[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 66 (Thursday, May 10, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H2639-H2643]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICAN VALUES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 52 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We are really blessed here in the Capitol with some of the greatest
people that work around here and touch the lives of so many. So many
come from around the country to admire our great national Capitol, and
the people that work around here touch them one way or another.
Albert Caswell is one of those great folks. It seems every day we see
him with wounded warriors, in addition to his regular duties as a tour
guide. He's taken them through the Capitol, doing poems for them,
having them signed by Members of Congress, getting them entered in the
Record, getting them to individual warriors. He just does great work,
so I'm quite pleased my friend Steve King read that into the Record.
The truth is, freedom is not free, and we're surrounded by people who
have given a great deal--given limbs, given so much. I was standing by
a Gold Star mom in Texas this past week, and I really wasn't sure who
gave the most. Her son gave everything--gave his life. But his mother
gave her son.
We're told by Jesus, Greater love has no one than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends.
This Nation has experienced so much love by people who have laid down
their lives for their country, but at the same time millions of parents
have given their children proper teaching to love the things that make
this country the greatest country in the world. Instill those values in
their children for them to be willing to show the greatest love that
anyone can have.
I do know, from being so close to parents who have given their
children, that that is an unfathomable love. To care about your country
and its freedoms so much that you're willing to risk a child's life for
the good of others, and ultimately give that child for the good of the
country.
{time} 1530
It is so terribly difficult.
So we have people on foreign soil who are risking their lives; some
have given their lives for this country. We have law enforcement. We
have intelligence agents, agents from all parts of State, local, and
Federal Government who put their lives at risk every day so we can
enjoy the freedoms we have. We owe them not to be stupid about the way
we carry out the government's business and the way in which we protect
the citizens of this country, the people in this country, from all
enemies, foreign and domestic.
Now, we have some very noble patriots that serve at the various
levels of our Federal entities that are charged with keeping us safe.
Having visited with Secretary Panetta, who called me a few weeks ago,
having had multiple conversations with Director Mueller as Director of
the FBI, so many others in our Federal law enforcement, our Federal
intelligence, justice, we have a great lot of noble people. But here
again, we cannot be foolish about the way we go about protecting
America.
There are people who have been at war with the United States since
1979. President Carter hailed the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace
as he came back from exile and for the first time in so many years gave
a foothold for radical terrorizing Islam to have a country in Iran.
Americans soon found out the price of bad judgment in international
affairs.
Not too long thereafter, there was an attack against the American
Embassy in Tehran. I know at Fort Benning, Georgia, where I was, a lot
of folks were put on alert that it may be necessary for us to go and
defend this Nation because an attack against a country's embassy is an
attack against that country. It is an act of war. So there was an act
of war committed in Iran in 1979, and our response was so benign that
it is still being used as a recruiting tool by radical Islamists today
to show how Americans are not very smart, they don't have the stomach
for a strong fight so we can still prevail.
We had a benign response in 1983 after the attack on our marines and
lost around 300 precious marine lives in Beirut. The response was to
pull them out without a fight.
So many times we've been attacked in the last 30 years, acts of war,
and we failed to recognize what they were until 2001 when most of
America woke up at that point, that there are people who want to
destroy America. When bin Laden wrote that they had spent around
$500,000 to train those people and to carry out the mission of crashing
planes into American buildings to destroy buildings and to kill
thousands of Americans--apparently they were hoping for more, in the
range of 50,000 or so to be killed in the Twin Towers. But as bin Laden
has pointed out, an investment, from their standpoint, the way they saw
it, of around $500,000 cost America trillions and trillions of dollars.
And even before he was taken out,
[[Page H2640]]
it was clear to him that they helped put America on track to be
bankrupt. From his standpoint, that was a tremendous investment. Invest
$500,000 in an act of war and cost your enemy not only thousands of
lives but trillions of dollars, not only in damage but in the money
spent to try to secure the Nation.
That's why it is so important that we be smarter about the way our
money is spent, that we utilize a little bit more discernment, a little
more wisdom in the way that we take on those who are bent on our
destruction. They are still there. And the Taliban's strength, as both
Senator Feinstein and Representative Rogers, the two chairs from the
Senate and House, respectively, of our Intelligence, our Homeland
Security--I guess, Intelligence--they understand and they believe the
Taliban is stronger now than it was before. It is growing in strength.
