Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, H.R. 2383, introduced by our colleague Mr. Nunes of California, honors the contributions made by Mr. C.W. ``Bill'' Jones to California water policy. This bill renames the Bureau of Reclamation's pumping plant in Tracy, California, as the C.W. ``Bill'' Jones Pumping Plant. Mr. Jones was a legendary water leader in California for decades. He was appointed to the State water commission in 1968 by Governor Ronald Reagan, and served as director of the Firebaugh Canal Company for over 40 years, and as president of the Delta-Mendota Water Authority for over 20 years. Throughout these years, Bill Jones was directly involved with the Central Valley Project, and I believe it is fitting that a major unit in this project be named in his honor. After his passing in 2003, the California water community pursued this legislation with the blessing of the Jones family, to pay tribute to his longstanding work on California water issues. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2383) to redesignate the facility of the Bureau of Reclamation located at 19550 Kelso Road in Byron, California, as the ``C.W. `Bill' Jones Pumping Plant''.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite).

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Boozman).

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4192) to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to designate the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home in Hope, Arkansas, as a National Historic Site and unit of the National Park System, and for other purposes.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller), my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate my colleagues across the aisle. You are right, this is not a partisan issue when we are talking about the birthplace of a President. Frankly, here I am making the motion, and I never voted for President Clinton. I was not a big fan of President Clinton, but you are right, also: he came from extraordinary circumstances and rose to the highest position in this country. I mean, he and I apparently had very different lifestyles growing up. I never consumed a drop of alcohol, and when I was underage, I never not only did not inhale, I never smoked. There are so many things different in our backgrounds, and he ought to be an inspiration to every child out there, whether leaning toward being Republican or Democrat. That President Bill Clinton, with the things that he had in his background, could reach the Nation's highest office. I mean, any of you should know that it is not out of your reach either. It is extraordinary what he accomplished. But there is an old political adage that says, democracy ensures that a people govern no better than they deserve. In 1992 and 1996, whether any of us like it or not, America deserved Bill Clinton, and that is who we elected. It is now a fact he has been a President. It is now a fact that his birthplace should be a historical site, and I understand the concerns of the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite), my friend. Maybe there will be a room dedicated to all the money made from the UAE, but that is someone else's determination. The fact is it is a historical place. It deserves that designation, and, hopefully, people will be inspired for years to come that this is America. It does not matter what your background is; you can rise to the highest office in the land, and you should be inspired by that. For that reason, I would urge the passage of this bill. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, S. 1578, sponsored by Senator Wayne Allard from Colorado, reauthorizes the Upper Colorado and San Juan River Basin endangered fish recovery programs. Congresswoman Cubin of Wyoming, a wonderful resource on the Resources Committee, is the sponsor of the House companion measures, and she should be commended for her hard work on this bill. The dual goals of those programs are to recover four endangered fish species and to ensure that local citizens can continue to use the rivers for their economic, social and cultural needs. Unlike much of the Endangered Species Act's activities, these programs have performance measures and benchmarks to determine recovery progress. As a result, the programs enjoy broad support among various users. This reauthorization will allow for the last installment of the needed construction projects to enhance fish recovery. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan bill. I applaud Mrs. Cubin as the sponsor of the House companion measure. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Florida yielding. We get into Washington, we get up here around the Capitol, we all have our committees and subcommittees, all these things we are trying to oversee and do. I was not aware that it was as easy as apparently it is for a foreign company to manage, own, lease terminals in our ports. Were you aware of that?

