[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      COME TO LOATHE THE MILITARY

                                 ______


                               speech of

                         HON. ROBERT K. DORNAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, August 12, 1994

  The SPEAKER, pro tempore (Ms. Brown of Florida). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Dornan) is recognized for 60 minutes as the 
designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Madam Speaker, I had mentioned a week ago that on 
Wednesday and Thursday just past I would be doing two special orders, 
the first titled ``Feeding Christians to the Media Jackals,'' and the 
second I had titled ``. . . Come To Loathe the Military,'' a phrase 
taken from a letter that 23-year-old Bill Clinton wrote when he was 
avoiding the draft for the third and final time; the third time that a 
young high school graduate from Arkansas would go into uniform in his 
place. Clinton had used that expression in a letter to the head of the 
ROTC in the great State of Arkansas, Col. Eugene Holmes, who had 
survived the Bataan Death March and later was a colonel in command of 
the ROTC at the University of Arkansas.
  Colonel Holmes' borther Bob had died over the skies of Germany. His 
remains came back on his Eighth Air Force bomber, and his remains were 
buried at the cemetery at Cambridge where on my last visit I attempted 
to find his grave but ran out of time. One of these days I will get 
back to visit the grave of Bob Holmes.
  I hoped during the break, Madam Speaker, to visit with Colonel Holmes 
himself.
  In that Clinton letter to Holmes dated December 3, 1969, Clinton had 
used that expression that he and other young people in that period, 
because of Vietnam, had come to loathe the military. They made the 
mistake of blaming our men, now our young women, in uniform for the 
political policies set by this country.
  The letter that I think of when I say the ``Holmes letter'' was the 
letter that Colonel Holmes wrote to all of us--the American people--in 
mid-September of 1992 telling the Nation, advising the Nation, ``Do not 
vote for his Governor, then-Governor Bill Clinton, because Clinton 
``did not have the patriotism or the integrity to be the President of 
the United States. These are the words of the Bataan Death March 
survivor, who had over 20 men die in his arms, who endured over 3 years 
of horrible captivity on a major island of the Philippines, and whose 
younger brother died on a bombing mission against Adolf Hitler's Third 
Reich.


                feeding christians to the media Jackals

  I want to split my special order tonight, but I am going to start 
off, and I know Colonel Holmes would approve of this, Madam Speaker, 
with my theme of ``Feeding Christians to the Media jackals,'' because I 
introduced a piece of legislation today, House Resolution 519. I have 
28 original cosponsors.
  On this very day, our former Republican whip who is now serving as a 
distinguished U.S. Senator from the great State of Mississippi, Trent 
Lott, has introduced companion legislation identical in the Senate.
  My House Resolution 519, I have it before me, I will read it and then 
I will discuss it.
  But before I do, I want to discuss again briefly some of the great 
history of our House.
  Almost certainly, if Joseph Kennedy II had survived the Second World 
War, he would have come to Congress rather than his younger brother, 
Jack. Today, August 12, is the 50th anniversary of the death of Joseph 
Patrick Kennedy, the oldest son of the nine children of Joseph Kennedy, 
Sr.
  Let me read just very briefly how Joseph Kennedy gave his life for 
his Nation 50 years ago today and quickly mention some other spots 
around the world where young Americans were giving what Abraham Lincoln 
so beautifully called the ``full measure of devotion,'' their mortal 
lives.
  On this day, Navy Lt. (jg.) Joseph P. Kennedy, the older brother of 
Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, two sisters, Rosemary 
and Kathleen, and John F. Kennedy, soon-to-be congressman, Senator, 
President, and then assassinated in the 46th year of his life.
  Joe Kennedy took off from Great Britain in a 4-engine aircraft known 
as a Privateer. Most of us would recognize it as a B-24 Liberator, the 
bomber that our Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and former Senator 
George McGovern flew in combat.
  But the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator had an extremely large 
high profile single tail, and the Navy called it a Privateer. It was a 
big 4-engine bomber.
  They loaded this airplane with high explosives, dynamite to the 
layman, from bow to stern and put on it exotic radio-controlled 
equipment.
  Having bailed out of military planes twice in peacetime, I can assure 
you when you bail out there is a great risk of life. You wonder if you 
are going to make it. Joe Kennedy had never bailed out in his life from 
an aircraft, civilian or military. And he was going to bail out of this 
big aircraft with his copilot--usually they would have a crew of 10. I 
am afraid I did not look up the name of this young copilot who died 
with Joe Kennedy. Kennedy was going to get this airplane over the 
English Channel, and even in summertime, it was pretty risky going 
across that channel. They were going to bail out of this aircraft once 
it had been guided by radio experimental controls toward the German 
submarine pens. They were to bail out and be rescued after they had 
launched this massive flying bomb, 4-engine bomber that of course would 
be destroyed when it flew right into the target.
  Something went wrong, some tiny little spark, and Joe Kennedy and his 
courageous volunteer copilot, their remains were atomized somewhere 
over the English Channel, his fate known only to God, after they had 
lost radio contact.
  He gave his life for his country in that struggle.
  Life-and-death struggles were going on all over Brittany and the 
Normandy Peninsula.
  The great George S. Patton, 3-star general at that time, had just 
broken out. He had run 35 miles yesterday, 50 years ago, and had taken 
a left turn and was about to close the Phalaise gap, which he came 
within a hair's breadth of doing, and maybe shortening the war, 
trapping an entire German army, an army that had been fighting since D-
day in Normandy. In Brittany he had reached out his forces, 
particularly the 5th Armored Division, which adopted a very simple 
nickname, ``Victory.'' The Victory Division was in the front, one of 
the spearhead units. We had crossed the beautiful Loire Valley, that 
beautiful chateau country. He had taken Nante and the French ports 
along Brittany. I only learned last night, reading something that I had 
never seen anywhere, that we never did conquer the German-held French 
ports of St. Milo and Lorean. They stayed German property until March 
1945. Imagine how the areas around those citadels were littered with 
the bodies of young American infantrymen and armored artillery officers 
and men. We did take within a few days Brest and some of the other 
ports along there. And of course used those ports again to build up 
Patton's 3d Army and the 1st Army to make the final thrust across the 
Rhine in the dead of the worst winter, 50 years ago in March 1945.