We have not been very wise about the way we took on an enemy that wants
to take this country down.
Now, there are some who have been a little oversensitive, and it
seems that some who are our Muslim friends who have been more defensive
about any questions about radical Islam than they have been about
condemning the radicals that have hijacked their religion. And it would
be helpful for those of us who know there are moderate Muslims who just
want to live in peace, to have their help in condemning radical Islam
instead of condemning those of us who stand up against and condemn
radical Islam.
America, one of our great traits is we don't want to really offend
people around the world. There have been some ugly Americans over the
years who give us a bad name, but all in all, Americans are loving,
caring, forgiving people. And the only nation in the history of the
world that has ever sent treasure in the form of money and our greatest
assets, our individuals, to fight and die on behalf of people in
another nation over which we want no control, we want no territory, we
just want freedom to reign in the world so we can live in peace and
help extend that freedom to others around the world.
That's why, over the years, as stories have unfolded about high-
handed leaders in other countries who say, We want Americans out; we
don't like you. And the response has come in some situations, Do you
want us to remove all of the dead bodies of Americans who gave their
lives so you could have the freedom to tell us where to go and what to
do?
Americans have had a place in history like no other nation.
Ironically, as one general recently said in conversation, virtually
every deployment he has had into harm's way, he has been sent there by
the United States on behalf of Muslims who were being mistreated by
others, including Christians. So, for some of us it gets a little
discouraging that our Muslim friends who want to live in peace will not
take notice of the fact that this country has stood up against tyranny,
against moderate Muslims around the world, and we continue to do that.
{time} 1540
We are doing that in Afghanistan and we get no credit for that.
Instead, we get condemned because we want to protect what we have, and
we get so caught up in political correctness that we're afraid to call
things as they are.
Now, I mentioned before, but that line in the ``Patton'' movie may or
may not have actually been said. But it is a fact for military
strategists, as Patton looked over the carnage from a battle in which
his tanks took on the tanks of that incredible German Field Marshal
Rommel, and reportedly Patton said something like, paraphrasing,
Rommel, you glorious, childless son--or apparently, son--I read your
book.
Going through military science, we were taught that if you want to be
able to fight effectively on behalf of your country, you have to know
your enemy. We would prefer we have no enemies. As Christians--those of
us who are--we're taught to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus,
himself, said, when he was asked by a lawyer, What's the most important
commandment? He said, Love God. The second is like it, Love your
neighbor. And on those two things, those two laws, hang all the law and
the prophets.
The full face of Moses depicted above the door in the center back in
the gallery is there because he was considered perhaps the greatest
lawgiver of all time. Of all the lawgivers who have side profiles,
Moses has the one full face. And if you were to outline the Ten
Commandments that Moses was used to provide, you could outline them
under two headings: number one, love God; number two, love each other.
They all fall under those two commands.
Since we have a very rich Judeo-Christian heritage here in America,
for at least the first 130, 140 years of our country's history people
have been proud to constantly quote the Bible here on the House floor
as the ultimate authority for reasoning behind good legislation. As one
goes right out those doors, straight down the halls a matter of feet,
you come to Statuary Hall. It is the place where the House of
Representatives met for most of the 1800s. And except for after the
fire in 1814 that the British set, a fire which was put out by what
insurance policies would call an act of God, a deluging rain that put
out the fire, preserved this Capitol's shell so that it didn't implode
and become a bunch of ruins, right down the hall in Statuary Hall--
formerly, the House of Representatives--for most of the 1800s, it was a
place of nondenominational Christian worship services.
I hope one day we'll have a plaque down there so that the 15,000 or
so people a day that come through can read and understand that the man,
Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase ``separation of church and
State''--not in the Constitution, as most Americans apparently believe,
but in a letter to the Danbury Baptists about why, really, we shouldn't
have an official denomination of the Christian religion--Jefferson
attended church virtually every Sunday he was in Washington just down
the hall. They had nondenominational Christian worship services.
So it is amazing the lack of education that has occurred in recent
generations so that you can have one of the cable channels--is it BSNBC
or something like that? They reported that in the past week there was
some kind of a prayer service in Statuary Hall by a bunch of right-
wingers, when what was actually done was not nearly as stout in
Christian nature as what Thomas Jefferson used to do as President when
he attended church down there, and the Speaker's podium was used as the
pulpit each Sunday for most of the 1800s.
