[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 33 (Thursday, March 1, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1129-H1132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1320
                     THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Denham). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to be recognized by 
you and to address you here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives.
  As I listened to the dialogue take place here in the last 30 minutes 
and the gentlelady from the District of Columbia, I'm glad she has a 
voice here in this Congress. And I do take an oath to uphold the 
Constitution, as does everyone who serves in this body, as does the 
President of the United States and many of our executive officers and 
every military personnel. I believe every State legislator takes an 
oath, as I did when I was in the State senate in Iowa, to preserve, 
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State 
of Iowa.
  As that oath takes place, I would just remind you, Mr. Speaker, that 
we have to have an understanding of the Constitution in order to take 
an oath to the Constitution. And when we place our hand on the Bible 
and raise our right hand and take the oath to the Constitution of the 
United States, it's not an oath to a constitution as it might be 
reinterpreted by activist judges at a later date. It's not even an oath 
to a constitution that has been interpreted by the activist judges that 
came after the Constitution was ratified.
  The oath that I take to uphold this Constitution is the oath to 
uphold the Constitution as it was written, as the clear text of the 
Constitution defines, and as the amendments, the clear text of the 
amendments defined, and as it was understood to mean at the time of the 
ratification, whether it would be the full body of the Constitution, or 
later on the Bill of Rights, or whether it would be the subsequent 
amendments to the Constitution.
  No public official, no person who takes an oath to a constitution can 
be taking an oath to something that is amorphous, something that 
fluctuates and something that can change. The Constitution has to be 
fixed in place. Guarantees aren't amorphous, Mr. Speaker. It is no 
guarantee if it's amorphous. It has to be fixed in place and fixed in 
time.
  I understand that our language changes over time, and I understand 
that we have people that have looked at this Constitution with 
disrespect and they would like to disregard the American Constitution.
  If we look back through history, we will see that there was an effort 
that began in the late 19th century, especially when some of the 
liberal-thinking people emerged here and in the intellectual world. In 
the United States, many of those people came here from Germany and 
established themselves. In fact, they established themselves on the 
west coast. And our friend whom we expressed our deep regrets at the 
loss of and our deep sympathy to the family of Andrew Breitbart grew up 
around some of those people that were the foundation of the progressive 
movement in America.
  These are the people that grew from socialism, the ideology of 
utopianism. Karl Marx put it down, and it grew from there. Lenin 
advanced it, and Gramsci also advanced it. It has gone on to the day 
where liberalism got a bad reputation, so they decided to define 
themselves as ``progressives.'' It's all rooted in a Marxist, 
socialist, utopian ideology. And that Marxist, socialist, utopian 
ideology looks at the United States Constitution, the Constitution of 
the United States of America, with abhorrence. They reject our 
Constitution. They're just afraid to stand up and say so.
  The clear meaning of the Constitution is something that they 
concluded, back in the late part of the 19th century and coming into 
the early part of the 20th century, that they would like to abolish. 
They would like to abolish our Constitution. They would like to have a 
new Constitutional Convention or no Constitution and change and shape 
America at their will. They reject an America with individual rights 
that come from God. I would like to think the gentlelady from the 
District of Columbia and I would likely agree on that. They want an 
America that can always be in constant flux and constant change with no 
locked-down guarantees or values.
  In other words, they looked at an effort to undo and repeal America's 
Constitution. They concluded that they could not do so because the 
culture of America has so embraced the Constitution of the United 
States that Americans would rise up in defense of the Constitution. If 
they tried to assault the Constitution, Americans would rise up and 
reject anybody that would seek to do that. So they sold us an 
alternative of trying to repeal and undo the Constitution and amend it 
out of existence.
  There's another alternative, and that alternative is the one that 
they chose more than 100 years ago. That was the effort to redefine the 
Constitution, to undermine the meaning of the Constitution and turn it 
into this--remember the language, Mr. Speaker?--a living, breathing 
document. A living, breathing document is the language for an amorphous 
constitution, a constitution with no guarantees, a constitution that 
only takes reaction to the majority at the time that can be found in 
the House of Representatives, in the United States Senate, or a 
majority in the United States Supreme Court or the activist judges that 
by the hundreds have been appointed since that period of time during 
the last more than 100 years, and the law schools in America that have 
been populated by leftists who have been undermining the Constitution 
even while they teach the Constitution.
  That's what we've seen here in America, Mr. Speaker.
  And if the solid, conservative American people understood the flow of 
history and how the Constitution has been willfully undermined by 
active and by now self-labeled progressives, they would stand up 
against them everywhere they appear.
  Think of a contract. The Constitution is a contract, it is a 
guarantee, and it is the supreme law of the land. It's defined as the 
supreme law of the land in the Constitution itself. When you have a 
supreme law, a law has to be black and white, it has to be clear, and 
it must be also enforced. It's impossible to take an oath to something 
that is amorphous, that's living and breathing.
  It is now being taught under constitutional law in universities 
across the land that this Constitution doesn't mean what it says. 
That's what some of the judges say. That's what some of the law school 
professors say. In fact, that's what a majority of the law schools in 
America teach. They don't teach the foundation of American liberty, 
which is the clear text of this

