[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 85 (Friday, June 14, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3649-H3651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    FREEDOMS ENDOWED BY OUR CREATOR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Meadows). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  We are living in interesting times--it's purported to be a Chinese 
curse to live in interesting times--but when you see what is 
confronting this country, what is taking our liberties, what is 
threatening our way of life, it's clear we are on the front lines of 
either winning back or losing for all times the greatest freedoms ever 
given and secured for one group of people.
  This is an extraordinary country, and it is because, just as our 
Founders pointed out repeatedly, they recognized that our rights are 
provided by our Creator; but just as any inheritance can be taken by 
those who are evil, greedy, power hungry, it must be defended or you 
lose it.
  We have people who make no bones about the fact that they want to 
destroy our way of life, that they think the freedom afforded the 
American people leads to debauchery, leads to ways of life that are 
evil and wrong, and therefore they must destroy the freedoms which have 
provided people the chance to make wrong choices. Our Founders would 
prefer the freedoms and so would the people here.
  Unfortunately, there are good people who believe that they are so 
much smarter and know better than everyone else, that, gee, since we're 
in Congress, we should tell people what they can do, how they can live, 
how they can make a living, whether they can make a living, or that we 
may just pay you to do nothing and to never reach your God-given 
potential.
  Then, as we heard today, we had an amendment made by our friend on 
the Democratic side, Mr. Polis, that would have required a new addition 
to the chaplain corps of every branch of the military. It would be a 
new addition to the chaplain corps for those who are nontheistic--or 
atheistic--for those who believe there is no God. I had no idea that 
people who do not believe that there is a God needed help and 
encouragement and support for their unbelief. Astounding.
  If people truly are atheistic, why would they need help in remaining 
so?
  Could it possibly be that, the more people look around, the more they 
see things like Ben Franklin did--80 years old--and, yes, he enjoyed 
what some people would call ``pleasures'' of different types when he 
represented us in France and represented us in England. He was a 
brilliant man, and the massive painting outside these halls shows him 
sitting front and center at the Constitutional Convention.
  It was there at that Convention when he finally got recognized after 
they'd been there nearly 5 weeks. Some across the country are still 
mis-educating children, unfortunately, by telling them he was a deist, 
someone who believes there is something--some force, some thing, some 
deity--that created nature, that created all of mankind and all of the 
things in the universe, and if such deity or thing still exists, it, 
he, she never interferes with the ways of men. Obviously, you see Ben 
Franklin's own words, and you know that's not what he believed. When he 
was 80 years old--2 years or so away from meeting his Maker--he finally 
got recognized after all the yelling back and forth that was done there 
at the Convention, and someone noted that Washington looked relieved 
when Mr. Franklin sought attention or, as some at the Convention called 
him, ``Dr. Franklin.''
  He pointed out during his remarks--and we know exactly what he 
pointed out because he wrote it in his own handwriting. People wanted a 
copy of what he said. Madison made notes, but Franklin wrote it out.
  Among other things, he said:

       I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the 
     more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that 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 writings--

  He called it ``sacred'' by the way--

     that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that 
     build it.

  He encouraged those at the Convention that he also believed, in his 
words, that without His concurring aid--he was talking about the same 
God, the same Lord he had just referenced--we shall succeed in our 
political building no better than the builders of Babel. We will be 
confounded by our local partial interests, and we, ourselves, shall 
become a byword down through the ages.
  That was in 1787 that Franklin said those words, late June. Now here 
we are, all these years later since 1787, and we have a motion to 
create chaplains in the military to help people not believe in what Ben 
Franklin said was the God who governs in the affairs of men, 
generically speaking. But it is important that people have the freedom 
to choose what they believe. As the Founders believed that God gave us 
freedom of choice, that He--our Creator--gave us those rights, they 
also believed that people should have the chance to choose right or 
wrong as well.
  As an exchange student in the Soviet Union back in the seventies, I 
saw people and became very good friends with some college students who 
didn't have our rights, who envied our rights, who would love to have 
shared the rights that we have. Ultimately, we saw that play out a 
couple of decades later when many across the former Soviet Union 
demanded those rights. Of the 15 states that made up this socialist 
republic, some have gone back to those ways. I was intrigued that some 
are scared when they're given that much freedom to choose where they 
work.