  What we always forget, and I have said this on the floor 4 or 5 times 
already in the last month, is the other struggles that were going on.
  British forces took one of the most beautiful places in the world and 
liberated it today. They crossed the Arno yesterday into Florence and 
today they took the northern suburbs of Florence, 50 years ago today. 
The Russian Army, where more people were killed in combat than ever in 
history and probably ever again--God willing we never got ourselves 
into a nuclear conflict. In the South Pacific, in Guan, with the loss 
of almost 3,000 American lives and 17,000 Japanese lives, Guam was 
finally secure--secure except for the hundreds of Japanese that went 
into the jungle and fought on, not until just the end of the war, but 
fought on for years. One of them, one of the last survivors, turning 
himself in finally 27 years later in 1972. But Guam was safe enough to 
start building those B-29 based to bring Japanese Imperial warlords to 
a position of unconditional surrender in August and to sign a peace 
treaty September 2 of 1945.
  I hope to be a U.S. Congressman next year at not only Iowa Jima's 
50th anniversary on February 23 but there in Tokyo Harbor on September 
2 for the 50th anniversary of the signing of that great end to a 
ghastly, horrible slaughter of 55 million human beings. Yes this is 
quite a date in history.
  May I put in here some notes of important meetings going on that 
turned out to be Communist lies.
  Churchill, 50 years ago today, was in the recently liberated city of 
southern France. And he was there meeting with Yugoslav leader Josip 
Tito and the royalist prime minister of the kind of put together from 
World War I the false state of Yugoslavia. That prime minister was 
Irvan Subasic. Tito swore that he would not impose a Communist 
Government on Yugoslavia. Tito was probably a Croat, mostly with 
Serbian support. Preying on and eventually executing Radij Mihalevic, 
he says, ``I am not a communist, and there will be no communist 
government,'' in lies to the great Winston Churchill, lies to his face. 
I repeat the British Army, 8th Army, driving the Germans out of the 
Italian city of Fiorenzi, or Florence. by the way, Joseph Kennedy's 
mission was called Aphrodite. I wonder if that is taught in schools 
about the first of the Kennedy brothers who died violently serving his 
country. It is interesting that Joe's death came 1 year and 11 days 
after John F. Kennedy's PT boat was cut in half, when he lost two of 
his men, and he won the Navy Cross by swimming to the Tuculumbungara 
Island with his life preserve on one of his burned enlisted crew 
members in his teeth. Kennedy picked up there a painful back injury 
from the Japanese destroyer cutting him in half that gave him great 
pain until the day he was assassinated in Dallas 20 years and some 
months later--back pain from his service in World War II.
  Now what was happening to George Bush, our last immediate President, 
the 41st President of the United States? This week, 50 years ago, 
George Bush flew his 41st, 42nd and 43rd combat missions, building up 
to September 2, when he bailed out for the second time. That time he 
lost both his crew members. The first time he ditched, and both were 
saved; that was his 48th combat mission. He went back, and, after his 
second bail out, he had every right to be sent back stateside. They 
offered it to him. He had just done 30 days of unexpected submarine 
duty when the lifeguard submarine had picked him up. He was depth 
charged in that sub, had combat missions under the water, and he said, 
``No, I'm going back to my ship, the San Jacinto,'' and he flew ten 
more combat missions. But this was the week in the Marianas, bombing 
Iwo Jima, Chi Chi Jima, that George Bush got missions 41, 42 and 43.
  Cut that half a century in half. Where was Clinton 25 years ago 
today?
  Meeting with the pro-Hanoi movement to set up those coordinated 
demonstrations that he would lead in England while they were being led 
here by his friends, David Metzger and the deputy, No. 2 man at the 
State Department today, Strobe Talbott--all that pro-Hanoi gang. They 
were working on dual objectives for Clinton, crush and suppress his 
draft notice in which he was ordered to show up July 28 of 1969. He had 
that crushed, reversed, undone. I had never heard of that in my life 
before or since. Right to this day, never heard of that. And now he was 
spending all of August getting ready for the demonstrations in Europe 
and was about to head back at the end of this month, 25 years ago, to 
Oxford where all the evidence indicates he never went to class, never 
stood for his June exams and, thereby, never got his degree until they 
gave him the honorary one at the end of the week-long photo opportunity 
period during the 50th anniversary at Normandy.
  So, that was what was going on 25 years ago. By the way, 25 years ago 
in Vietnam the 101st Airborne was still mourning its wounded from the 
battles in Hamburger Hill; the mini Tet offensive of September before 
was 11 months old. They were expecting another, a third, Tet offensive. 
That summer it never materialized, and it was Nixon's first year. His 
secret plan to end the war in Vietnam was not to be implemented until 3 
years later when Nixon had watched another 15,000 or more lives 
squandered in Vietnam. That is why this Republican was never a fan of 
Nixon's conduct of the war. Our POWs were at about the half point in 
numbers. Some of them had already been there. As I said, Alvarez was 
shot down 30 years ago this month on August 5, and so he was at the 
halfway point of his--beyond the halfway point of his captivity, but 
hundreds more were to be taken in this off-again, on-again, uncertain 
struggle.
  And, as I have said on this floor, and I will say it until the day I 
die, Vietnam was no different than France, no different than New 
Guinea, no different than Iwo Jima, no different than France on the 
first go-around in 1918. It was American men from the same type of 
family, the same type of background, the same kind of patriotic 
conservative upbringing, the same men that fought in Desert Storm. 
These are all the same families, the same middle class background, with 
a few heroic, young, nobless oblige kids from wealthy families, and 
some poor kids generally, but they were the lucky ones because most 
poor kids were rejected by the draft board because they did not have a 
sufficient education to serve.