[[Page H1130]]

Constitution, but they teach something that's been redefined by the 
courts.
  And, by the way, we have course after course across the country--and 
I could go back to my big-ring notebook when we did the research on 
this--that teaches constitutional law in law school without using the 
basis of the Constitution. You can take the course on con law and never 
be required to read the Constitution. And the test questions aren't on 
the Constitution; they're on what they call ``case law.'' Well, I will 
sometimes refer to case law. It is usually a slip of the tongue when I 
do that. Case law is what they say now is the Constitution. I can think 
of a lawyer who says: I don't have to amend the Constitution. If you 
give me a favorable judge and a favorable jury, then I will amend the 
Constitution in the courtroom.
  Think of what that means, Mr. Speaker. An attack on the Constitution 
is taking place by activist lawyer after activist lawyer with favorable 
judge after favorable judge in front of a favorable jury that a lot of 
times just doesn't know the movement of the currents in this country 
and the competition that's going on between two philosophies and 
ideologies.
  One of them mirrors the words of our Founding Fathers, the beliefs 
and the foundation of our Founding Fathers, that our rights come from 
God. No place in history have we seen that aside from the New 
Testament. No government was ever formed on the foundation of religious 
belief and believing that we have individual human rights, that these 
rights come from God. We're endowed by our Creator with certain 
unalienable rights. I don't say ``inalienable.'' That is a typo in the 
Jefferson Monument down here. It's ``unalienable'' rights. We're 
endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among them 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  We all know those words. They echoed us. They are writ on our hearts 
as Americans. And we should remember that our Founding Fathers were 
inspired and, I believe, guided by God to articulate the vision of the 
unique liberty that's endowed within each of us who is created in His 
image. They articulated it; they understood it; they made the argument; 
they laid it out in the Declaration; they fought a war for it; and they 
enshrined it within the Constitution itself, this rule of law.

