[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 186 (Friday, December 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14818-H14825]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          WESTERN CIVILIZATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Pingree of Maine). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the privilege of being 
recognized here on the floor of the House of Representatives. As I 
listened to the dialogue of my colleagues, Mr. Lungren of California 
and Mr. Gohmert of Texas, I can't help but pick up a little bit where 
they left off.
  I would like to address the situation of freedom, and then I hope to 
transition it into some other subject matters, all of them related to 
the subject matter that has been brought up by Mr. Lungren, who knows 
it well; and that is to propose a concept that's going on here that has 
to do with our western civilization. And as we studied western 
civilization, and maybe it has become a dirty word among the 
politically correct left, but it clearly has been a subject matter for 
hundreds of years in one way or another; and as we have watched what 
has happened across Europe and compare it to what happens here in the 
United States, there are those, especially on this side of the aisle, 
that believe somehow we're an appendage of the modern, forward-
thinking, liberated, progressive Europeans who have become a social 
democracy and in many cases a post-Christian Europe.
  I will argue, and I will to greater length, that we are a different 
country, that we're founded on Christian principles, Judeo-Christian 
values, and we've learned to assimilate people into this culture, but 
the foundation of our culture has been the law, the rule of law, and 
the values that flow from the religious foundation of the people that 
came here to settle this country. They are the ones that wrote the 
Declaration, they are the ones that wrote the Constitution, they are 
the ones that ratified it. And the core of the civilization remains the 
same.
  I want to draw this comparison, this juxtaposition, if I might, Madam 
Speaker, and that is that in Europe for more than 100 years, they have 
had socialized medicine. It started in Germany under Otto Von Bismarck. 
He did so for a political reason. It wasn't necessarily a reason of 
what was best for the German people, it was how Bismarck was able to 
expand and strengthen his political base. So he looked out across 
Germany and decided that if he is going to pacify the people, if he is 
going to get loyalty there, he was going to make sure that everybody 
had what they will call free health care in Germany.

  And so he, I will say, adeptly, as from a political perspective, was 
successful in passing legislation that established socialized medicine 
in Germany more than 100 years ago. And that was contagious enough that 
it was adopted by, by now every country in that part of the world. And 
the country that I pay the most attention to and look back on 
historically has been the experience in the United Kingdom. They had a 
higher level of freedom when they went into World War II. And of 
course, they were looking at their enemy more in the eye than we were. 
And Winston Churchill helped lead them through that time. But in the 
aftermath of the all-out effort to expend every resource they had to 
preserve the British Empire, they also saw their economy with too much 
of a burden on it, and it was collapsing at the end of World War II. 
There were all kinds of stresses on it.
  You can imagine, Madam Speaker, all the rebuilding that had to take 
place, the restructure of government, the lessons learned and the 
repositioning of assets, resources and conviction that takes place in a 
time of war. If you win the war, you don't undergo quite the changes as 
you do if you lose the war. But Great Britain was afraid their economy 
would collapse. And among the things that they did, just as we have 
knee-jerk reacted to an economic downward spiral here in this country 
and passed TARP legislation, $787 billion in an economic stimulus 
plan--and I say ``we'' as this Congress, and I opposed those things--
just as this administration, it actually started in the previous 
administration, began nationalizing huge economic entities in America, 
three large investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General 
Motors, Chrysler, about one-third of the private sector profits in the 
United States nationalized because we have fear of failure. Well, the 
British had fear of failure in the aftermath of World War II.
  And so one of the things they did to try to provide a safety net for 
people would be to adopt a national health care act similar to 
Bismarck's national health care act in Germany. And that's socialized 
medicine. They passed it in 1948.
  I sat reading through the Colliers magazines, the yellowed copies of 
that just a few years ago, that had been saved for me by a World War II 
veteran that had watched this national health care in the United 
Kingdom pass. And the things that they predicted that would happen 
before its passage and

[[Page H14819]]

implementation into law were the ones that came to pass within a year. 
The doctor said, we're going to have long lines, and I won't be able to 
treat all the patients with the care and the attention that I have in 
the past.
  When the government sets the fee that you get for doing the work, and 
the people that are receiving those health care benefits don't have to 
pay for them, there's an overutilization of the service. It's human 
nature. It's kind of like former chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, Bill Thomas, said of the people that utilize Medicare the 
most in America. He said, well, the people there, they wake up in the 
morning and feel good, and since it doesn't cost anything, they go to 
the doctor to find out why. Well, some of that happened in Great 
Britain. And it has happened in Canada. It has happened all over Europe 
and most of the industrialized world except in the United States. 
Government supplanted one of the responsibilities of the people; and 
there was less reason for people to be cohesive and hold themselves 
together. If you look across Europe, this post-Christian Europe that 
I've talked about, the churches that were built when there was a 
dynamic faithful force, and I will say prior to, during and post the 
industrial revolution, if you look at just the churches, just the 
edifices, the gothic architecture that's there, you can see there was a 
powerful force. That force has been significantly diminished. And I 
will argue that it has been diminished in a real part because the role 
of our faith, the role of our families, the role of communities pulling 
together, the nucleus of which were the places of worship, the 
churches, has been replaced by the government.