Most people credit Madison with having more to do with the
Constitution than anyone else of our Founders. Madison also attended
church, a nondenominational Christian church, in Statuary Hall--back
then, the House of Representatives--and he found no affront to the
Constitution to attend church in the U.S. Capitol. For much of the
1800s, the largest Christian church in the Nation's capital was here at
the Capitol in the House of Representatives where they attended church
each Sunday.
The Congressional Research Service did some research on material that
we provided to see what they believed was documented and what wasn't.
They said Jefferson normally came down Pennsylvania Avenue on horseback
by himself. One story is of Jefferson coming down Pennsylvania Avenue
with a big Bible under his arm, and one of the citizens said, Mr.
President, where are you going? Well, it was Sunday morning, and he
said, I'm going to church up in the Capitol. He said, Sir, you don't
believe everything those Christians do up there. And he said, Sir, I am
the highest elected magistrate in this country. It is imperative that I
set the proper example.
So he came to church, and he did not find attending church down in
the House of Representatives as offending the notion that he dreamed up
of a separation of church and State--his words.
He's also the person that coined the phrase having a ``wall of
separation'' that the Supreme Court has many, many years later
misconstrued because they didn't know their history, weren't properly
taught. But Jefferson did not find it an affront to his concept of
separation of church and State to bring the United States Marine Band
into the Capitol to play Christian hymns for the Christian worship
services.
So what to some cable channel may have been this strange, weird thing
[[Page H2641]]
that happened because they have not been properly educated, to Thomas
Jefferson, to James Madison was just a matter of propriety and course.
Certainly, there's nothing wrong with bringing the Marine Band to play
hymns in the House of Representatives for a nondenominational church
Christian worship service, because it was nondenominational. They
weren't putting emphasis on any particular denomination.
When Randolph, during the 1787 Constitutional Convention, saw that
things were falling apart and heard this inspirational speech by
Benjamin Franklin, how Franklin, in his words--we have his words
because he wrote them down in his own handwriting--said:
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 man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the
ground without His notice, is it possible an empire could
rise without His aid?
Franklin went on to say:
We've been assured, sir, in the sacred writing that, unless
the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.
Some of us were taught he was a deist, but in his own words, in his
own handwriting, the speech that he gave to the other members at the
Constitutional Convention, he urged them by saying, Firmly believe
this. He said:
I also firmly believe without His concurring help, we shall
succeed in our political building no better than the builders
of Babel.
We'll be confounded by our local partial interests and we,
ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages.
{time} 1550
Well, Randolph, his proposal, after Franklin, was we basically have
had so much disagreement, such a spirit of anger in here, I move that
we all go to church. Here we are, the end of June, we're about to
celebrate the country's anniversary. I move that we all go to church
together, and all of us--the irony of this, all of us, as part of the
Constitutional Convention, that are going to give this Nation the
Constitution that will one day cause the Supreme Court to say we don't
think that you can constitutionally do what the Founders and the
writers of the Constitution did, he said, we all ought to go to church
together in celebration of the anniversary and then come back and pick
this up.
One wrote that there was a new spirit. They all went to the Reformed
Calvinistic Church. They all went to the same church. They all heard
the same sermon. And it evoked a spirit of unity and collaboration,
that although there were differences, they were able to come together
thereafter and give us the Constitution.
So it's part of our heritage. And as part of our heritage, we welcome
people from all faiths, or no faiths. But just because you don't have a
faith, don't come in and tell us we can't have and enjoy what the
Founders provided and assured in the First Amendment that we could
have.
Don't try to mis-educate any more Supreme Court Justices, so that
although they're brilliant of intellect, they're ignorant of our
history and what the Constitution means so they do not really
understand the freedoms that we were provided and that there is a
prohibition against our practicing our religion.
Some have twisted those words, the language, our Constitution, and
political correctness to the point that it is exposing us to
unnecessary danger. And although these people that we have in authority
here in this town mean well, and they all want to see the country do
well and thrive, we can't be stupid about the way we go around helping
protect the country.
So, we have people in America that are more concerned with political
correctness and more concerned that someone does not get offended while
we are fighting for our Nation's life, fighting for the Nation's
existence against powers that want to destroy us. They're concerned we
might offend somebody, we might offend those who want to kill and
destroy us, and, what's worse, we might offend someone who is a
moderate and practices under the name of the same religion of those who
want to destroy us.
