remove their names as coconspirators in supporting terrorism. The judge reviewed all the evidence, had the hearing, and he ruled that their names would not be struck as coconspirators because there was plenty of evidence to support them as coconspirators supporting terrorism. They appealed that to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for the United States, and the fifth circuit, in their order, confirmed that there was a prima facie case made that the entities, CAIR, NAIT, ISNA, those associations have strong associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, namely Hamas, its Palestinian branch, which was specifically designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Government. Anyway, the organization here that the Federal courts found had plenty of evidence to make a case against them, as supporters of terrorism, have become partners with this administration, and that is why Denis McDonough, who was getting the acclaim for demanding Israel leave part of Israeli territory, he was there back in 2011, giving praise to Imam Magid, thanking him for his wonderful prayers at the White House. This is a guy that is president of what two Federal courts have said had plenty of evidence to show they are coconspirators in supporting terrorism. This business about, oh, the long tradition going back to Thomas Jefferson of Iftar at the White House, Iftar is the celebration during the month of August--or after the fasting during the month of August for the religious observance of Muslims, and Iftar is the feast after the fasting. If you go back to what they say was the first Iftar under Thomas Jefferson, it doesn't appear to me that Jefferson realized he was having an Iftar dinner. He wanted to have a dinner with a Muslim leader, and he couldn't do it until the fasting was over, and so when he could eat, they had a meal. It is kind of like hearing people say: Well, Thomas Jefferson, having a copy of the Koran shows how open-minded it was. No, it shows the fact that he had been a diplomat negotiating with radical Islamists called Barbary pirates as to why they kept capturing United States Navy--not Navy--but seamen and holding them for ransom. They had so many of our sailors that they held in captivity, we were paying a massive part of our budget for ransom to get these back. Jefferson was one of those that went over and negotiated and apparently asked: Why do you keep attacking us? We don't even have a navy. Why you are attacking us? We are not a threat to you. He was reportedly told: In our religion, we believe that if we die while attacking you, an infidel, we go to paradise. Jefferson was so well read, he couldn't believe there was a religion that thought you could go to paradise if you die killing innocent people, so he got his own English translation of the Koran. His ultimate action was to create and send a new thing called United States Marines to the shores of Tripoli because he realized there is not going to be any negotiation that is adequate to deal with these radical Islamists. There is only one way to beat them, and that is to physically beat them in a fight to the finish. It kept them off our backs for some time. Well, that is Denis McDonough, speaking for the President in 2011 and now. Then we know that the White House is doing everything it can to bend over backwards, the State Department: Oh, Iran, what can we do for you? Okay. Now, we find out today they are going to let them have centrifuges spinning in their secret facility they didn't even disclose until we found out about it, and they are going to let them keep having centrifuges spin there. Look, they will almost do anything to get them to sign some kind of agreement, bending over backwards; but they can't spare a minute to meet with the leader of Israel, can't spare the President, Vice President, or one of the Cabinet to come listen to Netanyahu--oh, no. Then, today, this outrage has come to light, that the United States, the Obama administration, has declassified a document that reveals Israel's nuclear program to the world, especially to Iran and to those who want to destroy Israel, so they will know exactly what they are after, what they are up against. What has happened, what has come to light today of this administration declassifying a document, obviously, it is a slap at Netanyahu. It is a slap at the Israeli people for coming out in droves to support a group of representatives that this President doesn't approve of. We are betraying this great ally of ours: Israel. If you believe the Bible, judgment will be coming down on our country for what our elected officials and appointed officials have done in betraying Israel. There will be problems for this. If you don't believe the Bible, then just use common sense. When you betray your most trusted ally in this torn-apart Middle East, then you are going to have problems galore. I have talked with leaders in those countries. I can't now because the Speaker won't let me go talk to them overseas anymore. That is what you call retribution if you don't support the Speaker. I get that. I am fine with that. As a result of him canceling my trip this weekend, I get to be on FOX News. Anyway, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Somebody needs to be friendly to our allies and stand up against our enemies, and this administration is not doing it. This betrayal is going to do more damage in the world than the snotty little act that was intended to slap at Netanyahu and the Israeli voters than we could possibly imagine. This is just unbelievable. Now, if you believe that there are lessons worth noting in the Bible, you could go back to King Hezekiah, who entertained the Babylonian leaders. If you believe the account in the Bible, God sent Isaiah to Hezekiah and asked him: What have you done? He already knew; but Hezekiah said, in effect--and this is Texas paraphrase--well, we met with these lovely, wonderful leaders from Babylon, and we showed them all of our treasure. In the most correct translation, he adds: And we showed them all of the defenses we have in our arsenal. Isaiah basically says: Because you have done that, you fool, you will lose the country. This is the kind of thing that brings down nations. It was petty, and it was a betrayal, and people need to be called to account for it. I yield back the balance of my time.