                              {time}  1645

  So if the government can provide you with all the health care that 
you need and your own personalized health insurance premium, which is 
advocated by the people on this side of the aisle--on the opposite side 
of the aisle, I want to make that clear for the record, Madam Speaker. 
If government can take care of rent subsidy and heat subsidy and give 
you a childcare credit--so pay you for the children that you have--and 
if the government can pay you for the earned income tax credit so if 
you don't make enough money they cut you a check for that, if the 
government can replace all that the churches did with the check that 
comes unwillingly from the taxpayer, when all of that happens, then 
people slow down their attendance or they stop going to church. They 
forget about the core of their faith. They forget about the reason of 
the blessings that we have, and slowly, society falls back to a 
dependency class that settles upon the government that has replaced the 
need that the churches were fulfilling out of the willing giving of 
their membership.
  I believe that one of the reasons for post-Christian Europe is 
because they have replaced the responsibilities and the duties and the 
activities and the services that come willingly from the churches with 
a service that comes unwillingly from the taxpayers but guaranteed as 
an entitlement to the people. That is what we're poised to do in this 
country because the people on this side want to create a dependency 
class. If they can create a dependency class, then their goal is to 
expand the political class. That is the short version of the subject 
matter that I think was very well raised and articulated by the 
gentleman who spoke ahead of me, Mr. Lungren.
  I would also ask my friend from Texas, Judge Gohmert, if he was able 
to get everything off of his heart before he goes back to where his 
heart really is, which is in Texas.
  So I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Gohmert).
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Iowa so very much.
  The gentleman from Iowa makes such a great point; we think we're the 
be all and end all in this Congress. And as I said in here last week 
over the debate about the death tax, we have the power to pry money 
from someone's wallet when they're lying cold and dead. We have the 
power to do that; we do not have the moral authority to do that.
  But we even hear people, as they did last week and have in previous 
debates, who play on some of our Christian faith and say, well, it 
sounds like the Christian thing to do would be for our government to 
help everybody, take care of everybody. But you could go throughout the 
New Testament and you will never find one place where Jesus ever said, 
Go ye, therefore, take from other people and give to someone else. He 
said, You do it. With your own money, what you've earned, what you've 
made, you take and you give from your own self. Don't go take somebody 
else's money just because you've got the power. You don't have the 
moral authority to do that. Do it yourself. And there is a great deal 
of blessing derived from individuals doing that and helping others, but 
it is tyranny when you use the power and abuse the moral authority and 
take from other people to do what you, yourself, want to do.
  When you look at the bills we've been passing, including the bill 
passed today, ``financial reform'' so-called, it's not financial 
reform. It's like the health care bill wasn't a health care bill. It is 
a government takeover. I hear friends and very scholarly people say, 
well, this is a takeover by the government of one-sixth of the economy, 
of the health care. But the truth is, it's not even that. It's more 
than that. Because if you go to the trouble to try to get through the 
massive bill that's been brought here, it's about taking over and 
legislating and regulating restaurants. That's not health care. It's 
legislating vending machines. It goes into all kinds of things.
  I read a provision where it is required that the Secretary of Health 
and Human Services shall do a study of businesses. Study of businesses? 
It goes on to tell them what you've got to study for. You've got to 
make sure that certain businesses are making good decisions that will 
allow them to stay solvent. Do you want Washington bureaucrats coming 
to your business in Iowa--I know they don't in east Texas--and sitting 
down with you that has never balanced a budget, never made any money on 
their own, have been living on government welfare, and then they're 
going to tell you you think you have too much inventory? What do you 
know about inventory? You've never been in this business.
  It is kind of like the car czar and all these people that were 
appointed by the President, unaccountable to anybody. They made laws. 
They subverted the bankruptcy code. They just ignored the Constitution, 
the laws, and this Congress did nothing about it, let it go. The 
Supreme Court did nothing about it, let it go. They just supplanted all 
of those things and dictated things from behind.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman will briefly yield, and reclaiming 
my time, I would make this point, that the bankruptcy courts through 
which the auto makers were pushed, when I listened to the witnesses 
that were before our Judiciary Committee and point-blanked them on this 
question? Do you believe that there was anything that changed 
throughout the course of the bankruptcy court as a result of the 
testimony or evidence that was presented to it, or was the deal, the 
proposal that was presented by the administration, as an investor in 
the car makers, did that proposal remain in tact all the way through 
the courts, or were the judgment of the courts applied to the final 
product? Their answer was, without equivocation, no. The deal was the 
deal, and the courts essentially rubber-stamped the deal. That's the 
testimony that I heard, but it is, of course, summarized in a nutshell 
for the benefit of this dialog.
  I again yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate that so much.
  The fact is, even on the health care bill, when the President had his 
town hall lady named Pam Stern--and I went and watched the video and 
typed this up myself--but she had pointed out she had a mother that was 
approaching 100 years old and she needed a pacemaker in order to have 
the other things she needed. And apparently the arrhythmia specialist--
he had not met her--decided nobody at age 99 should need a pacemaker, 
but then her own doctor recommended he meet her. So he met Pam Stern's 
mother and said, Wow, this lady is alive and going strong. She deserves 
a pacemaker. So he put it in, and she is 105 right now and going 
strong.