                              {time}  1330

  How hard was that compared to our charge today, Mr. Speaker? How hard 
was it in comparison to the Founding Fathers identifying liberty, 
articulating liberty, using the language and the scholarship that they 
created to write on our hearts: life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness?
  As an aside, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't an accident that they delivered 
to us three distinct rights, not exclusive to those three. When they 
said life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Thomas Jefferson 
didn't just pull those things out of a hat and say, Well, let me see. 
Life came out first and what is the next one? Well, it is like a 
Chinese fortune cookie. Liberty. And the third one he pulled out is 
pursuit of happiness. They are carefully placed in the Declaration 
because they are prioritized rights.
  The most important right is life, the next most important right is 
liberty, and the last of the three is pursuit of happiness.
  Let me start with pursuit of happiness. Our Founding Fathers--and 
especially Thomas Jefferson--studied and understood Greek. They looked 
back in the history of Greece and they understood this term that I will 
pronounce ``eudamonia.'' It is a Greek term that really is pursuit of 
happiness. It is spelled e-u-d-a-m-o-n-i-a. Eudamonia by my 
pronunciation. What it means is to be intellectually and spiritually 
whole, to pursue knowledge, to pursue an understanding of this unique 
being that we are with a soul, with a spirit, with an intellect, and to 
expand that to the maximum limit that God has given us. That was 
eudamonia. Pursuit of happiness wasn't a tailgate party at the ball 
game. Pursuit of happiness was the Greek understanding of happiness, 
which was developing your whole being to the maximum amount.
  Thomas Jefferson placed that pursuit of happiness language in there 
understanding what it meant in the Greek understanding. He understood 
what it meant to the Americans at the time. That's been redefined since 
that time to now people think somehow pursuit of happiness is a 
tailgate party or going to the ball game or going out on the deck to 
light the grill or going down to the corner pub and having a drink with 
the guys, whatever it is that people do. Go fishing, go skiing in the 
mountains, that is pursuit of happiness? None of that was in the minds 
of the Founding Fathers. What was in their minds was the ability to 
have the freedom that God gave us to develop ourselves as human beings 
spiritually and intellectually. That was eudamonia. That was the 
pursuit of happiness. It was the third right, Mr. Speaker.
  The second one was liberty. We understand, I think, liberty better 
here in America than in the rest of the world. Liberty is a component 
of our history and often gets conflated with the term ``freedom.'' 
Freedom and liberty are two different terms, Mr. Speaker. They have two 
different meanings even though they are associated with each other.
  You might think of freedom--as I look across outside the snowy 
landscape where I live, sometimes I will see a coyote run across the 
field and I will think he has freedom. He is out there in the wild; he 
can run wherever he wants to run; no fence keeps him in; he is free to 
chase down rabbits and anything else that he wants to go after, and my 
pheasants I might say. He has freedom. But there is a difference 
between freedom and liberty. The distinction is this: liberty is 
freedom bridled by morality, bridled by an understanding that you have 
a moral obligation, a faithful obligation not to go outside those 
bounds that have been laid out for us. If that is the case, you have 
liberty. You have freedom, and the bridle that goes on freedom is the 
moral underpinnings that we must adhere to as Americans. That's why 
this Constitution works for us, we know.
  So within liberty, are those rights that are defined in the first 10 
amendments in the Bill of Rights? The liberty for freedom of speech, 
for religion, freedom to assembly and peaceably assemble for redress of 
grievances, the freedom to keep and bear arms, the freedom from double 
jeopardy, the freedom to keep and own property, the freedom to have a 
trial by a jury of our peers, the freedom for the powers that are not 
defined within the Constitution for the Federal Government to devolve 
down for the States or the people respectively, that is all liberty. 
Everything I've defined in there is liberty, provided it is within the 
moral boundaries.
  Now I take us up the ladder of the priorities of life, liberty, 
pursuit of happiness--eudamonia. Pursuit of happiness is subordinated 
to liberty. You can develop yourself, Mr. Speaker, intellectually and 
spiritually in the philosophy of our Founding Fathers, provided that 
you don't trample on someone else's liberty. If I want to develop my 
knowledge base, my spiritual base, I can exercise my freedom of 
religion, my freedom of speech, my freedom of assembly in any way that 
I so choose under the rights that we have that are liberties, provided 
that I don't trample on the liberty of someone else.
  I can't take a position that says you will be censored because I'm 
going to exercise my freedom of speech or you can't assemble because I 
don't like what you say, I'm exercising my freedom of assembly, you 
must not. I can exercise my pursuit of happiness, my development, my 
own liberties, provided I don't trample someone else's. The Founding 
Fathers understood that priority. In the exercise of our liberties--
freedom of speech, religion, assembly, keep and bear arms, the list 
that I've given--Mr. Speaker, in no case can we take someone else's 
life in the expansion of our liberties.
  If I say that there's someone that encroaches upon my liberties, 
therefore I'm going to take their life, I have violated the principles 
of the Declaration, the principles of this country, let alone the laws 
of the United States of America. We need to understand that the 
Founding Fathers laid out prioritized rights in the Declaration: life, 
liberty, and pursuit of happiness. That pursuit of happiness cannot 
trample on liberty or life, and the exercise of our liberties cannot 
trample on life.
  They understood that and that life is the most sacred. If we 
understand also

[[Page H1131]]

that life begins at the instant of conception and we need to protect 
that life both in law and in fact and provide for those who cannot 
scream for their own mercy, cannot speak for themselves, that 
protection for life, all of that is wrapped up in this Constitution and 
in the rights that the gentlelady from the District of Columbia 
referred to.
  I go back to law schools in this land teaching Constitution law as if 
this Constitution is a living, breathing document and some amorphous 
combination of case law created by activist lawyers, activist judges, 
and sometimes I will say compliant juries, because they seldom see the 
big picture of what is going on. They have respect for what is taught 
in law schools; they have respect for judges sitting behind the bench. 
I do too.
  But I will take the position, Mr. Speaker, that any judge that 
believes they can amend the Constitution by their policy decision on 
case law should not be seated on that bench. Anyone who takes an oath 
to the Constitution and they believe it was whatever it will be defined 
to mean by somebody that comes along later, they should stop and take 
stock of what they are about to do. That may be a violation of 
conscience just not thought through.
  We had a major case in Iowa a couple of years ago called Varnum v. 
Brien. Seven State supreme court justices universally declared that 
they could find rights in the Constitution that were up to this point 
unimagined. They wrote unanimously that they had discovered unimagined 
rights in the Constitution itself.
  Can you imagine a guarantee with unimagined rights, Mr. Speaker? The 
Founding Fathers could not have imagined allowing judges to sit on a 
bench who believe that they could write any decision they chose to 
write, that they could manufacture unimagined rights in order to get 
their public policy in place. But that's exactly what happened in Iowa 
in that case. Three of those judges were up for retention and Iowans 
voted them off the bench. Now there are three new supreme court 
justices there, and hopefully there is a reconsideration among the 
other four.
  The unimagined rights that were inserted into the supreme court 
decision impose same-sex marriage on the State of Iowa. That brought 
about some people like my good friend Congressman Louie Gohmert, who 
came there to help with that cause and went on the bus to help with 
that cause who made the constitutional argument consistently and 
continually. It is an example, Mr. Speaker. But we have a number of 
other examples of activist courts, and I'm concerned about what has 
happened historically.