  Remember 18,000,000 people were called by our draft board in World 
War II, and 6,000,000 of them were told--6,000,000--``We don't need 
you. You're not physically strong enough. You weren't fed well enough 
when you were young, and you don't have a sufficient education to even 
enter the Army as a G.I. doughboy, grand M-1 rifle-toting 
infantryman.''
  So, that is the background of my remarks today about what those men 
fought for.
  As a young kid in the Second World War, I remember the Saturday 
Evening Post magazine's coming out with those Norman Rockwell paintings 
of Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want and 
Freedom from Fear. So, if I were doing a separate special order and 
starting out now, I would have ended the one called ``Come to Loath the 
Military,'' and I would now be starting a special order entitled, 
``Feeding Christians to the Media Jackals.''
  Madam Speaker, here is my House Res. 519:
  Mr. DORNAN submitted the following resolution, and in the 
Congressional Record, those people on C-Span that may want to look at 
it up in the library in their hometown that carries the Congressional 
Record, and most do, they will get the list of 28 cosponsors. I expect 
to have 150 before we adjourn here someday in the first week in 
October. Here is the resolution, which is also being introduced on the 
Senate side today, I repeat, by a great Senator from Mississippi, Trent 
Lott.
  The resolution expresses the sense of the House of Representatives 
regarding religious intolerance:

       Whereas the rights, liberties and freedoms derived from the 
     Constitution of the United States are guaranteed to all 
     citizens regardless of their religious beliefs or 
     affiliations; and whereas individuals of all religious 
     denominations have made substantial contributions to the 
     establishment, preservation and protection of the system of 
     government of the Nation; now, therefore, be it resolved 
     that, one, the House of Representatives strongly opposes 
     anti-Christians bigotry and all forms of religious 
     intolerance and condemns all manifestations and expressions 
     of religious bigotry and intolerance; two, the House condemns 
     individuals and organizations that foster intolerance, 
     suspicion, hatred or fear of individuals who, A, hold values 
     rooted in religious tenet; B, participate in the political 
     process to ensure that the laws of the Nation reflect such 
     values; C, advocate public policies that are respectful of 
     such values; and, D, it shall be the policy of the House to 
     seek to ensure that the rights of individuals to participate 
     in the political process of the Nation are not infringed on 
     the basis of their religious beliefs or affiliations.

  Now, what motivated me, Madam Speaker, to have our legislative 
counsel draft this, I believe, important resolution? And what causes us 
to reaffirm what, when I was a young kid, was part of the whole 
American fabric of life, a respect for all religions? Well, it was, I 
am sorry to say, my friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio], 
one of the Democrat leaders and deputy chair of the Democrat 
conference.
  I came to this House on my first go-around in 1976. Vic came 2 years 
later. He is a decade younger than I am, but I remember him over by 
that leadership desk in January of 1979 with little blond and red-
headed children. They looked like my children just a few years before, 
and I went over and introduced myself, and I said, ``Boy, can I borrow 
some of these kids? They're just duplicates of mine, only a couple of 
decades younger.''
  The gentleman from California [Mr. Fazio] and I have always, always 
had nothing but the most cordial of relations during our whole time 
here in Congress. I assume with that good paisano name, Fazio, that he 
might be a fellow Roman Catholic. So I asked him and he said no, that 
he was Episcopalian or something, and I said, ``Well, great,'' I said, 
``I'm glad to have you on board from northern California. This is an 
exciting time to be serving our country.''
  Since that time, I have crossed swords with the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Fazio] in debate on this floor only once. He apparently 
did not know that Kate Michaelman had admitted publicly in Senate 
testimony that she had aborted her fourth child--it was her first 
abortion, the other three daughters were born alive--and that she was a 
Catholic, and had done it with a heavy heart. Kate Michaelman is now 
the spokesperson for NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League. 
I had mentioned this fact on the floor of the House. Mr. Fazio thought 
I was revealing some personal secret of hers. He took me on, I took him 
on, and on a point of personal privilege we resolved the matter. It is 
the only time we crossed verbal swords in this House. But I think my 
pal from California, Vic Fazio, is walking on very slippery ground when 
he goes down to the National Press Club and talks about firebreathing 
Christians and gives egregious, and I cannot believe sincere, advice, 
to my party, the party that he is in opposition to here 90 percent of 
the time. He held a press conference to suggest that Republicans must 
purge from our party all firebreathing Christians who have entered 
politics because they are worried about the cultural meltdown, the 
moral decline and the degradation, and what the prior speaker, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Nadler] said, the bad guys and gals 
winning in the streets of our Nation, tearing our young people apart. 
We cannot demonize, and that is a word that the New York Times and the 
Washington Post and the L.A. Times have commented on. We cannot 
demonize the marginalize people in our country whose primary obligation 
as they see it is to raise stalwart young men and women and to pass on 
to them the verities that they learned at their mothers' knees, that 
were reinforced by their dads and by their school teachers.
  I can remember the first thing I had to write in my binder as a Air 
Force preflight aviation cadet was we hold these truths to be self-
evident, and that all men are created equal. And I remember taking my 
soft plastic binder, and with a ball point pen, embedding into it, with 
a firm reliance on divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our 
fortunes, and our sacred honor. And those very words that were signed 
by 56 early American forefathers, many of which gave up their fortunes, 
and some of them gave up their sacred lives, and none of them gave up 
their honor.