  And Pam Stern put this question, she said, Outside the medical 
criteria for

[[Page H14820]]

prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration 
that could be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, 
quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age? And 
the President went round and round, Well, we're not going to solve 
every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care, and he goes on 
and beats around the bush. And he finishes his answer by saying, Well, 
at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, 
maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the 
surgery but taking a painkiller. This is the government saying, you 
know, despite the Constitution talking about securing the blessings of 
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, this is the government saying 
not only are we not going to give you liberty, we're not going to give 
you what you need to have life. That is a government that, unless you 
committed a heinous crime, the government has no right to tell you that 
you can't get what you need to live of your own volition. And that is 
such a mistake.
  And we think we can do it on our own. The gentleman before, our 
friend from California (Mr. Lungren) and our friend from Iowa is so 
articulate about these things. But when you go back to our founding, 
you see that the Founders knew very well they could not do it within 
themselves. They hired George Washington to fight the revolution for 
them, and it went until 1783.
  Everybody knows about July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of 
Independence was made public. But he fought on as Commander, and he did 
something nobody in the history of mankind has ever done. He won a 
revolution, had the military under his control, could have been king, 
Caesar, emperor, generalissimo, czar--could have been ``the'' czar of 
America, but he did something, as depicted in a mural down the hall.
  He came into the Continental Congress with his outstretched hand, 
depicted in that mural, with his resignation. He said, Here is all the 
power back, because they passed a bill December 27, 1776, giving him 
basically all the power. They had to make contracts to enter whatever 
agreements, pay whatever they needed to pay, but there he was, 1783, 
tendering it all back. And in his own words--called the founder of our 
country--and actually, the whole resignation was so profound it was 
printed up.
  They got the resignation, printed it, and distributed it throughout 
the country because this was such an incredible document. This is what 
he thought; not the arrogance of people that say we know all. We do 
all. People in America are too stupid to do for themselves. They have 
to trust us in government because they're not smart enough. This is 
what Washington said--and this is not the whole thing because it would 
take too much time perhaps--but he said, ``I now make it my earnest 
prayer''--he thought it was okay to pray like that in public--``that 
God would have you in the state over which you preside in His holy 
protection.''
  He goes on and he says, to entertain brotherly affection and love for 
one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States, 
particularly for their brethren who served in the field, and finally, 
``that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do 
justice, to love mercy, to demean ourselves with charity, humility, and 
pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine 
Author of our blessed religion''--he thought there was a blessed 
religion here and a divine author that he knew--``and without an humble 
imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to have a 
happy nation.'' He signed it, ``I have the honor to be, with great 
respect and esteem, Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, 
George Washington.''
  And then, of course, for 4 years the Articles of Confederation were 
created after Washington left. That was too loose of a web. The country 
was falling apart. The military tries to get Washington to come back 
and preside as a ruler, a king, and he refused to have any part of it. 
In 1787, they finally talk him into coming back because they convinced 
him truthfully that the 13 colonies will not come back unless George 
Washington agrees to come back. He comes back for nearly 5 weeks in 
Philadelphia, windows covered, meeting there privately, trying to come 
up with a constitution that would hold, something that would work, 
something that they could be proud of. They had met nearly 5 weeks and 
accomplished basically nothing.

  And this is just the last point I wanted to share. I head back every 
weekend to my beloved east Texas, and will shortly, but after nearly 5 
weeks, Benjamin Franklin stands up, recognized by President Washington, 
President of the Constitutional Convention--and most people that know 
history know that Benjamin Franklin did sow some wild oats, he did, and 
he did in France and England and somewhat here. But by this point he's 
80 years old. He's about 2\1/2\ years away from meeting his maker, 
meeting the ultimate judge. He is just as brilliant, just as witty, 
charming, a real genius, but he has more thoughts toward the eternal.
  And so after Washington recognizes him, he stands up--and we have the 
whole thing because James Madison, as Secretary, recorded it all--and 
he went through and said, you know, we've been meeting for nearly 5 
weeks. We have more noes than ayes on most of these issues. We've 
accomplished nothing. And these are his words, as recorded by James 
Madison. ``In this situation of this assembly, groping as it were in 
the dark to find political truth and scarce able to distinguish it when 
presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto 
once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate 
understanding? In the beginning contest with Great Britain, when we 
were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the 
Divine protection.''
  Benjamin Franklin goes on and says, ``Our prayers, sir, were heard 
and they were graciously answered. All of us who are engaged in this 
struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending 
Providence in our favor. To that kind of Providence we owe this happy 
opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our 
future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful 
friend, or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?''
  Franklin goes on and he says, ``I have lived, sir, a long time. And 
the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: God 
governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the 
ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise 
without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that 
except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.''

                              {time}  1700

  Franklin said, ``I firmly believe this; and I also believe that, 
without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building 
no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our 
little, partial local interests, our projects will be confounded, and 
we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future 
ages.''
  He went on and said, ``I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth 
prayers of heaven imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings 
on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning.''
  He knew who governed in the affairs of men. They began unanimously 
having prayer. They had it every day as he moved, and it resulted in 
the Constitution that we still utilize today for those who still 
utilize it.
  I would recommend, as I know my friend has so many times, for those 
who have not read the Constitution or who have not read it recently, 
read it. I love the way it ends: ``Done in convention, by the unanimous 
consent of the States present, the 17th day of September, in the year 
of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred Eighty-Seven.''
  A great way to end a great document.
  I thank you and I yield back to my friend from Iowa.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  It is interesting to me, Madam Speaker, to listen to this 
presentation and to think about the impact of the core of the faith on 
our Founding Fathers. Clearly, Ben Franklin was a leader of them. Part 
of me is a little curious about what it would have been like to have 
heard his entire confession, but it was interesting to hear the 
statement that he made.
  I'd reflect also that, for 60 years, the Founding Fathers and their 
successors