                              {time}  1520

  Do you mean I've got to find a job? But I've never had to look for a 
job. It's a little scary. As so many Americans, particularly over the 
last 5 years, have found it can be very difficult to find a job. So the 
idea that the government may just tell you what your job is, tell you 
whether you get a chance to go to college or not, that sounds good. I 
don't have to think about those decisions. Let the government do it for 
us.
  It's shocking, but there have grown to be many in America who like 
the idea of the government telling them what they can do, when they can 
do it, and how they can do it. It takes away the need to really wrestle 
with those things or, as so many of the signers of the Declaration 
believed, to have to pray about it and to struggle with the decision 
and try to find out, as many of them did, what is God's will for our 
lives.
  We have a statue of Peter Muehlenberg from Pennsylvania that was just 
down the hall. But when the visitor center opened, he was moved. He is 
the Christian pastor who is depicted in the statue of taking off his 
ministerial robe as he preached from Ecclesiastes, There is a time for 
every purpose under Heaven. He also told his congregation, There is a 
time for peace and there is a time for war and now is the time for war. 
And he led men from his congregation to join the military and to fight 
for freedom.
  His brother, Frederick, who also has a statue here, was the first 
Speaker of the House under our new Constitution. He had not actually 
immediately been in favor of the Revolution, but after his church was 
burned down by the British, he kind of thought maybe it was a decent 
idea for ministers to be involved in a revolution and for ministers to 
be involved in government where there was self-government of a people. 
So that brings us to today, from the Revolutionary years, to the 
Constitution after the Articles of Confederation fell apart.
  Now, there was debate on Ben Franklin's proposal, because under the 
Continental Congress, they had had prayer every day to start their 
sessions. But the only way they could do that with the diverse 
Christian denominations, including the Quakers, was to agree on a 
minister that they believed would not offend the others and pay him to 
be the chaplain. But as they pointed out during the debate over 
Franklin's proposal, We don't have money. We're not getting paid. We're 
here for a constitutional convention, but we don't have money like we 
did in the Continental Congress. We can't hire a chaplain. But

[[Page H3650]]

once the Constitution was passed and ratified, from the time of the 
first Congress, that first day--actually, when George Washington was 
sworn in at the Federal building in New York, made his way down to the 
chapel that is still there--the only building that was unaffected at 
Ground Zero as the towers fell--they had a prayer session for the 
Nation. Then each Congress ever since, House and Senate, began each day 
with prayer before they ever begin their session. It's still true 
today. But, again today, we have the feeling that those who believe 
there's no God are insecure enough that they need somebody to encourage 
them in their unbelief.
  One of the dangers, though, we have come to face and come to realize 
is that many in our Nation are choosing political correctness over 
safety. Yes, we all in this body, all of the Armed Forces when I was in 
the Army 4 years and we took that oath, we were supposed to support and 
protect the Constitution. Everybody I knew was prepared to die for it 
and to die for their country if necessary. Those people are still 
serving.
  We found out, though, that if you get too involved in political 
correctness--and it's politically correct to look the other way when 
people are talking about hatred for America and wanting America to have 
the Constitution subordinated to shari'a law--that, gee, it's just 
politically correct not to face the facts that those people exist and 
that some of them are in the military. So they pass a man up the system 
so that he is there to counsel Christians, atheists, and others who 
need counseling.
  With the people I've talked to in the military, especially in 
Afghanistan and when we were in Iraq, when you have a Commander in 
Chief who on his watch does not allow you to fire at people who may be 
firing at you, unless you can be sure you won't hit a civilian--at 
least that fear is put into those individuals. And I have asked for an 
official response from the Department of Defense, to put in writing 
exactly what our rules of engagement are that our soldiers are fighting 
under. We were told, That's classified and it can't be provided in 
answer to your question.
  Well, somebody has passed it on to the military in harm's way, just 
like in August of 2011 when we had SEAL team members where a target was 
put on their backs by this administration when, first of all, the Vice 
President of the country violates the classified information laws and 
sets out in his speech who the commander was who brought down Osama bin 
Laden and about his great SEAL team.