  There is Moses' face in this chamber, the only one of the 23 large 
marble medallions of lawmakers that is other than a left or right 
profile. It starts with Moses, the keystone, the lodestar, dead center, 
looking right down at you, Madam Speaker, and over your head are the 
words ``In God we trust.''
  We are not going to strip out of our country our religious heritage.
  I spent my 30th year proudly watching John Lewis, the distinguished 
gentleman from Georgia, up there on that stage with Martin Luther King, 
speaking on that great August day, 31 years ago, it is amazing, August 
28th, 1963.
  John and I are the only two members of this Chamber or the U.S. 
Senate who were present to hear Martin Luther King give his speech, ``I 
have a dream.'' And that speech is the only words of Martin King, 
Reverend King, that supersedes his great words in his letter from a 
Birmingham jail, where he said, ``The laws of God supersede every law 
of man.''
  I suppose the Democrats are so desperate this election year that they 
will try anything to hang onto their majority. My gosh, the Democrats 
have controlled this place for 40 years, since I was too young to vote. 
In my first election, I was 21 then, I was in pilot training in 
Florida--no, I moved to Texas for jet training by that time, and 
everybody I voted for in California by absentee ballot lost. Jim Wright 
got elected in November of 1954, Eisenhower lost the House and the 
Senate, and it was only his second year. We have sat on this side of 
the aisle ever since. We have never had anything but minority loyal 
opposition on this side of the aisle. We are in our 40th year. We will 
come close, but I wouldn't put money that we will take it. And if 
Republicans do not take over Congress, the Democrats will continue to 
have liberals running the leadership positions and every committee for 
the 41st and 42nd year in a row. Totally unkown, that type of 
domination of one party in the first 150 years of our Nation's history.
  And now, the Democrats are trying to save themselves from losing more 
than the average 14 seats. They may lose 20 seats. They may lose 30 
seats. This conduct comes up, we might just have a seat change and turn 
this place upside down. We will move to that side of the aisle, and 
maybe in my last 2 years I will get to be Speaker pro tempore, standing 
up there and looking eloquent like you, Madam Speaker, which I have 
never done in 18 years of tenure around this place. Anything can 
happen.
  But I will give my friend Vic, and he is my friend, the same warning 
that I gave my classmate from 1976, Al Gore, who is now the Vice 
President of the United States. I gave it to him to the right, of that 
door here, when he said Hi to me, warmly one morning, We have got 
good relations. And he had with him the prime minister of Ukraine. He 
introduced me to the prime minister.