[[Page H14821]]

and the leaders of this Nation and others would come in, and they went 
to church in this very Capitol building. For 60 years, they worshiped 
in this Capitol building on a regular basis.
  The first Black man to speak in the United States House of 
Representatives was a pastor who came here right at the end of the 
Civil War to speak about the passage of the 13th and 14th and 15th 
Amendments.
  As I watch things transition here in the House, I'd like to say also, 
as another word to add to this discussion, that George Washington's 
Thanksgiving proclamation said--and it was a prayer--God grant this 
Nation the degree of prosperity which he alone knows to be best.
  I think that's consistent with the presentation from the gentleman 
from Texas.
  You know, this isn't exclusively about how we make a lot of money. It 
isn't exactly how we are able to turn this economy around and to put a 
lot of cash into people's pockets. There's something more important 
than this. I've long said that, if I have to choose between an 
education without a moral foundation and a moral education without the 
best academic foundation, I'm going to take the moral education. That's 
what I want my children to learn, and that's what I want my 
grandchildren to learn, and that's what I want this Nation to learn.
  There is something about prosperity, but I look back a decade or more 
ago, and there was a very well-educated Unabomber who didn't have a 
moral foundation. We have smart people with good educations and not 
moral foundations. They are destructive with their educations, their 
academics and their brilliance. We want a society where we have the 
opportunity to get back to the point where we don't lock our doors 
anymore.
  Madam Speaker, did you ever think, when you forget your car keys and 
you can't get in and you're standing out there and it's January and 20 
below, why it is your car is locked? Well, it's because of the people 
in society who don't have a moral foundation. It's because of the 
thieves. Why do you lock your house? It's the same reason. It's not 
just simply endemic that we have to build cars with keys or houses with 
locks or dead bolts and bars across them. We do that because it's a 
sign of the erosion in our moral foundation. There are still places in 
America where people don't lock their doors. There's a place in America 
where I live.
  Yet, today, standing on the streets of Washington, D.C., it happened 
to me, and it wouldn't have been hard for many others to have 
experienced the same thing. When an ambulance goes by, people on the 
street will stop talking because the siren is too loud, and some of 
them are irritated because the siren has interrupted their 
conversations. That's the level of compassion that emanates from the 
curb sometimes in the cities of America to the ambulance, itself. Where 
I live, if an ambulance goes by my house, we already know who is 
inside, and we know who the family members are who are reached by it. 
That's that neighborhood component. Those neighborhoods exist within 
the cities, too, Madam Speaker. I don't mean to imply that they don't.
  When people are in a transitional stage and the more there are and 
the more it erodes the moral foundation, the more we need to take our 
resources to defend ourselves against the people who would steal our 
property and who would assault our very families and individuals. 
That's the lack of a moral foundation. If we get that right, then at 
least, in theory, we won't need nearly as much for, let's say, the 
police force, which could go out and serve papers and could do those 
things. They won't need to be occupied in fighting off violence all the 
time as they are.


            The Supreme Court and the Detainee Treatment Act

  Now we have a situation here that is also of great concern. Madam 
Speaker, yesterday, Mr. Gohmert and I and a number of others did a 
press conference over in front of the Supreme Court building. We did 
that to take up the issue of Guantanamo Bay--the Gitmo detainees, the 
enemy combatants, the radical Islamist jihadists, who have declared war 
against the United States, who have committed their training and their 
lives and their assets and their resources into killing us, and who 
have succeeded to a significant level, particularly on September 11, 
2001.
  I've been to the locations of ground zero in New York and at the 
Pentagon here in Washington, D.C., and I've seen the impact of the 
attacks on our Nation. I've been down to Guantanamo Bay, Madam Speaker, 
and I've talked with and have observed the detainees down there. We've 
had over 800 detained in Guantanamo Bay. We tried to get as many of 
them released and sent back to their home countries as we could. We 
still boiled it down to, at that time, about 241 enemy combatants, 
radical Islamist jihadists--the worst of the worst--who didn't have a 
place to go. We didn't have a process to deal with them. They were 
committing acts of war against the United States. At least that's the 
evidence that we have.

  So President Bush started this fairly early in the process, and 
Congress passed legislation called the Detainee Treatment Act, which 
set up military tribunals to try these enemy combatants, is what they 
were called if I remember correctly in legislation, and established 
those parameters--all consistent within internationally set standards, 
all consistent within Geneva Convention standards.
  Then they also set up an appeals process in the event that an 
individual who was to be tried or who was tried under the Detainee 
Treatment Act were to appeal that decision or to appeal even being 
tried before the Detainee Treatment Act, their appeals would go to the 
U.S. Circuit Court of D.C., the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
  That's what happened in the Hamdan case. The Hamdan case is a 
landmark precedent case. That's the case of Osama bin Laden's 
chauffeur, who argued that he should have some constitutional rights 
and that the limitations that were set by the Detainee Treatment Act 
were too broad. So he took the case--his attorneys--and I don't know 
that these were pro bono attorneys, but I know there are dozens--and 
I'll say--scores of pro bono attorneys who are seeking to establish new 
precedents. They took the case to the D.C. Circuit, which upheld the 
Detainee Treatment Act that had been passed by Congress, signed by 
President Bush. They upheld it to the letter in the D.C. Circuit.
  The Supreme Court, by the way, had been forbidden from hearing a case 
which came out of the Detainee Treatment Act because, under article 
III, section 2 of the Constitution, this Congress stripped that 
authority from any court other than from the District of Columbia 
Circuit. Even though the D.C. Circuit upheld the letters of the law and 
the content of the statute, after the decision of the D.C. Circuit and 
outside of the bounds of the law, itself, of the article III, section 2 
language which stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction, the Supreme 
Court reached over and heard the case anyway. They got outside their 
zone. They went across the fence, and decided they were going to graze 
in the pasture that was set aside exclusively for the D.C. Circuit. 
They overturned some components of the Detainee Treatment Act.
  So we came back to this Congress again, and I argued we should have 
ignored the court because they didn't have jurisdiction to hear the 
case and that Congress had said so, and it's clearly a component in the 
Constitution--article III, section 2 stripping--but the Supreme Court 
heard the case anyway, and it came to a decision. Here is the article 
III, section 2 language that was designed to prohibit the Supreme 
Court:
  It says, ``In all the other cases before mentioned''--that would 
include the Hamdan case, and I'm quoting from the Constitution now 
again--``the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to 
law and to fact--'' so far, the Supreme Court would be okay, Madam 
Speaker, but this is the part to pay attention to--``with such 
exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.'' 
Congress made exceptions and Congress made regulations. Congress 
essentially forbid the Supreme Court from hearing such a case on the 
Detainee Treatment Act. They did so anyway.
  I read that decision through carefully--about this thick, Madam 
Speaker--and it took a while. The case came out on a Thursday. I got my 
hands on