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments, and I hope we can work together, not only to shore up an avenue of entry through our ports, as you pointed out. We would not let somebody, a foreign government, a foreign-owned company, even our close friends, I would not think, operate an airport or bring their own planes in. Yes, you can check them, we will let Customs do their thing. We wouldn't do that. We wouldn't lease a bridge to someone else to operate or manage, I wouldn't think. Gosh, I would hope not. Anyway, I hope that we can work together towards securing the avenues of entry into this country, because I don't know if you heard me saying it earlier, the gentlelady from Florida, but we all want to be secure. But if we don't secure our outer perimeter, then people that want to hurt us will come in, and then you lose due process rights at that point in order to be secure. I don't want to do that. So I appreciate your comments and your heartfelt notions on this issue, and hope we can work together.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, it is refreshing to hear about good things going on in Iraq. Of course, we know that some have been concerned a civil war may be breaking out over there, but the truth is what this boils down to is they have been finding with the IEDs, these explosive devices that have been killing now both Iraqis and Americans, that that hasn't worked. They have seen we have a President with firm resolve; that we are going to stay the course and make sure the country is ready to stand on its own and then let her stand. So they realized they were not being successful in that regard, so a last-ditch effort you have terrorists from other areas coming in and blowing up their own precious mosques to try to turn Shi'a against Sunni. It is obvious that this is a last-ditch effort to try to divide the country, because it scares a lot of folks over there greatly to think about a democracy succeeding right in the heart of the Middle East. I mean, that could spread to Iran. Boy, that scares Iran. It could spread to Syria. There are a number of countries over there that it scares them because democracy, as the President has said, could change things, and those folks are right on each other's borders. If I could take you back to 1973, between my sophomore and junior year in college, I was an exchange student in the former Soviet Union. Back then we didn't call it the former Soviet Union, it was the Soviet Union, and I spent a summer there and associated with and dealt with college students there in Ukraine, where I was. And I developed a number of friends, one of whom was an engineering student, a smart guy. He spoke a little better English than I did Russian. Well, a lot better English than I did Russian. We had some wonderful conversations. Very frank, very honest discussions. And at one point he was saying, you Americans seem to not understand why we would cling to communism, but it is the best thing we have ever had. We have had two major wars on our own soil and we have had to divert most everything to defense just to protect ourselves. As he pointed out, you, on the other hand, you have got two major oceans protecting the east and the west. Think about that. That is profound. And that is something that will be written about the United States hundreds of years from now when someone writes about the rise and fall of the greatest Nation in the history of the world, that we had two major oceans. Now, I would say that is a blessing from God. That is what has allowed this Nation to be nourished and to grow without much threat of intervention from other countries because they had to cross two major oceans to get here. The thing that concerns me is finding out we are potentially allowing footholds on our own soil. We are giving up an advantage. I didn't realize we had other foreign countries managing, leasing, utilizing avenues of entry in our ports. But now we have one transaction that is up right now with the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. As some have pointed out, the UAE has been our friend since 9/11, and that is interesting in and of itself; but there is a transaction in question that has stirred up much of America, for them to purchase or lease terminals at six of our ports. So I think it bears looking into. If this goes through, of course they would be handling shipping arrivals, departures, unloading at the dock, and other security sensitive functions. Yes, we would still have our Coast Guard. Yes, we would still have American Customs at work. Some of us are aware that they do not always catch everything. We are a little sarcastic sometimes in Texas. But they may have containers sitting on their docks for a number of days. They will necessarily be aware of the manner in which our government inspects containers, how it selects the maybe 5 to 6 percent that it actually x-rays, how it goes about selecting which container will be one of the maybe 1 percent that they actually examine. The current administration has looked at the issue and seems surprised that Americans are really upset about the issue. And I want to say about this President, he is the first President in at least 30 years to take seriously the threat of a foreign government. I know I was in the United States Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, back when the United States soil was attacked and Americans were taken hostage. That is an act of war. Under international law, you attack somebody's embassy, as ours was attacked in Iran, it is an act of war and it justifies defending yourself. And we did nothing. We begged them to let them go. And then later, because of a lack of leadership here in Washington, there was a failed rescue attempt that embarrassed us even further. But it sent a message that perhaps we do not have the stomach, we cannot handle these things. Perhaps if we had had an administration in Washington 30 years ago that took care of business when we were attacked, we would not be worrying about these issues now. But it did not and so we do. Some say, well, since the UAE is one of three nations to have recognized the Taliban as an official government, that that gives them concern, as it should. There are indications that the UAE also saw an opportunity for making money, and so apparently there were al Qaeda moneys that flowed through UAE systems. But this administration has done more to fight terrorism abroad than any perhaps in history. This terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon for our young country. But we have not done so well at home. And so it bears looking at even more closely. We need legal immigration. We need people legally coming across the border, willing to work. Most all of us were a result of immigrants, even being here. It is a good thing, if you are willing to work. But we need to secure our borders so terrorists do not come in. Now, since there is a war going on near our U.S. border, at our U.S. border, and some of us believe there have been insufficient efforts by the Federal Government to intervene and help our sheriffs and those that are trying to fight that war, it gets even more critical. I personally do not believe that this great Nation should be contracting out any rights to manage, operate, use, own any avenue of entry into the U.S., whether it is an airport, whether it is a bridge across our border, whether it is a road across our border, or whether it is a terminal in our seaports. That is just problematic. Now, the UAE has been our friend. They have been helpful to us in the war on terror, and we do want them as an ally. And I hope and pray we have a longstanding relationship with them that just brings us closer.