  I said Al, let me talk to you a second. I crossed that door, spoke to 
him by that half a pillar on the Republican side, I said Al, Vic Fazio 
is giving my party advice. I don't know whether to take it seriously, 
about kicking activist Christians out of my party because they control 
the State organizations in six States. That kind of makes me happy. But 
let me give you some real advice. Al, we don't want a battle over 
religious belief. I said Al, are you aware that Mother Theresa is not 
part of the political religious left? She is certainly not the 
nonbelieving pagan left in this country. She is not the country-club-
Republican atheist right in this country. And she is not part of the 
National Council of Churches, that doesn't know where they stand one 
month to next. Mother Theresa is part of the conservative religious 
right. And I said Al, so is Pope John Paul II, who you have met with 
twice.
  This is the religious right. What you are taking on would be one-
quarter of this country. Because I speak for the majority of my church. 
I am in the mainstream of my faith. I may not agree with my bishops 
over certain forms of gun control or Central America or capital 
punishment or universal medical care--all of those are optionable 
beliefs in my faith.
  But the sacredness of human life, growing in a woman's womb, the 
sacredness of that life with an immortal soul for all of eternity 
infused into it by God the Creator Himself? That belief is not 
optionable.
  And when I hear that nine members of this House go to a meeting 
yesterday, right here in our own building, guarded by nine Capitol Hill 
police in case something untoward happened--to a meeting of a task 
force called the Radical Right Task Force, it struck me that every 
caucus in this House, funded or not funded, usually has a positive 
purpose. For strong Rational defense, for instance. Or the Hispanic 
Caucus. We are allowed to belong to that, even if we are not Hispanic. 
I am a southern Californian. I love Hispanic history in my adopted 
State. The Arts Caucus, I am on that even though I get on the floor 
here and get angry at certain NEA grants squandering our good 
taxpayers' money for pornography or blasphemy. I am in the Grace 
Caucus. We have got all these caucuses focused on a positive good.
  I cannot recall--may find an exception over the weekend--I of a task 
force or caucus ever formed in this House like the one that Mr. Fazio 
that is focused on one group of people because of their religious 
beliefs.
  Now, to be sure, that whole group would say, oh, we are not talking 
about the Pope or Mother Theresa or your run-of-the-mill average loyal 
or disloyal Catholic.
  We are not talking about mainstream Protestant designations. We are 
not even talking about smaller Protestant groups like Christian 
Scientists or Mormons. We are talking about fundamentalists. That is 
the word they use in all of these fire-breathing press releases of 
theirs.
  Fundamentalists. That word has taken on a terrifying meaning in Iran. 
It has taken on a terrifying meaning, when that is the way the general 
media describes terrorists who blow up the second and third tallest 
buildings in the world after the Chicago Sears Tower, it is the Trade 
Twin Towers in New York. Blowing them up, five people dead, a sixth 
dies horribly in pain with lung failure weeks later. Six people dead, 
1,000 injured by people called radical fundamentalists.
  I know that Vic never makes a move, nor does Mr. Clinton, without 
these focus groups, without this garbage of putting people in a theater 
somewhere and getting touchy-feely buzzers, to press a button every 
time they ask them a test question.
  And boy, when those focus groups or pollsters tell you this is up or 
this is down, then you come out with this bizarre attack on 
fundamentalist Christians who have tended to avoid politics as Caesar's 
world. All my adult life, how many groups I have spoken to begging them 
to come into the political process so they can have home school for 
their child and keep their young daughter innocent and try to teach 
their son to live up to the same standard of chasteness and decency 
that they are asking of his sisters. And then when they turn that son 
out into the angry, dangerous, violent and drug-ridden streets, they 
can expect that their son or daughter not to have their family values 
trampled upon. These people must come into the marketplace and get 
involved, they must make sure that Mosaic law and Christian principle 
and Jesus Christ's golden rule is written into law in this Chamber.
  The dumbest, the most ignorant remark I have ever heard in my life 
is, you cannot legislate morality. What an asinine half-truthful 
statement. What that purports to mean is you cannot legislate morality 
in somebody's heart, which is an organ that we use to indicate the 
sensitive reasoning of brain power. You cannot do that.
  But all law is a form of legislative morality. If not, why do we have 
St. Gregory over this door? Why do we have St. Alphonse over the other 
door, St. Edward the Confessor, St. Lewis, whose mother said, ``I would 
rather have my son dead at my feet than have him commit one grievous 
mortal sin''? Why do we have Moses up here? Why do we have the great 
Rabbi who rewrote all the Talmudic law, a genius, Maimonides, writing 
in 11th century Spain.
  Oh, we have got some losers up here like Napoleon, but we still have 
his Napoleonic law. We have people who did not belong to any specific 
religion but who certainly believed in God, like Thomas Jefferson. I 
tend to believe that he was a sincere man when he wrote, with a firm 
reliance on divine province. He meant every word of it.
  Hammurabi, with his dark sides and did some killing. There are Greek 
and Roman people up there like Solon and Justinian who had their dark 
moments. But we have got Suleiman. We have got saints up on these 
walls. All law is a form of legislative morality.
  It is easy to take down the tablets of Moses. Just off the top of my 
head, I remember when I was traveling against child pornography 3 years 
before I came here, finding the tablets on the front lawn of the 
courthouse in Duluth, Minnesota, up in Lake Superior, in the capital 
city of Nevada. Are they still there? I did not know there were tablets 
on the wall of the third floor in the Montgomery County, MD courthouse 
where the ACLU is trying to rip them down.
  When Moses wrote, thou shalt not kill, did he say, you cannot defend 
yourself in uniform if you are a police officer, a police woman, in the 
military, a fighter pilot in the skies? No. He meant killing, 
murdering, immorally. But then we took his commandment and turned it 
into first-degree murder, second-degree murder, third-degree murder, 
voluntary manslaughter.
  When he says, thou shalt not steal, did he foresee Bunco? Did he 
foresee a rip-off televangelist minister, a disgrace to religion, 
focused on greed and money, giving a bad name to religion but 
disappearing quickly, destroying themselves. They always do. Did he 
think about pickpocketing or, I said bunco artists, armed robbery, 
burglary, carjacking, home invasion? We are learning terms like 
carjacking and home invasion that we not even dreamed of when I first 
arrived in this Chamber. We have codified all of those stealing fever 
laws under mosaic commandments, thou shalt not steal.