[[Page H14822]]

the printed document on Friday. On Saturday morning, I went out. This 
must have been June because I remember sitting in my backyard, reading 
carefully down through this Supreme Court decision called Hamdan. I 
marked up the margins with all of my opinions. When I got through that 
stack of paper, it was a little thicker because it was wrinkled up a 
little bit, and it always swells a little when you write on it.
  I looked up at the sky, and I thought, My gosh. The Supreme Court has 
defied Congress and the Constitution. They heard a case they didn't 
have any business hearing, and now they've issued this decision, this 
opinion, which as I said is all it was, which is now going to redirect 
Congress to go back and to redefine the Detainee Treatment Act.
  So my position was that Congress should simply pass a resolution that 
we restate the Detainee Treatment Act and ignore the Supreme Court 
because they were outside the bounds of the jurisdiction that's offered 
to them in the Constitution.

  I would agree with Justice Scalia that the cases of article III, 
section 2 stripping are legion. That was the word that Justice Scalia 
used. Those cases are legion. Yet, by the time I had analyzed the 
case--and not that I had the leverage that was going to turn this thing 
around the other way--the Chairs of the Judiciary Committee in the 
House and the Senate and the President of the United States, President 
Bush, all had conceded to the Supreme Court, and had said, Now we are 
going to comply.
  So, at that point, it was too late to put the toothpaste back in the 
tube. It was too late to reel this back in again and to cast it out and 
get it right. So Congress came back and passed new legislation, new 
legislation on the heels of the Detainee Treatment Act which set up 
enemy combatant review tribunals. Then it was adjusted for the decision 
of the Supreme Court. We tried again. Along came the Boumediene case. 
Then it narrowed somewhat our ability under those decisions of the 
Supreme Court if we conceded those positions which the majority of 
Members of Congress did and the administration did, but it left intact 
the ability under military tribunals to try these detainees, these 
enemy combatants, these radical jihadists, who we are faced with.
  So we continued forward then with the development of Guantanamo Bay, 
with the housing of these detainees down at Guantanamo Bay. We had 
built the courtrooms. We had built up secure rooms and had set up a 
place where the family members could observe the trials and where the 
press could observe the trials. There was a microphone that projected 
to them with a bit of a delay and an officer sitting there with his ear 
tuned to anything that came out which would be classified/secret 
information that could put the people of the United States in jeopardy. 
He was the person who could put his finger on the mute button of that 
microphone and could delay things so that the observing rooms could be 
cleared of reporters and family and so that we could go to the 
classified types of information that would be part of the trial.
  The facilities down at Guantanamo Bay are perfectly suited for the 
task at hand of trying these enemy combatants. They were built for 
that. There are not any facilities anywhere in the world which are 
custom-built to try enemy combatants other than Guantanamo Bay down in 
Cuba.
  I went down and visited the place one weekend shortly before Easter 
of this year. I would say that that location might be the best place 
you could be if you were going to be someone who is an enemy combatant, 
which is similar to being a prisoner of war. I don't believe there have 
been prisoners of war, prisoners who have been picked up in armed 
conflicts, who have been treated as well as the detainees at Guantanamo 
Bay.