  Yes, he was paying them compliments, but he put a target on their 
back. I know our Vice President did not intend to do that. He was just 
so excited, just as he was when he revealed where the undisclosed 
location was. He didn't mean to breach national security. He was just 
happy and whatever he was to reveal those kind of things. But he put 
peoples's lives in danger.
  One SEAL team member's father told me that right after the Vice 
President's speech, his daughter-in-law looked out the window. She had 
a marine guard out front. Karen and Billy Vaughn, they talk about how 
Aaron called them part of SEAL Team Six after they were outed. And it's 
been printed in the media that Leon Panetta, as a Cabinet member, was 
meeting with people who could receive the classified information.
  But this administration wanted all the kudos they could get before 
the election, of course, and so they had producers of what I thought 
was a pretty good movie, ``Zero Dark Thirty,'' and gave them classified 
information and told them who took out Osama bin Laden. But in August 
of 2011, our SEAL team members paid the ultimate price of this 
administration's carelessness. They paid with their lives.
  It would be nice to have it out where we could talk about it as a 
Nation, just exactly what the rules of engagement are that our military 
are dying under. Because there was a C-130 gun ship there--and this was 
not from some classified source. I got it because it was information 
that was given to the family members, although the military may not 
have known what they gave. There's testimony from the C-130 gun ship, a 
pilot and others, that they saw this group moving like a military 
group. They were not allowed to take them out. They even saw them shoot 
down our Chinook and kill our Americans, but there was a chance they 
might have hit civilians if they had killed the people that took down 
our SEAL Team Six members. So they couldn't even kill them after they 
killed our people.
  We need to know what the rules of engagement are. We need to address 
the political correctness that is blinding our agencies and blinding 
our military of its ability to see who the enemy is, because it's 
getting people killed in harm's way.

                              {time}  1530

  When you refuse to acknowledge that the Afghans you're training may 
be willing to turn the guns you've trained them on and kill you, just 
as an Aggie friend had happen here recently in Afghanistan, what they 
call a ``green on blue killing,'' until we recognize that and recognize 
who our enemy is, and that our enemy may be among us and that our enemy 
can be in uniforms that we're supposed to be friendly with, then more 
Americans are going to be killed needlessly.
  And when the political correctness of the FBI and the Justice 
Department and the State Department, intelligence department, for that 
matter, is that you've got to leave mosques alone where people are 
being radicalized, and even though there were sting operations that 
identified people who were radicalizing Americans before this 
administration changed the policy and they had to get friendly and 
reach out and partner, as the FBI said it originally did with CAIR, the 
Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though they've said they're 
not partnering with them, anytime CAIR says this offends us, then the 
FBI says, oh, gee, we better change it.
  When you've had the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of 
Appeals confirm that, yes, the evidence shows that CAIR and Islamic 
Society of North America, those are front organizations for the Muslim 
Brotherhood. They want shari'a law to be the law of the land, not our 
Constitution. And that is what we did not take an oath to allow to 
happen. We took an oath to the Constitution, and that means no law 
shall be above our Constitution.
  And so that brings me also to the conversation, the question and 
answer with the FBI Director this week. I have a great deal of respect 
for him. He has been a patriot. He fought in Vietnam. He's a warrior. 
He cares about the country, but he has done great damage to the FBI. He 
instituted an administrative policy that has caused thousands and 
thousands of years of experience to leave the FBI and say, Under the 
new policy, I have to leave.
  So you have very willing, able young FBI people who are in charge, 
but they have not benefited from the years of experience that others 
who had to leave had. I think that contributes to some of the problems 
that we see with our rights being protected, that we see with poor 
investigations. They just have not been the beneficiary of enough years 
of experience, and they've been taught by a lexicon, a language that 
does not allow them to talk about or see our enemy.
  I've been making the point for months that the Boston massacre had 
clear potential to be completely avoided. And then we find out Russia 
gave our administration information to say the older Tsarnaev brother 
has been radicalized and he's going to kill people; you better look 
into it. Then all we've heard since the Russian bombing from this 
administration is the Russians should have given us more information.
  Now, I grew to know a little bit about the way they think, and I 
don't entirely appreciate some of it, but I appreciate this: if they 
give information that says this person is going to kill Americans, 
understand we really don't care whether they kill Americans, but we 
would like for you to recognize that these are the kinds of people that 
will take out your government and will take out our government, and 
we'd like you to look into it. There's a mutual concern.
  And when they put our government on notice and the reaction of our 
government is, well, we did some interviews. We looked into it. We 
didn't find anything.
  The Russians: Are you kidding us? We hand you somebody who is going 
to kill Americans, and you can't find anything? What's wrong with you?