  When he says thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, does that mean 
you could do it if you were a lesbian and she was separated from her 
husband? No, we do not have all that codification. It says basically, 
thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
wife. And it is left up to men and women of good will, with the 
guidance of religious leaders and lawmakers of principle, to decide 
what should be in the law and what should be taken care of by our 
hearts.
  We know that there has not been a single person ever maybe in this 
Chamber, we left it to the States, who have tried to pass any laws 
against easy, quick, no-fault, cheap lying divorce. Never going to be 
adjudicated in my lifetime. I have never even thought of writing a law. 
But we know that quick, easy divorce, where children are involved is 
causing those angry streets out there. It turns into the community 
deserted children.
  I do not like the term ``dead beat dad.'' It may both start with a D 
and have a little alliteration to it, but dead beat dad sounds far too 
cute to me. This is a deserting, rotten person who brought children 
into the world and then ditches them and, so he can keep his Mercedes-
Benz payments, does not contribute to the education of the children, 
let alone the funding of how they live and how they eat.
  We all know when we study divorce that it turns loose a man. And 
unless he is a person of particular courage who becomes that Sunday 
visiting dad, his income goes up and the woman's income goes rock 
bottom and a life of terrible pain and struggle begins. That is for the 
States to decide and really for a change, a sea change of heart in 
culture, in our society.
  The abortion battle is going to be with us forever, forever, because 
it is like slavery. It involves life. You cannot steal a human being's 
life and lock them up, as with a slave, and that can never be 
accomplished without turmoil and bringing a curse on your society. And 
you can never snuff out a human being's heartbeat in the womb of its 
mother and zero line its brain wave. You cannot ever do that. And that 
brain wave starts, that heartbeat starts at day 18, about, and the 
brain wave, by day 40, is established. You can never snuff that out 
without having this always a matter of public concern.
  I tell my friend Vic that when he reads editorials like this in the 
New York Times or a front-page story, he better run from this. Here is 
the New York Times, June 3d. This is the paper that gave Vic Fazio some 
of these ideas. Conservative Christians have burst into view this year 
as an important, often divisive force in Republican politics. They now 
have control of six State organizations and are making inroads into 
several others. Front page. The mother paper of America.
  Here is an editorial in the New York Times 4 days later:
  ``Many of the retrograde forces that brought us the ugliest 
Republican National Convention in recent memory,'' I was there. I did 
not see this festival of hate and fear. I saw some speeches I did not 
agree with, but it was dominant media culture, 95 percent liberal at 
the top of the networks, the three biggest papers in the country, they 
put this hate and fear spin on my Republican convention with a darn 
good platform.
  It says, ``The retrograde forces that brought us this national, 
ugliest national convention of recent memory have now conspired to 
nominate Oliver Lawrence North for the United States Senate in 
Virginia.'' That became a fait accompli.
  ``Mr. North's startling ascendancy is ominous evidence that the GOP 
remains vulnerable to the foot soldiers of fundamentalism.''
  Listen to this paragraph from my brilliant young friend, William 
Crystal.
  ``This month marks an important and alarming development in the 
politics of American religion.'' The month he is talking about is June. 
``As the influence in the Republican Party of `fervent Christians' 
emerges as the hottest trendy story and talk show topic of the 
summer.'' And it persists, 2 months later. Why should just now there be 
all this dark talk about this subject is an interesting question.
  The answer is not, despite what the Times suggest, that the religious 
right has ``taken over'' one of our two national parties and that our 
civil liberties, therefore, hang in the balance. It is by no means 
clear, in fact, that the influence of religious conservatives has 
increased much at all over the past many months.
  We remember a front-page Washington Post story reporting significant 
Christian coalition participation in the Republican politics in more 
than half a dozen States a year ago. That story presumably about the 
same States featured with such drama not 2 weeks ago in the Times was 
in fact in September of 1992.
  Madam Speaker, at this point let me look for another few key articles 
to put in here. I was over here at St. Peter's on the Hill, St. 
Joseph's on the Senate side, St. Peter's on the House side, and here, 
just like many churches, only a block away from what used to be, and I 
would like to think still is, the heart of the District of Columbia.
  Madam Speaker, in the back of the church I picked up the standard 
Archdiocesan newspaper for this area of the country called the Catholic 
Standard. The senior publisher of this would be, of course, the 
Archbishop, James Cardinal Hickey.
  Madam Speaker, I read in here in a front-page story that many of my 
colleagues are distraught at the role the Catholic church is now 
playing in politics vis-a-vis the health debate. Leaders in the 
Catholic church are demanding that there not be coverage of abortion on 
demand for any reason under the sun, or no reason whatsoever, for all 9 
months, right up until 1 microsecond before labor begins. That is the 
Roman Catholic Church's stand.
  I read on the cover that my friend and colleague, the gentlewoman 
from Colorado [Patricia Schroeder], is really upset with that, that the 
church is making these statements. She says that, ``The church is now 
going to undermine women's health care needs.''
  That is my colleague, the gentlewoman from New York [Nita Lowey], a 
Democrat from New York. She insisted that the church is using health 
care reform to repeal Roe versus Wade. No, it is not. It is a separate 
debate, although, of course, the church would like to repeal Roe versus 
Wade. I would, too. After all, the whole case was based on lies.
  Madam Speaker, the name for the young woman, Roe, was a lie. She 
never was raped. She made it up. Whoever heard of a Supreme Court 
decision that significant and far-reaching based on a foul lie? She 
simply was not raped, and had that baby anyway. It was her third 
attempt at abortion.
  The woman who uses this pseudonym, Roe, has three daughters, all 
grown up, in their twenties. They have never met, as far as I know. The 
daughters would like to reconcile, but they said, ``Not until our 
mother says she is happy that she did not get to kill all three of 
us.'' That is the Roe in Roe versus Wade. The Wade was the district 
attorney in the State of Texas.
  Madam Speaker, the gentleman from California [Don Edwards], who is in 
his last months; in just 88 days is the election, when he will be 
replaced in this Chamber; Don Edwards says, joining the debate, ``I 
especially resent the fact that certain religious groups are entering 
this political fight here in Congress.'' He resents that fact? Certain 
religious groups? Come on, Don, you mean Catholic, Roman Catholic 
Church.
  If you want to be a know-nothing, like the people that got a rowboat 
and took a carved stone that the Vatican had sent for our Washington 
Monument, and took it out in the middle of the Potomac and dumped it, 
where it remains to this day, and that kind of know-nothing shut down 
the building of the Washington Monument for the better part of several 
decades; if you want to be a know-nothing about the Catholic Church, go 
ahead, take it on, Don.
  Madam Speaker, the landscape of history for the better part of 1,900 
years is littered with the forgotten and demeaned reputations of people 
who took on Holy Mother Church, or religion in general.
  Let us have a debate about that some day. That is a good subject for 
our Oxford debate, casting the fire-breathing right to the media 
jackals. It would come up with a softer title than that.