                              {time}  1715

  I don't know how they could be treated as good as the detainees at 
Guantanamo Bay. They are living down there in private cells. They each 
have their own room. There are some exceptions, but essentially they 
each have their own room. They have got their bunk and their personal 
possessions. They each get their own personal Koran. The Koran comes to 
them in a zip-locked bag all carefully packaged up so that no, and I 
put this in quotes, no ``infidel'' has touched the Koran and desecrated 
it by the hand of an infidel.
  They get their own sterile Koran delivered to them. They get a prayer 
rug that's embroidered, fancier than anything in my house and fancier 
than anything I have see in anybody's house. They get their own 
personal little skull cap or prayer cap that they wear.
  They get a menu to choose three squares a day, nine items, all of 
them approved for Islamic meals. They have a little arrow in the bottom 
of every cell or maybe under the mattress that points east to Mecca, 
wherever that's dialed in on the compass of the world. As you move 
around, it's a little bit different direction to point to Mecca.
  You will notice if you go, Madam Speaker, into the Middle East, and 
you look up on the ceiling of a hotel room, there will often be an 
arrow there. That's the arrow for which direction to Mecca, which 
direction to pray, if you are a Muslim. They have an arrow in each of 
the cells that tell them which direction to pray.
  The thermostat is set at 75 degrees in their air conditioned, 
Caribbean prison, because they claim that 75 degrees is their cultural 
temperature. I would suggest that it ranges up over 140 degrees myself, 
but 75 degrees, they claim, is their cultural temperature. That's the 
climate control that they get.
  They are not even exposed to the elements unless they volunteer to go 
out. They are in that 82- or 83-degree temperature that is very stable, 
especially during the day in the Caribbean. It seldom goes down below 
60 degrees at night. They are in a perfectly controlled environment in 
the best location you could ask for to be able to have an outdoors 
environment.
  The attacks on Americans in Guantanamo Bay average about 20 a day. 
About half of those attacks are these detainees throwing human waste in 
the faces of our mostly Navy guards. These guards are trained to 
restrain themselves from retaliation, and they take pride in 
restraining themselves from retaliation. That's about 10 times a day 
they are throwing human waste in the faces or were trying to rub it in 
the faces of our guards.
  The other 10 times a day, out of the 20 assaults, come down to 
physical assaults with their cuffs or their chains, an assault, or they 
are trying to physically injure the guards, about 20 attacks a day. Now 
if that happens in a maximum security prison in the United States, they 
will go into solitary confinement. There will be charges brought 
against them.
  If found guilty--and of course if they're guilty, we likely will find 
them guilty--then these prisoners in American prisons would get an 
extended stay in their maximum security prison. They would watch their 
diet be dialed down to fewer calories per day and they would go into 
solitary confinement for a period of time.
  That, Madam Speaker, that is what happens in an American prison. Down 
at Guantanamo Bay, with these worst of the worst, the most vile 
American haters, the planner and the planners of the September 11 
assault on the United States, the worst thing we can do to them, if 
they should get a guard down and injure that guard and rub human waste 
into his face and perhaps nearly strangle the guard, the worst thing we 
can do to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed if that happens is, we reduce his 
outdoor exercise time down to 2 hours a day. It's the worst penalty we 
can do.
  They get their air-conditioned cell, their private room. They get a 
menu that's designed to fit their religious beliefs. They get their 
Koran and their skull cap and they get their rug. Oh, and by the way, 
out of the 800 or so that were down at Guantanamo Bay, one of them 
asked for not a Koran but a Bible. When the word got out that there was 
an individual there who wanted a Bible, the ability to keep order down 
at Guantanamo Bay became very precarious. There was going to be such a 
rejection of the idea that there would be a Bible in the hands of 
someone down there, that they denied this inmate a Bible.
  We are promoting religious freedom to the people that are there and 
giving them all of the trappings that they require, with arrows to pray 
towards, and Korans, and skull caps, and prayer

[[Page H14823]]

rugs. But if there is a Christian in the mix, they are denied their 
equal rights, their right to faith and religion.
  The temperature is set for the cultural temperature, at 75. That's 
Guantanamo Bay. Perfectly set up, though, to try these enemy 
combatants, to house them. Some of them need to be locked up for life, 
and some of them need to be executed.
  We can't get there because the world has said we think that you were 
hard on these prisoners down there. So we are adjusting American policy 
because of critics in places like Europe, critics that are 
international, let's see, what do we have, Amnesty International, and 
other global Web sites that allege the United States is cruel and 
inhuman.
  No one could have been any less cruel or any more human in dealing 
with these detainees than the United States has. I have gone there to 
see it, Madam Speaker, and it is a place where you would want to be if 
you had to be locked up.
  Now, because of the politics of this, the Obama administration has 
decided that they have, the President, 2 days after he was inaugurated 
on January 22 of 2009, issued an executive order that said we are going 
to close Guantanamo Bay. It's 7 pages long, it's written in English, 
but it's posted on the bulletin board down in Guantanamo Bay in Arabic 
and in English, a bulletin board cover with Plexiglass in the middle of 
the commons area, right over by their foosball table.
  So they can take a break from their foosball and read the promise 
from the President that they are not going to be there a day after 
January 22, 2010. I don't know if the President can keep that promise, 
but that's certainly the promise that's made to the detainees.