And just like Patton was pointing out, you can't defend yourself
unless you know the enemy that wants to destroy you.
9/12 was a day like I've not experienced in my lifetime. We were
scared. Americans across the country came together. We prayed. We
didn't care about political correctness. Courthouse squares around the
country, we grabbed hands. We did in Tyler, Texas. They did all around
the country, people holding hands and singing hymns, singing ``Amazing
Grace,'' singing ``God Bless America,'' people praying for God's
protection once again, just like Ben Franklin told us we would have to
have or we would succeed no better than the builders of Babel.
We came together, and for that day, and for a time thereafter, there
was no such thing as a hyphenated American. There was no Euro-American,
there was no African-American, no Asian-American, Native-American.
There were Americans here in America, and we were concerned about
having a future for us and our children and, hopefully, their children
and their children. And we were smart for a short time, and in a
bipartisan way, this Chamber came together.
I was on the bench at the time as a judge. I was qualifying a jury
panel when the Twin Towers were hit. Nobody was concerned about
hyphenated Americans because we were Americans. And what this Chamber
did, in coming together with the Senate and saying, You know what?
Let's study where we went wrong. And a bipartisan commission was put
together to study, in complete candor, what had gone wrong. How did the
worst attack against America on its own soil occur without us realizing
what was coming?
We had the 9/11 Commission report that came out of that, and the 9/11
Commission report used words like ``enemy'' 39 times, ``jihad'' 126
times, ``Muslim'' 145 times because those who wanted to destroy us and
tried used that term about themselves. That's who they said they were
before the attack. They used terms in the report 32 two times like
``Islam'' because those who attacked us in the worst attack in our
history on our soil used that term about themselves.
And I am very sorry for our moderate Islamic friends who want to live
in peace with all Americans because they're Americans. And I'm sorry if
people are offended that those who hated us so much they would bring
down the World Trade Centers, try to wipe out the Pentagon, try to wipe
out what some say is the most recognized building in the world, this
Capitol, I'm sorry if they're offended that those people call
themselves Muslim. They call themselves Islamists.
``Muslim Brotherhood'' was mentioned five times in the 9/11
Commission report because it was important. There was an interwoven
nature to what was going on in the attack. They used ``religious,''
that word, 65 times. They mentioned ``Hamas'' four times. They
mentioned ``Hezbollah'' two times. They mentioned ``al Qaeda'' 36
times. They mentioned ``caliph'' seven times. They mentioned
``shari'a'' twice.
But apparently we have leaders who mean well, I know that, who think
they're protecting America, who are more concerned about not offending
people who don't want to hurt us than they are about just speaking
truth. And how can you deal with an enemy unless you're willing to
recognize them in truth?
So now, because in the very recent months, the FBI counterterrorism
lexicon, this effort by our FBI that's going on in the Justice
Department, it's going on in the Intelligence Department, it's going on
in the State Department, it's going on in the White House, itself--
they're leading the charge--we don't want to offend anyone.
{time} 1600
So no longer is an FBI agent who is new, someone who may barely
remember what occurred on 9/11, allowed to be taught what the enemy who
attacked us said about themselves. They're not allowed to be taught
what they said motivated our enemy. How can you deal with your enemy?
How can you take them on and win that fight and come out victorious
unless you recognize what motivates them? Because, when you know what
motivates them, you can predict more likely what they will do next.
That's why there are novelists in America who do a better job of
projecting where we will be hit next than
[[Page H2642]]
our own government intelligence agencies, other than our own government
FBI. It's why some noticed that there was a soldier on al Jazeera who
was saying exactly what Major Hasan had said: in essence about how,
with his being a Muslim, if he were sent to a Muslim country where he
might accidentally kill another Muslim for one of the unrecognized
allowances to kill another Muslim, then they would have to act up and
kill Americans to avoid having to risk going to a Muslim country and
killing a Muslim.
The guy is saying basically the same things Hasan did before he
killed 13 of our precious servicemembers in an act that in our
political correctness this administration now refers to as ``workplace
violence.''