Mr. GOHMERT. This is also part of an important process. Some people say, why would you come down and talk for an hour on the floor of the House? It is part of educating our colleagues with information we have gleaned in preparing to come here. It is part of educating the people that would bother to watch this on television. And we have picked up some facts. And it is important people understand there are changing relationships, one of the things that concerns us when we have a contract that deals with an avenue of entry into this country with a foreign country. After World War II, we had no better friend than France. They knew that they had their freedom, they got their country back over the graves of the brave men and women of the United States and other countries, they got it back for them. Our Americans died. Now, it hasn't been too many years later they have forgotten all about that. Now they call us imperialists. And I get a chuckle when I hear somebody from France saying we are imperialists, because if we really were, they would not be speaking French over there in their country right now, and they would not be running their own country and they would not be calling us names now. But anyway, they are. But it just shows an example of how things change with other countries, even some that have been dear friends. And I wanted to point out something else that we learned that helps people assess how close the UAE actually looks at issues like we do. So I went back, I think not only do words have meaning, but votes have meaning; and I have a bill pending that we have filed, the U.N. Voting Accountability Act, and we have got a lot of Republicans, I know, supporting us. I do not know that I have Democrats supporting us. But it basically says any country that voted against us more than half the time in the U.N. the preceding year gets no financial assistance this year. And then it gives the exception for national security, but to the President. But that caused me to say, well, I wonder how the UAE has voted in the U.N.? Well, I went back and looked. My staff has done a great job helping out. In 2002, the year after 9/11, there were 90 votes in the U.N. Of those, the UAE voted against our position 61 times, with our position, 13 times, abstained 13 times and was absent 3 times. Now, not exactly a real good, helpful voting record for the U.S. But in 2003, there were 85 votes in the U.N. UAE voted against our position 66 times, with our position they agreed 8 times, abstained 9 times and were absent 2 times. Then I went ahead and put these up. We do not have 2005 records; those will come out from the U.N. on March 31, according to their own rules. But in 2004, the UAE, well, there were 79 votes in the U.N. in 2004. They voted with the United States 5 times. Oh, good friend, yeah. And then against the United States 62 times, abstained 10 times and were absent 2 times. So I think those are telling. And I think it is part of the democratic process that as Republicans we feel an obligation, I know I do, to come down and educate people on what it is we are looking back at. We know no government lasts forever. I know I left the bench because having three daughters, I just could not leave this world without trying to leave this country better than it was when we found it. I do not want to leave a country that is not secure. I do not want to leave a country that is overly in debt. And those are reasons, I know we have talked before with my good friend from Georgia, these are things we hold dear that are important to us. And I want to make sure that in the 100, 200, 300, whoever knows how many years from now when somebody writes The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Nation on Earth, it does not fall to us that we let things slip by giving people who may have liked us at one time a foothold on our soil that elevated into something that hurt us down the road. One other parenthetical. Of course, as an old judge, I am concerned about due process. And I heard the gentleman from Georgia talking about eavesdropping on foreigners calling in here. We know terrorists. By golly, if a terrorist is calling the United States, we need to know what they are saying. But on the other hand, when you look at due process within the United States, it has been so critical, it is so important to us. If you do not secure the borders and keep out people that want to come in and hurt you, then you are necessarily going to have give up due process rights within the United States to protect yourself and stay secure. I do not want to do that. I want to secure all our avenues of entry and make sure we do not give up due process rights. Of course, if you are a terrorist trying to phone home or phone into our home from your home where you hate us, then look out. We are going to be watching.

Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman yield back?

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my good friend from Georgia, the eminent physician, healing not only bodies in the past, but coming in and healing with the good elixir of truth. We appreciate that tonight, Mr. Speaker, and we appreciate the opportunity to be here. You are talking about truth, and you have the poster that says the Official Truth Squad. Something that has been neglected for far too long is the truth about our history. You look back, there was a school I read not too long ago that was going to change their name away from George Washington, and I thought how tragic. They do not know history. You go back, and above the Speaker's head up here, we see ``In God We Trust.'' George Washington, there was a time when he was in desperate need, and he prayed to that God in whom we trust. Going back to 1755, a young man in his early twenties, Washington was headed up toward Fort Duquesne with about 100 American soldiers and about 1,300 British soldiers. As they proceeded up through Pennsylvania, they had to go through a wooded area, a large wooded area, and there was a ravine that they marched through. There were 85 soldiers on horseback, those were the officers, and that included George Washington. As they made their way through, the Indians and French were lying in wait, this was the French and Indian War, and here this young man with boldness, gallantry, was on horseback, he led his soldiers. When the ambush started, it was horrible. Bodies were flying everywhere, bullets taking them out. After about 2 hours, there were over 700 who had died. There were 84 of the 85 officers that had been shot off their horses. Only one remained. That was George Washington. Finally, after a couple of hours, the remaining British and Americans retreated from the woods, and when they got a good distance away, they reformed and retreated, I believe it was back to Maryland. There was a letter that Washington wrote back to his mother and brother accounting what happened. There are other accounts that seem to all tell the same story. But Washington wrote that when he took off his hat and shook his head, bullet fragments fell out of his hair, but there wasn't a scratch on him. He said when he took off his vest, there were bullet holes in his investigate, but not a scratch on him. As he wrote to his mother and brother, he said, ``Truly God was with me,'' that God in whom we trust. Fast forward 15 years later. Washington and a friend of his named Dr. Craig were going up through Pennsylvania. Washington was going to go by and show him this place where this horrible thing happened, where so many people died. As they approached the woods, they were met by a group of Indians, and it turned out an old Indian chief was with them. They had a council fire, and during that time the chief disclosed that 15 years earlier, he too had been in that wood, and that he had heard Washington was coming to that area so he journeyed to meet him. He said, ``I gave the order to my braves to shoot at you, because we could see you coming from a distance and I knew if we shot you, that your men would flee in fear. We could just tell the way you rode.'' He said, ``I personally shot at you around 17 times. I traveled this distance to meet the man that God would not let die.'' This was a man who was prepared for that. Through it all, through that horror of that event, you look back and see how that was worked together for good. He saw how the British reacted when they were under fire. He saw effective tactics. But, even more so, all those people saw him. They saw his gallantry, his bravery, his courage, his leadership. They knew this was a guy that they could trust, even in his early twenties. So as we move toward the 1776 time, in the days when he would lead this country, a lot of people don't realize, but he was just the man for just such a time. Mr. Speaker, I was talking to a group of youth from Grace Community School there in Tyler. Those kids know so much about our history. They know. But not every school teaches the history. I am proud to have a school like that in my city in Tyler where they know those kinds of things. But after 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was signed, things looked so grim that the signers of the Declaration of Independence knew that if their troops failed, they were all dead people. Their families were dead, everything they owned would be taken, their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, everything would be gone. Yet they put their trust in George Washington, along with the God that we trust. On December 27, 1776, when things looked so bleak and they knew that shortly, just a matter of a week or so, the enlistment of these men would be up, they knew if they headed home as they were intending to do, all was lost. So they passed a resolution as a Continental Congress that basically gave Washington all the power that they had, power to pay money, to make orders, to tell people to do whatever. Then, interestingly, the letter that accompanied that resolution that they sent to Washington included this line. It said, ``Happy it is for this country that the general of their forces could be safely entrusted with the most unlimited power, and neither personal security, liberty nor property be in the least degree