  That number has been reduced a little bit. We had the Uyghurs, some 
of them were sent to Bermuda. There have been others that have been 
infiltrated back out to the rest of the world.
  Madam Speaker, I want to make this point that of those who were 
released, and the numbers of those who were released is a number 
greater than 500 by the Bush administration, there is about a 1 in 7 
incidence of recidivism. Of those that were released--these were not 
the worst of the worst that were released, these were the best of the 
worst that were released--it was more than 500.
  That more than 500 went back around the world and at least one out of 
seven went back and began to plot against or attack the United States. 
That's a lousy recidivism rate. Some will say, well, we have a greater 
rate of that when we release people from the prisons in the United 
States.
  We have a closer eye we keep on them too, Madam Speaker. At least in 
America we have a police force out there that when people break the law 
we have a tendency to go find out who they are, where they live, and 
pick them up and try them again, and lock them up again. But when you 
turn somebody loose in the world, and they go back into the mountains 
of Pakistan or Afghanistan, and they train and plot to attack 
Americans, it's kind of hard to catch them a second time.
  If we do that with one out of seven, then what happens with the worst 
of the worst? What happens with these 241 that are now down around 220. 
If they get released into the world, these are the most dedicated 
killers of freedom-loving people that exist on the planet, at least in 
incarceration. They are going to make common cause with the others that 
they can find around the world, and they will turn around and attack 
the United States.
  It is inevitable, and the equation that the President of the United 
States and Eric Holder, the attorney general, needs to understand, 
Madam Speaker, is, that of these 221 detainees that they are looking 
desperately to try to find a way to bring them to the United States, or 
at least a large share of them to the United States, if they are 
adjudicated in civilian courts, as they propose will happen with KSM, 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom I have laid eyes on and watched him 
operate and read his documents--he blamed the attacks of September 11, 
2001, on us, Madam Speaker. He wrote that in his defense document. You 
would think in his defense document he would try to defend himself. 
Instead, he attacked us.
  He said, it's your own fault, America. We told you that we hate you. 
We declared war on you. We said we were going to come and kill you. You 
failed to defend yourselves from us, and so, therefore, it's your fault 
that 3,000 Americans were killed September 11. You had to know we were 
coming because we said we would, and you didn't defend yourselves. 
That's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That's how evil he is.
  Now the President has said, and Eric Holder has said, that we will 
feel better when they are prosecuted in the United States and when they 
are executed. I will say the President and the attorney general have 
repeatedly said that KSM will be constricted, and I will say it opens 
up a whole array of new appeals to think that KSM, while it would be 
announced that he would be convicted and implied, at least, that he 
would be executed, by the President of the United States, who is a 
lawyer, a Harvard lawyer, an instructor of constitutional law at the 
University of Chicago, even though he was an adjunct professor, that's 
the announcement from the President of the United States and the 
Attorney General that says essentially this, that some say it's the Old 
West story. I say it's a Mark Twain story; first we will hang them, 
then we will try them.
  I would point your attention, Madam Speaker, to a writing by Mark 
Twain called ``Roughing It,'' sometime about the turn or the middle of 
the 19th century Mark Twain wrote a story, ``Roughing It,'' about a 
Captain Ned Blakely. Ned Blakely, who sailed off to the Chinches 
Islands to get a load of whatever the product was there.
  As he sailed into the bay, he had the meanest man on the islands come 
aboard, named Bill Noakes. They had a big fight, and Captain Ned 
Blakely won that. Bill Noakes came back another time, they had another 
big fight. Even though Captain Blakely won that over a period of time, 
this mean Bill Noakes shot and killed the first mate of Captain 
Blakely.
  The first mate happened to be a Black man, a Black man whom had great 
favor of Captain Ned Blakely, a Black man who was trying to get away 
from the confrontation, was actually running, and he was chased down 
and shot to death by Bill Noakes in the narrative by Mark Twain. So no 
one wanted to take on Bill Noakes. He was too mean out on the island. 
There were about a dozen ship's captains that were part of what we 
would say would be the law in that era. Ned Blakely went and arrested 
him and planned to hang him in the morning.

  When the other captains found out about it, they came to see Ned 
Blakely, Captain Blakely, and said to him, You can't hang this man; he 
has to have a trial. Captain Blakely said, Fine, let's have the trial. 
I will help you with the trial. I will help you prosecute the man. How 
soon do you think you could do it? They said, Well, we think we could 
have the trial in the morning.
  But Captain Blakely said, Well, I am going to be a little busy in the 
morning with the hanging and the burying, so let's do the trial in the 
afternoon. That's how Mark Twain described this. First we will hang 
him, then we will try him. Actually, he said, First we will hang him, 
then we will bury him, then we will try him.
  That's about the message that came from the President of the United 
States and the Attorney General of the United States. He essentially 
declared Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four other compatriots to be 
guilty and subject to the death penalty, and predicted that they will 
be convicted and executed, an unbelievable prediction for the President 
of the United States and the Attorney General of the United States, to 
take that position.
  We are doing what? We are bringing these Gitmo detainees to the 
United States, not because there is any logical reason to do this; 
there is no rational reason to bring these enemy combatants to U.S. 
soil. There is no constitutional reason, Madam Speaker, there is no 
statutory reason, there is no rational, logical reason. There is no 
strategic or tactical reason. We don't get more safety with bringing 
them here, we don't get the odds of a conviction with bringing them 
here.
  KSM has confessed his own guilt and asked for a death penalty. As 
Scully Simpson said yesterday, take the plea, attorney general, take 
the plea, Mr. President. If he wants to plead guilty

[[Page H14824]]

and submit himself to the death penalty, why would you bring them to 
the United States and bring them within six blocks of Ground Zero in 
New York City and subject them to the circus of a civilian court? We 
know what that looks like. O. J. Simpson's circus court comes to mind, 
that media circus that would come.
  For what purpose? Not because it's constitutional, statutory, 
logical, reasonable or tactical, none of that. Madam Speaker maybe, 
just maybe, if we want to be charitable we could say maybe the 
President and the Attorney General would want to demonstrate to the 
world that America has a legitimate civilian court and that equal 
justice will be provided under the law for anyone on the entire planet, 
not just people that have set foot in the United States, our citizens 
of the United States or our Americans.
  Madam Speaker, if that is the motivation for the President and the 
Attorney General to express to the world that we are equal justice 
under the law and an open judicial system, that we have the courage and 
the confidence and the wherewithal to try these enemy combatants in a 
civilian court, so now the rest of the world is going to like us, 
because we have done something that isn't really smart, and may be the 
most colossal blunder in this administration? It could be the most 
colossal blunder of many administrations, Madam Speaker.