I came to know and love some Pearl Harbor survivors. They had no idea
that what they experienced at Pearl Harbor, according to the thinking
of this administration, was an act of workplace violence, where someone
came into the workplace of all of these civilians and all of these
soldiers and sailors and marines in Pearl Harbor and killed them in
their workplace. They didn't understand that because that's not what it
was--nor was it workplace violence at Fort Hood. It was an act of war
against our military.
I am grateful we have Members of the House and Senate who had the
foresight to file a bill to make sure that they should have Purple
Hearts, because it was not workplace violence. They died for their
country. They died for freedom. They laid down their lives, which they
knew were at risk from the moment they took the oath, which is just
like all of us who have been in the service have taken.
Political correctness must be set aside so that we can speak candidly
and truthfully. So, if there really is nothing to fear from the radical
Islamists who have hijacked the name of a religion away from the mass
moderate Muslims, it is time for more than just three or four or a
handful of moderate Muslims to step forward and help us in calling it
what it is.
Now, I recognize that, for any Muslim to step forward and condemn
another Muslim, it is a very, very risky proposition. It's far more
risky for them to do that than for a considered infidel like me to step
up and condemn radical jihadist Islamists, because I'm already an
infidel in their eyes; but moderates know that if they speak out
publicly they could be targeted for turning on their own religion.
Among the radicals--crazies--who are trying to highjack the religion,
they get angrier at a moderate Muslim than they do at an infidel for
speaking against another Muslim. So it is very risky for a moderate to
step up and join those of us who want to recognize accurately what our
enemy is.
But, in the name of political correctness, not only have we cleansed
our National Intelligence Strategy, which is becoming a misnomer--how
can you have intelligence if you're not allowed to recognize your enemy
for what your enemy calls himself?--our FBI counterterrorism lexicon,
how it has been cleansed of the terms that those at war with us call
themselves.
It is important that we learn from our mistakes because, if we refuse
to learn from our mistakes, we're going to keep making them. Most
people have been taught the old adage: ``Those who refuse to learn from
history are destined to repeat it.'' We should not have to experience
another major attack on our own soil and the loss of thousands of
American lives before we have another heartbreaking day like September
12 of 2001 on which we come together, embrace, and say we're not
hyphenated Americans--we're Americans. We are one people, and we will
stand together. We shouldn't have to have more Americans killed as they
were on 9/11 to bring us together like that.
But I beg, Mr. Speaker, of my colleagues: Let's help educate our
Federal Government that it's okay to call people ``radical Islamists''
if they have called themselves that and that it's okay to describe
people in our FBI counterterrorism lexicon and in our intelligence
materials what the terrorists, themselves, call themselves. It's okay,
and we won't be mad at each other when we do that.
What happens when we try to become too politically correct is that we
have things like the FBI and a wonderful Director who, I believe,
unintentionally has hurt the FBI by his 5-year up-or-out policy, which
we now know has cost us thousands and thousands and thousands of years
of experience by running off our more experienced FBI agents in favor
of agents in charge, who may go from having 26 years of experience to
having 5 or 6 years of experience, who may not even have been out of
college at the time of 9/11 and who are now in charge as the most
experienced people we have in our offices around the country. That has
hurt us.
At the same time, for example, in June of 2002, our FBI Director took
fire for giving a speech to the American Muslim Council, which the
Director's spokesman described as ``the most mainstream Muslim group in
the United States.'' But, at the time of the speech in 2002, the head
of the American Muslim Council was a man named al-Amoudi, who was
videotaped in October of 2000 delivering a speech just yards away from
the White House, proclaiming:
I have been labeled by the media in New York as being a
supporter of Hamas. We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish
they'd added that I'm also a supporter of Hezbollah.
That was also the same year, 2002, that the AMC, the American Muslim
Council, board adviser and former acting president, Jamil al-Amin, was
arrested for murdering a Georgia police officer. Al-Amoudi was arrested
in 2003 in a Libyan assassination plot targeting the Saudi Crown
Prince, and was later identified by the U.S. Treasury as one of al
Qaeda's top fund-raisers in the United States.
At the time of our FBI Director's speech in 2002, al-Amoudi had been
under investigation by the FBI for almost a decade for funneling money
between Osama bin Laden and the ``Blind Sheikh.''
In October of 2003, just days before the ceremony honoring a Detroit
Muslim leader, Imad Hamad, and bestowing on him the FBI Director's
award for exceptional public service, the FBI had to contact Hamad and
tell him he wasn't going to receive the reward.