                              {time}  1340

  And I'll make this point: that if I look through the continuum of 
Supreme Court cases that take us to where we are today, and we have a 
conscience protection piece of legislation before this Congress, one of 
them may have had a vote in the Senate this afternoon, and that would 
be Senator Blunt's language, Senator Blunt from Missouri. In this 
Congress, it's Jeff Fortenberry from Nebraska, who understood 
conscience protection and introduced the legislation that protects the 
health care providers and all of us for our religious liberty. And this 
Congress may get a vote on it, and it may actually have failed in the 
Senate this afternoon is what I'm advised was about to happen. I 
haven't confirmed that. And it could actually be happening after I 
finish speaking, Mr. Speaker.
  But what I see happening is that the Constitution protects our 
religious liberty, our religious rights, and still, this government 
steps in to usurp them. This executive branch steps in to usurp our 
religious rights.
  To this extent, and I'll take you, Mr. Speaker, through this 
continuum that is appalling to me, and it would be appalling to the 
Founding Fathers had they lived through these decisions.
  1965, no, excuse me; I'll go back to 1963, Mr. Speaker. There was a 
case called Murray v. Curlett, and I don't know that that is very well 
universally recognized, but that was the case that took prayer out of 
the public schools. There was an argument made before the activist 
court in 1963 that there was a separation of church and state, and that 
that separation of church and state was firm enough and solid enough 
that we could not pray in our public schools because that advocated for 
a religion.
  And so I'll read to you the language that surely had to be reviewed 
by the Supreme Court justices. It says, Congress shall make--this is 
the First Amendment, Mr. Speaker--Congress shall make no law respecting 
an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 
And it goes on, of course, freedom of speech, the press, and the right 
of the people to assemble.
  It says Congress shall make no law. There was no law that came from 
Congress that established a religion. The law that Congress made just 
didn't exist with religious freedom because Congress understood that 
the First Amendment means what it says. The textual reading and the 
original understanding said Congress shall not establish a religion. 
We're not going to be like Sweden, establishing Lutheranism as a state 
religion. We're going to have freedom of religion, but it shall not 
establish a religion. Congress shall make no law respecting an 
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
  But if you believe in judge-made law, the Supreme Court, by that 
decision in 1963, Murray v. Curlett, outlawed prayer in the public 
schools by a court decision. I think it's in direct violation of the 
First Amendment of the Constitution. If we're going to respect judge-
made law and stop praying in our public schools, that was the beginning 
of the judicial activism that's begun to break down this civilization 
and this culture. I think those decisions needed to be made at the 
local school level, not at the Supreme Court level.
  And I remember sitting, as a freshman in high school, and this news 
came to me, I was sitting in general science class. And they said now 
there will be no more prayer in our school. And I remember thinking, 
what does that actually stop? How will they stop us from praying? If 
the teachers decide not to, does that mean I can't? Can we not, as 
students? Can I not pray before a test? I needed help, I will tell you.
  A thought process went through my mind. The only way that the Federal 
Government could prohibit prayer in the public schools would be to 
clear out the public schools. If we insisted on following through, 
they'd have to empty the schools. Otherwise, there was going to be 
prayer in the public schools, as well as our parochial schools. They 
would have to come in and march us all out of school, chain the doors 
shut, and post a guard to prevent prayer in the public schools.
  So what did we do? We genuflected to the Supreme Court, accepted the 
Murray v. Curlett decision in 1963, stopped activity of public prayer 
in public schools, and we've had subsequent decisions along the way 
about whether students could pray, whether athletes could pray, whether 
coaches could pray with athletes, whether coaches could be there when 
athletes prayed with themselves, all of these things decided by a 
Supreme Court that believes in stare decisis, that there was a decision 
made in 1963, and that they're somehow bound by that decision, rather 
than looking back at the plain text of this Constitution and concluding 
that as long as Congress doesn't make a law establishing a state 
religion, or interfere with the practice of religion, then it isn't the 
Federal Government's business to be engaged in religious activity that 
takes place in the public or the private schools. But that's what 
happened in 1963.
  Then, Mr. Speaker, 1965, we went through, at breakneck speed, went 
through the Constitution over here at the Supreme Court, out those 
doorways and off that way, breakneck speed. This was Griswold, Griswold 
v. Connecticut. At that time, Connecticut and Massachusetts and 
multiple other States had outlawed contraceptives in their States. That 
meant that you couldn't go in and buy contraceptives at the drug store. 
The case of Griswold was brought against--Griswold brought the case 
against the State of Connecticut and said, your State law that bans 
contraceptives is unconstitutional. And they went before the Supreme 
Court and argued.
  What are you going to base that on? How does a State not have a power 
that's not--all non-enumerated powers are reserved for the States or 
the people, respectively. So the Constitution, I say, defines that the 
States had that