                              {time}  1730

  All for what? All to ask the rest of the world to like us, to trust 
us, to respect our judicial system? Could that be the reason? And if it 
is the reason, and it's the only one that seems to be threaded with 
anything that one could construe as logic in this decision, that it had 
to be approved by the President and announced by the Attorney General, 
if the rationale is the rest of the world will lift their criticism of 
how we've dealt with these enemy combatants if we just bring them out 
of the military tribunals, this court system, and put them in the 
civilian court, I will submit that if that were a sound logic and it 
had any chance of being effective and it would be good for the public 
relations of the world, they've already messed it up; they've already 
destroyed any benefit that might come from trying KSM in a civilian 
trial within six blocks of Ground Zero in New York City because the 
President of the United States and the Attorney General of the United 
States have both announced that KSM and his four co-conspirators are 
guilty and that we're going to prove it in an open court, without 
cameras, but prove it in an open court, and we're going to sentence 
them to death.
  Now how in the world is anybody around the world going to believe 
that this was an objective decision, that it actually is the result of 
a court when the verdict is already announced by the President of the 
United States and the Attorney General?
  Madam Speaker, this is self-defeating logic here, and I think that 
they have actually defeated their own rationale.
  I want to, in the moments that are left, just go through some pieces 
of this rationale so that it goes into the Record. And that is this:
  The Obama administration is acting dangerously by bringing foreign 
terrorists to our shores from Guantanamo Bay. This is a direct threat 
to our national security. And by doing this, the Obama administration 
is opening us up for another terrorist attack.
  You've heard a host of other concerns from my colleagues. I'm the 
ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee, and I will focus a 
little bit on immigration, Madam Speaker. The truth is if we bring 
these terrorists to U.S. soil, we may not be able to keep them in 
detention. Even worse, we may not ever be able to deport them. So if we 
manage to convict these terrorists, which is a question, they may one 
day become our constituents' new neighbors. And how? Well, because of 
the confluence of two factors: One of them is the Convention Against 
Torture, and the other one is the Supreme Court 2001 decision called 
Zadvydas.
  First, the Convention prohibits the return of aliens to countries 
where they may be tortured. So if we could release any one of these 
detainees, we would send them back where? We can't send them back now 
because of that fear. The U.S. Department of Justice regulations 
implementing the convention, the Convention Against Torture, that is, 
made no exceptions whatsoever for anyone's activities. Whether they be 
rapists, murderers, participants in genocide, or terrorists, they're 
all equally protected. Hundreds of criminals have already received 
relief from deportation as a result of the Convention Against Torture, 
and so has an alien involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat. Osama 
bin Laden himself could probably frustrate deportation by making a 
torture claim under this convention. I mean, after all, the more 
heinous a person's actions and consequently the more hated they are in 
their home countries, the more likely they are to be subjected to 
torture, so the stronger is their claim that they couldn't be returned 
to their home country for fear they would be tortured when they arrive.
  So the ability of terrorists to frustrate the deportation process 
might be tolerable, but if we were certain that we could keep these 
terrorists detained, that would be the condition by which it would be 
potentially tolerable. But this may not be the case because section 412 
of the PATRIOT Act does wisely provide for the indefinite detention of 
terrorist aliens, indefinite, regardless of whether they qualify under 
the Convention Against Torture or whether they have other available 
relief from removal. However, it's very possible that the intervening 
Supreme Court will rule this provision unconstitutional and there would 
go the indefinite detention section under the PATRIOT Act.
  In Zadvydas, the Supreme Court ruled that under a different law, 
aliens who had been admitted to the United States and then ordered 
removed could not be detained for more than 6 months if for some 
reason, such as the Convention Against Torture, they could not be 
removed. In the Zadvydas case, the Supreme Court made a statutory 
interpretation, but they also put up a warning and said to us that they 
were interpreting the statute to avoid a serious constitutional threat. 
So the Court believed that a statute permitting indefinite detention of 
an alien would raise a serious constitutional problem.
  So already, Zadvydas, that decision, has resulted in the release of 
hundreds of alien criminals into our communities. Jonathan Cohn, the 
former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, testified, and I quote, that 
``the government is now required to release numerous rapists, child 
molesters, murderers, and other dangerous illegal aliens into our 
streets. Vicious criminal aliens are now being set free within the 
U.S.''
  It seems incredible that the administration would intentionally bring 
alien terrorists into the United States knowing that we may never be 
able to deport them or even detain them on a long-term basis, and 
that's the immigration component of this argument, Madam Speaker.
  This is a very serious decision on the part of the President and the 
Attorney General. And if allowed to set foot in the United States, it 
establishes a precedent, a precedent that will be very difficult to 
reverse. It establishes a precedent that any enemy combatant that we 
would pick up anywhere in the world may have to be read their Miranda 
rights. Remember, Madam Speaker, they are reading Miranda rights to 
enemy combatants in Afghanistan as we speak. They are being asked to 
pick up battlefield evidence out on the battlefields. It's an entirely 
different process to prepare for a military tribunal than it is for a 
civilian prosecution. The chain of evidence and the introduction of 
hearsay evidence are under different types of rules. And that's for a 
wise reason because, laying this out, this Congress understood the 
difference between war and criminal actions. This Congress understood 
the difference. Our previous President understood the difference. This 
President seems to believe that this war on terror is fighting a 
criminal action, not an enemy war on terror action. So it brings forth 
this idea of bringing these enemy combatants to the United States.

  This point needs to be understood, Madam Speaker: Of the 221 or so 
that might be brought to the U.S., and I reject the idea of allowing 
any of them to set foot on our soil, could we presume that they're all 
facing a death sentence? Could we presume that they will all be 
convicted? Could we then presume that they would all face that sentence 
and be executed so they were no

[[Page H14825]]

longer any trouble to us and they could be the martyrs that they wish 
to be and set the example for others that might attack innocent people 
under the banner of al Qaeda, this hateful organization?
  In closing, Madam Speaker, I will submit that some will be released 
and some of them will attack free people. Some of those victims are 
likely to be Americans.
  I reject al Qaeda KSM coming to the United States, and I yield back 
the balance of my time.

                          ____________________