{time} 1610
The FBI initially claimed they had decided to give the award to a
victim of the 9/11 terror attacks, but later an FBI spokesman revealed
that unflattering information about Hamad had been made public during
the deportation proceedings for one of his close associates. In fact,
the INS fought for two decades to deport Hamad for his suspected
support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a
designated terrorist organization by this government. That information
came to light not due to any checking or vetting by the FBI, but thanks
to an article published by the New York Post.
It brings me back to the point about a young soldier after the 13
military members were killed at Fort Hood by Major Hasan who was on al-
Jazeera saying the same things Hasan did before he went to kill. We had
people that actually noticed that, but it would have been politically
incorrect to do anything about it. You know, they say those things. If
it had not been for a gun dealer in Texas who found this young private
suspicious, if it had not been for that gun dealer calling in local
authorities and alerting them, we would have had another Fort Hood
shooting and lost other precious members of our military. They were
saved not because of the intelligence community, the FBI
counterterrorism, or the Homeland Security countering violent
extremism, because we don't want to use the term jihad or Islamic
jihad. So it's countering violent extremists. No, none of those picked
it up. There were people who noticed and reported it, but nothing was
done because it might be politically incorrect. They risked the lives
of our precious military in political correctness. If not for the work
of a gun dealer in Texas and local law enforcement jumping right on top
of it, we could have lost military members.
Here are some other examples. Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami
al-Arian had meetings and conversations with high-ranking officials at
the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department despite
being the subject of FISA wiretap warnings since the early 1990s and
having his home raided in 1995. He was still having meetings at the
DOJ, Homeland Security, and having access to our government's inner
sanctum. As part of a plea agreement, al-Arian admitted to being
[[Page H2643]]
a part of the leadership structure of the terrorist group, and they
were meeting with him.
In 2008, our FBI director handed one of his Director's Community
Leadership Awards to Imam Yahya Hendi, who had testified during al-
Arian's trial as a defense witness. Hendi had served as a moderator
during a 2000 fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation,
which was shut down in November 2002 by the U.S. Government and
designated a terrorist organization for its support of al Qaeda and a
number of other Islamic terrorist groups.
An FBI agent testified during the Holy Land Foundation trial that
CAIR was a front for the terrorist group Hamas, and the FBI was
publicly forced to sever its ties with CAIR. They had all this
information, and yet they continued to, as their own information says,
partner with CAIR, though CAIR--they knew we had evidence--was
partnering with terrorists.
In September of 2010, known Hamas cleric, Mustapha, who was a part of
a 6-week FBI Citizen's Academy, was treated to guided tours at the top-
secret National Counterterrorism Center, FBI headquarters, and the FBI
Academy at Quantico. Mustapha's participation in the FBI program came
after he was personally named a coconspirator in the Holy Land
Foundation trial and after his appointment as a Muslim chaplain to the
Illinois State Police had been revoked. Illinois had already figured
out what he was and what he believed before he was given tours of our
top-secret National Counterterrorism Center.
Time magazine featured a profile of Mohamed Majid, imam of the All
Dulles Area Muslim Society--or they call themselves ADAMS for short.
I'm sure John Adams appreciates that. He is the current president of
the Islamic Society of North America, which also was a named
coconspirator to fund terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation trial. And
both the district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals examined
the record and said there is plenty of evidence here to support their
being named specifically as supporters of terrorism.
But in November 2005, Majid was awarded by the FBI for the imam's
cooperation in the war on terror, claiming, ``Majid regularly tips off
the Bureau.'' But in a letter to the ADAMS center community the very
next day, Majid told his mosque Members he did no such thing. Majid
made clear that he never reported on anyone in the Muslim community and
that his relationship with the FBI was one-sided, and the outreach
meetings, ``are solely to create avenues to work with law enforcement
to preserve our civil liberties and civil rights.'' Majid has met with
top DOJ officials urging the criminalization of criticism of Islam.
It's okay to burn a Bible; it's okay to criticize Christianity and
Judaism; and police allowed people to scream and cuss obscenities about
God during a prayer at a Tea Party, but it's not okay to be critical of
these people.
It's time to wake up. It's time to set political correctness aside.
And Mr. Speaker, I would ask that this letter, signed by 22,000
Americans begging us to end political correctness that risks our
liberty, be made a matter of the Record.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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