  Madam Speaker, here is a great lady that I have only have the 
opportunity to meet once, Helen Alvare, of the Life Issues Forum under 
the National Conference of Bishops. She says, ``The best antidote (in 
addition to prayer, for the graces of dignity and holding your temper) 
is a good dose of the truth.''
  With that preamble, this spokeswoman for the Life Issues Forum of the 
Catholic Church takes apart these false claims. She says, ``One of the 
claims is that the church is trying to take away what women presently 
have in private insurance.'' According to Alvare, ``Virtually everyone 
who supports abortion mandates in health reform has claimed that most 
women have private insurance coverage of abortion. They say that unless 
abortion is `a basic benefit,''' and it is, in the Gephardt and 
Mitchell health care reform plans, and of course, Clinton or Clinton-
light or Hillary Clinton health care plan, all this abortion coverage 
is in there, making all of us pay for what we believe is the flat-out 
killing, and in some cases, in the cases of these abortionist doctors 
who kill 32 or more a day, knowledgeable, knowledgeable murder of 
innocent human life; not all of them, I guess there have to be stupid 
abortion doctors out there with a totally twisted and malformed 
conscience.
  She goes on to say that is not a proven fact at all, and mandating 
abortion in every policy in this country. Not so, she says. ``There is 
no conclusive proof that most private policies now cover abortion. Even 
if the claim were true, it would be irrelevant. What people can freely 
choose to buy or not buy'' in abortion insurance coverage today ``is no 
argument for forcing them under penalty of law to buy it tomorrow.''
  Then again, in answering my distinguished colleagues, the gentlewoman 
from New York [Mrs. Lowey] and the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. 
Schroeder] and the gentleman from California [Mr. Edwards], she goes on 
to say, ``If those who claim they only want to preserve the `status 
quo' were honest,'' said Alvare, ``they would insist that health care 
reform preserve people's ability to choose whether to buy abortion 
insurance. They would never insist that abortion be a `basic benefit' 
that every person must own.''
  Then here is myth, too, that she explodes. ``Another claim is that 
the church,'' and this speakes for most Christian denominations, ``does 
not want women to benefit from health reform. This was the premise of 
Schroeder's argument as she harshly accused the church of plotting to 
harm women's health interests under cover of removing abortion mandates 
from health care. The Congresswoman included `osteoporosis' in her list 
of woman's services and diseases targeted for destruction in the 
church's `plot.'
  ``In reality,'' comes back Mrs. Alvare, ``the church has been in the 
forefront of efforts to promote access and quality services for women. 
Our hospitals,'' over 1,2000 of them, ``provide care to millions of 
women every year. And our respect life agenda includes both support for 
healing and opposition to killing.
  ``That is why * * * the church opposes legislation that would force 
individual abortion coverage, force Catholic hospitals into business 
relationships with abortionists, and force communities,'' and this 
includes Lutheran hospitals, ``to open unwanted abortion clinics.'' She 
emphasized the word ``force'' in the statement.
  As an aside, Alvare added, ``The church thinks women deserve really 
good,'' excellent, ``treatment for osteoporosis.''
  The argument that the bishops are really trying to overturn Roe 
versus Wade admittedly tries Alvare's patience. ``It is legally 
impossible for Federal health care legislation to overturn Supreme 
Court decisions,'' she says firmly. ``Roe could be overturned only by a 
constitutional amendment'' or another whole group of flesh-and-blood 
people on the Supreme Court, people who have maybe had a life, unlike 
Justice Souter, who indicated one thing and votes the other, which so 
often happens with appointees to the Supreme Court.
  She closes, ``Unfortunately, Roe is the law. It made abortions legal 
on demand,'' for all 9 months, for any reason at all, ``but a health 
insurance bill that mandates abortion coverage would go much,'' much, 
much ``further. It would force abortion into the private lives of every 
family, every health provides, every community, and every taxpayer.''
  Alvare notes that if abortion is eliminated from the basic benefits 
package and made available as a supplemental benefit, abortion-on-
demand is sadly going to remain legal but the rest of us will not have 
to subsidize other people's decisions to kill their young in their 
womb.
  Still another claim floating around the halls of Congress is that the 
bishops are really trying to impose their religious values on everyone. 
Yeah, they're really having luck with that, aren't they? ``Does this 
one sound familiar?'' she asks. Every time an identifiable Catholic or 
Catholic institution speaks up in the public square about abortion, 
someone else raises this question.
  She suggested practicing the following response in front of a mirror. 
She is recommending looking in a mirror for Edwards and Lowey and Pat 
Schroeder. Look in a mirror, without a hint of impatience in your 
voice, and say this to yourself:
  Being for unborn life is not a religious perspective, but a moral one 
shared by millions of Americans, religious and nonreligious. Opposition 
to government coerced involvement with abortion--China--is shared by 
even more millions. Poll after poll shows it. American women and men do 
not want universal insurance coverage with abortion mandates.
  The final phony, false, lying claim is that the church really wants 
to make contraception illegal. I have never heard a sermon on making 
contraception illegal in the 45 years of my life since I was a middle 
teenager, not that I even heard it then, as anything but for the 
faithful.
  She noted, Mrs. Alvare, that contraception is an important moral 
issue but she makes this key distinction: It does not kill human life, 
which abortion does. In the area of contraception, the church is 
seeking conscience protections but not seeking to make it illegal or 
unavailable.
  She pointed out that much of the rhetoric by prochoice advocates is a 
way to deflect attention from the truth.
  ``People don't lie about you or your arguments if they have good 
arguments themselves.'' Well said, Mrs. Alvare.
  Look, what I see here is a veiled attack, marginalizing and 
demonizing born-again, charismatic, evangelical, protestant Christians 
in order to try and cripple, intimidate or to scare orthodox and 
traditional Jews, Serbian orthodox, Greek orthodox, Armenian orthodox, 
Russian orthodox, eastern orthodox, Greed orthodox and traditional 
loyal orthodox Roman Catholics. By hitting at these groups that they 
think in their little focus groups do not have the clout to fight back, 
they think they can accomplish a major objective and save about 20 
seats that they are probably going to lose in the coming election 88 
days from this very day.
  I would say for the sanity and the comity and the well-being and the 
decency of debate and discourse in this Chamber, do not proceed with 
your battle plans, Task Force on Radical Right. Jim Moran was in the 
well right today when I used his name as having been at this 9-
policemen-guarded opening meeting yesterday, chaired by Louise 
Slaughter. Do not do this.
  I close, Madam Speaker and let my time clock run out on this: 
Intelligent, lovely black lady columnist Adrienne T. Washington that I 
read occasionally in the Washington Times, the headline of her article 
from this week, 3 days ago, August 9, caught my eye. It says ACLU 
Censors the Ten Commandments. I will start reading it and I will 
include it in the Record in its entirety:

       For decades a 3-by-4-foot bronze plaque with a centuries-
     old message has blended into the brickwork of the Montgomery 
     County Courthouse. It's been around so long it hangs 
     virtually unnoticed.
       But no longer.
       The ACLU wants the plaque of the Ten Commandments taken 
     down from its perch on the third floor of the Judicial Center 
     in Rockville.
       Is Moses next, the author of those commandments? I would 
     guess so, in the long run. Do they not have more significant 
     causes to champion?

  Madam Speaker, you will find the rest of her article compelling 
reading.
  Her last words are:

       Those 10 commandments are a necessary reminder, something 
     we can learn from, if not aspire to. It should stay right 
     where it is as just one expression, one example, of what a 
     whole lot of people believe it takes to truly live free in 
     today's topsy-turvy world.
  Madam Speaker, I include the Washington article for the Record, as 
follows:

               [From the Washington Times, Aug. 9, 1994]

                   ACLU Censors the Ten Commandments

                      (By Adrienne T. Washington)

       For decades a 3-by-4-foot bronze plaque with a centuries-
     old message has blended into the brickwork of the Montgomery 
     County Courthouse. It's been around so long it hangs 
     virtually unnoticed.
       The American Civil Liberties Union wants the plaque of the 
     Ten Commandments taken down from its perch on the third floor 
     of the Judicial Center in Rockville, saying it violates the 
     First Amendment separation of church and state.
       Don't they have more significant causes to champion?
       Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the Montgomery County 
     chapter of the ACLU, told reporter Arlo Wagner of The 
     Washington Times that the plaque should be removed ``because 
     the government should not be telling people to observe the 
     Sabbath,'' among other religious teachings.
       How ludicrous. Mr. Spitzer is wrong. If ever there was a 
     place to hang the Ten Commandments, it's in the so-called 
     hallowed halls of blind justice. Here, humankind may welcome 
     a little divine guidance along with a little divine 
     intervention.
       Most of the criminal codes and civil laws of Western 
     civiliazation are based on the Judeo-Christian ethics 
     espoused in the Ten Commandments. Besides, what about the 
     other First Amendment rights that guarantee free speech and 
     the right to religious freedom?
       Wiping out any mention or symbol of religion or faith in 
     all public places does not constitute religious freedom. This 
     could be construed as religious censorship for some. Surely, 
     the ACLU opposes censorship.
       The Ten Commandments plaque was presented to the Montgomery 
     officials by the Church Women of Montgomery County in 1940. 
     Before the Judicial Center was built in 1981, the plaque hung 
     outside Courtroom One in the District Court.
       No doubt this plaque is like the hundreds of statues and 
     monuments you walk by, drive by or stand by each day and 
     never notice. Rather than take the Ten Commandments down, 
     other religious and secular groups should be encouraged to 
     place other placards that espouse their affirmations and 
     thinking.
       I fundamentally agree with the ACLU's position opposing 
     adult-led prayer in public schools. It's too difficult to 
     administer without offending someone.
       But I firmly believe all students should learn about 
     various world religions as part of their basic education. 
     Just as they study history, geography and languages, people 
     ought to know the difference between Hindus and Muslims, 
     Christians and Jews, atheists and agnostics. Such information 
     breeds religious tolerance. Lack of knowledge--like removing 
     the Ten Commandments as though they don't exist--is what 
     leads to more problems.
       So why is Mr. Spitzer picking on the Ten Commandments?
       Only three of the 10 tenets speak directly to God or 
     religious practices. The rest speak to what should be 
     appropriate behavior and interpersonal skills. And God knows 
     we can't be remained enough about common courtesy and human 
     decency.
       The Commandments were engraved on stone tablets and given 
     to Moses by God at Mount Sinai. They are the foundation of 
     divine law in the Old Testament. They are also paramount, 
     individually or collectively, in the ethical systems of 
     Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
       And just is case your memory needs to be refreshed or you 
     never learned the Commandments, let me give you the hit 
     parade:
       1. I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods 
     before Me.
       2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in 
     vain.
       3. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
       4. Honor thy father and thy mother.
       5. Thou shalt not kill.
       6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
       7. Thou shalt not steal.
       8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
       9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.
       10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his 
     manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor 
     anything that is thy neighbor's.
       This is the fundamental moral code on which this country 
     was founded, and to which the framers of the Constitution 
     subscribed. I really don't think they thought the day would 
     come that something as harmless as the Ten Commandments would 
     be viewed as inappropriate to be seen in public building, 
     especially a courthouse.
       Montgomery County Attorney Joyce R. Stern unfortunately 
     agrees with the ACLU's stance that the plaque, as presently 
     displayed, does violate the Constitution. She ruled the 
     plaque must be made part of a larger ``historical display'' 
     to remain in the courthouse.
       The Ten Commandments plaque is a necessary reminder, 
     something we can learn from, if not aspire to. It should stay 
     right where it is as just one expression, one example, of 
     what a whole lot of people believe it takes to truly live 
     free in today's topsy-turvy world.