endangered thereby.'' Mr. Speaker, I know my good friend from Georgia feels the same way. I trust so many people, but I don't know of a single person in this country right now I would trust with that kind of power. But that is what George Washington had. One of my favorite paintings, as I was telling the group from Tyler earlier today, from Grace Community Church, is the painting of Washington coming back in to the Continental Congress saying here is all the power back. Nobody had ever done that before. This was a guy that had won the war. He had won the day. He was entitled to be called czar, emperor, dictator, pharaoh, whatever he wanted to be called. Yet he came back in and, just as the resolution and the cover letter said, they knew he could be trusted. He came back in and said here is all the power back. It is yours. I am going back to Mount Vernon, and he did. Some people don't realize just how brave he was. At the battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777, a young soldier wrote, and it is a recorded part of our history, ``The sight of Washington set an example of courage such as I have never seen. I shall never forget what I felt when I saw him brave all the dangers of the field and his important life hanging as if it were by a single hair with a thousand deaths flying around him. Believe me, I thought not of myself.'' That is not a picture we see much these days. Nathaniel Green wrote, ``He will be the deliverer of his own country.'' The Pennsylvania Journal wrote of Washington in 1777 as the revolution went on, ``If Washington had been born in the days of idolatry, he would be worshipped as a god. If there are spots on his character, they are like the spots on the sun, only discernible by the magnifying powers of a telescope.'' As David McCollough wrote, ``Without Washington's leadership and unrelenting persistence, the Revolution almost certainly would have failed.'' That is the kind of heritage we have. That is the kind of truthful, honest, courageous man that helped start this country and to whom we owe so much. In conclusion, as our good friend and fellow Republican, we didn't know him personally, but God rest his soul, what a legacy, Abraham Lincoln, said in his second inaugural, ``With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.'' God has blessed America. Mr. Speaker, it is my prayer that will continue. I thank my good friend from Georgia for yielding to allow me to address those comments.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that from my good friend from Georgia. And it is an honor to not only be on the floor here, but to serve with the kind right honorable gentleman from Georgia, a physician to the body before he got here and now a physician to the heart of America since he is here. So that is an honor. But, you know, you were talking about, and to observe the House rules we do not call people by their first names here, so, Dr. Price, you were talking about truth. And one of the great disappointments over the last few decades has been the United Nations. It should be an integral part of our national security. Yet it has failed miserably. It has taken the wrong side so often, and yet we had an administration and a President who wanted someone as an ambassador to the U.N. who would be truthful, call things like they were. And as we saw in the Senate, when it came time to confirm Mr. Bolton, they threw on the brakes. Oh, my gosh, this guy can be rude. He will actually tell people what he thinks. We do not want someone going to the U.N. representing the United States that tells them what he thinks. Goodness, that might offend them. They need some offending. We needed Mr. Bolton in there. Son of a gun, that is his history. He tells people what he thinks. He got to the U.N. and he has been doing that, but without any thanks to the Democrats in the Senate that blocked it at every turn. But as we look today, a matter of national security is what is happening with Iran. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons. They have said that Israel has no right to exist. They want to nuke it out of existence. This is a dangerous country. And so what have we done? Well, we are sending that to the U.N. to let them see what they can do. Well, we are better off with Mr. Bolton there helping us and representing our interests. But the trouble is, that is one person in a myriad of people who are just overwhelmed with self-interest. And I really rise in frustration to the toothless tiger that we call the United Nations. You know, it was born out of the best of intentions. It was born out of the greatest and noblest aspirations, that we would bring peace to a war-torn world and justice to the oppressed. Yet what has happened is living proof that there is no such thing as institutional evolution. What has evolved has not been a higher, better entity in the United Nations. The U.N. has devolved into a mire of self-aggrandizement and self-absorption. They provided wealth to family members in the U.N., wealth to their own cronies, along with some of the most evil oppression in history. The U.N. sometimes barks, but never has any bite. It reminds me of a school teacher I had once years ago who often defended the bullies in our class and would lash out at anybody that tried to defend themselves against the bully. She would not help the oppressed; she took up for the