[[Page H1132]]

power. But yet, the Supreme Court, in their imagination in 1965, 
created this right to privacy, a right to privacy fabricated out of 
whole cloth, didn't exist in the Constitution, doesn't exist today in 
the Constitution, but it exists on the lips of every law school 
professor that's teaching constitutional law, a right to privacy that's 
been created now by the Supreme Court. They say it was in this 
Constitution somehow but had never been discovered until the Supreme 
Court discovered it in Griswold v. Connecticut.
  So it was against the law in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and multiple 
other States to even sell contraceptives. So the Supreme Court created 
a right to privacy and outlawed the ban on contraceptives in 
Connecticut.
  I say if you lived in Connecticut in 1965 and you wanted 
contraceptives, you could drive across the State line, or you could 
move to another State. That was the vision of the laboratories of the 
State experiment of the Founding Fathers. States' rights, Tenth 
Amendment. They imposed that in 1965.
  Oh, by the way, in 1972 there was a case called Eisenstadt that said, 
well--it was just married people in Griswold in 1965. Eisenstadt came 
along and said, well, if there's a right to privacy for married people 
to be able to purchase contraceptives, surely that exists for unmarried 
people as well. They imposed that, and the Federal Government took 
another reach, and now we have the foundation for Roe v. Wade, which 
turned into--the right to privacy became the foundational argument for 
Roe v. Wade in 1973, just 8 years after Griswold.
  And they found, in the emanations and penumbras, a right to abortion. 
Only the right to abortion of a nonviable fetus, I might add, but the 
companion case was Doe v. Bolton. And in that case it said, But there 
will be exceptions to the viable fetus if the health of the mother is 
considered. And health of the mother was defined to be mental, 
physical, or familial health of the mother. And so it was an open door 
right to any kind of abortion, this all rooted in judicial activism, I 
might add.
  Today, seeing what has happened in Griswold, and them setting aside a 
State law, now, to the point where the President of the United States, 
Mr. Speaker, stepped before a press conference, a week, 2 weeks ago, on 
a Friday at noon, and he said, Well, okay, you know I might have gotten 
in a little hot water about taking away the rights to conscience of the 
Catholic Church and other religious institutions by telling them, 
through Kathleen Sebelius, that they shall provide, not just 
contraceptives any longer--I want to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, it wasn't 
just that. It was contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortifacients, 
pills that cause abortion, requiring religious organizations, pro-life 
organizations, especially the Catholic Church, to provide that if 
they're going to provide any kind of health care for their employees or 
their patients, a direct, clear, imposition of a violation of rights to 
conscience.
  And Father Jonathan Morris said, publicly, that you cannot force 
someone to violate their conscience. You keep your convictions of your 
conscience, even unto death. I applaud the position that he has taken. 
I endorse that position that he has taken.
  But now, a few days after this announcement came out, and the heat 
came on the President, his noon press conference on that Friday, he 
stepped up and, instead of, let's say, legislating within the confines 
of the Constitution itself, the supreme law of the land, or amending 
the Constitution if you disagree with what it says, or even legislating 
from the bench, as Griswold, Eisenstadt, Roe and Doe, and many others 
have done, we have now a President with the highest degree of audacity 
I have ever seen--and by the way, he uses that term ``audacity'' pretty 
often.

                              {time}  1350

  He thinks he's legislating by press conference. He said, Well, I'm 
not going to impose this on you any longer, Catholic Church and others. 
I'm going to impose it on insurance companies. They shall provide 
contraceptives, sterilizations, abortifacients, abortion-causing pills, 
and they shall do it at no charge.
  The audacity of the President of the United States to issue such a 
thing. And we should not comply with such an unconstitutional order 
from the President of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.

                          ____________________