bullies. That is what has started happening with the U.N. They do not want to help address the issue of bullies; they want to turn their heads, continue to help family members and cronies. But anyway, the U.N. has been a willing accomplice to some of the world's worst, most oppressive people; and sometimes it has been one of the biggest obstacles to people's liberty, freedom, and self-respect. We all know, or we should know, that referring Iran to the U.N. is problematic because of the lies and the intentional distortions. Iran has said that they want to destroy another nation, and yet the U.N. has shown they have no stomach for doing what is required. They pass resolution after resolution. But when it comes to putting teeth in anything, they just do not do it. They will try to justify what they are doing. I mean, I guess asking the U.N. to protect us would be tantamount to saying let us send in Scott Ritter to protect us from an oncoming train. I mean, he will notice the train's existence, try to justify why it is about to run over him and everybody on the track, but he will do no good. The U.N., that is the kind of actions they take. They try to justify things' existence, lash out at those being bullied, but not do what needs to be done. The U.N.'s word means nothing, and its corruption and deceit are an embarrassment, and it is no longer an advocate or a defender of truth and justice. In fact, they are often the impediment to those very things. It is high time we confronted them with that. And I would submit, Dr. Price, that sending an item to the U.N. for action is a bit like sending raw food to a kitchen that is filled with corruption, confusion, and selfishness. You are lucky if they act in that kitchen before the food spoils. And even if they do act before the food spoils, odds are they are going to consume it, and you will never seen it again. That is kind of what it is like when you send something to the U.N. They are either going to let it spoil, let it go rotten, or they are going to use it to their own self-fulfillment. What a sad nightmare this once great dream has become in the United Nations. I hope and pray that they will assist us with this international problem in Iran, because it involves our own national security. Some want to turn their heads and say, just like they did with Hitler, well, if we just let him have a little bit of what he wants, then he will leave us alone. But that kind of ambition and that kind of desire for world conquest does not ever go away. It continues to proceed on, and in some cases unimpeded where you meet pacifists, Dr. Price, I saw back a couple of years ago a bunch of signs being held by protesters about the war in Iraq. And they actually said this: war never brought about peace. That is it. War never brought about peace. I thought, my goodness, these people never studied history. War never brought peace? That is the only time there has been any kind of sustained peace where people had liberty during that peace is when there has been a war and the good guys won. So it is unfortunate that we have uneducated people who do not know history, refuse to learn from history. But I appreciate so much your efforts at bringing truth. And as you and I have talked about, and you have said, sunlight is one of the best disinfectants there is. So bringing truth out, I know at times we struggle as we listen to things that were not true. It is like there is a culture of deceit in this body, and the people need to know the truth.

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman would yield for one more moment, you come from a background as a physician of healing people. I come from a background of being a judge and chief justice and wanting to see justice. And it is amazing how we can work together and America allows that kind of freedom. So thank you for your efforts at bringing about what they used to say, as Superman started, truth, justice and the American way.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I come today to the floor of the House to honor the achievements of one of my constituents in the First Congressional District of Texas, Judy McDonald. Judy has been a model citizen and someone who deserves to be honored because of the way she has honored East Texas. Her lifetime of work has made our country, East Texas, and Nacogdoches a better place to live. As the first female mayor in Nacogdoches and one of the first female mayors in Texas, Judy worked tirelessly to increase economic opportunities and strengthen the local economy. She has been someone who has never shied away from firsts. She was the first woman to serve on the advisory board of what is now known as Texas Utilities and was later the first woman from East Texas to be named to the Texas Utilities governing board. The reason she deserves the honor itself does not lie in the fact that she is a woman, but in the beauty and generosity of her heart and soul. Through all of her many endeavors and accomplishments, she remains a wonderful wife to her husband, Archie, and a magnificent mother to their two sons, Tucker and Christopher. I am proud to say she is not only a great friend of East Texas, but she is a friend of mine. Madam Speaker, with this one piece of advice to anyone encountering Judy, if she is pushing a project, you have two options: number one, get on board; or, number two, get run over.