[[Page H3651]]

  There's a great article, and I used it in questioning our FBI 
Director. It is entitled, ``Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed 
Boston Bombers.''
  It says:

       Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI 
     agents. No more surveillance or undercover sting operations 
     without high-level approval from a special oversight body at 
     the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review 
     Committee.
       Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? 
     Nobody knows; the names of chairman, members and staff are 
     kept secret.

  The FBI Director did not want to provide those as well.
  So the FBI Director, as I pointed out to him here before I asked the 
question, I pointed out that according to this article, the Bureau did 
not even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying the Boston 
bombers' images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV 
cameras and cell phones. The FBI Director attempted to correct me. He 
said, You said facts that aren't true. In fact, he said, Your facts are 
not all together--and I understood him to say not true, and so I 
demanded that he point out specifically what facts were wrong.
  And he said, We went to the mosque prior to Boston. We said we went 
to the mosque prior to the Boston happening. We were in that mosque 
talking to imams several months beforehand. I couldn't during the 
questioning hear what he said at the end. What he said at the end, It 
was part of our outreach efforts.
  If I'd heard that, I would have known and could have followed up and 
said, Wait a minute, that was part of your outreach effort to a Muslim 
mosque? It was not to follow up on the Tsarnaevs. And then, knowing 
that he had not properly followed up, knowing the FBI did not properly 
follow up with the mosque, I then asked about the mosque that was 
started, there are a couple of them, started by the Islamic Society of 
Boston, and were you aware that a founder was al Amoudi, because our 
Director knows who al Amoudi is. The FBI arrested him in 2003 or 2004 
at Dulles Airport, as they could have done with al-Awlaki, who was 
killed by a drone bomb, as ordered by our President, that caused a lot 
of folks on both sides of the aisle to say, wait a minute, is that a 
good idea to kill American citizens without a trial?
  And why is he an American citizen? Well, he's an American citizen 
because we have a policy, and a misinterpretation I would submit of the 
14th Amendment, that if someone comes here on a visa and has a baby, 
then they're American citizens. So al-Awlaki's family was free to come 
in on a visa for college and then take him back to Yemen and radicalize 
him so that he hated America, and then he could come back here, and as 
he did, lead prayers here on Capitol Hill with congressional Muslim 
staffers and also have contact with people in the administration.

  But I guess we won't ever know who all he had contact with because 
they blew him up while he was in Yemen. But he was free to come and go 
and radicalize people in America because he was an American citizen 
because his father and mother got a visa to come in here where he was 
born.
  Al Amoudi was free to come and go here in the United States; that was 
until he was arrested at Dulles Airport and was tried and convicted and 
is doing over 20 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism. And 
our FBI Director said at the hearing, he kind of had his head down and 
said it quietly, but he said it, no, he was not even aware that al 
Amoudi in prison for supporting terrorism was one of the founders. In 
fact, he is the one listed on the articles of organization for 
Massachusetts for the Islamic Society of Boston that started this. He 
didn't even know that.
  Until we get past this political correctness so that we can see our 
enemies, see those who want to destroy our way of life and subjugate 
our Constitution to their ideas, then we are not protected, and we've 
got to get over that.
  How about that? When Director Mueller testified before, he said, Oh, 
yeah, we have these great outreach programs to the Muslims. So 
apparently this is a part of it. I asked how is the outreach program 
going for groups like Christians and Catholics, Jewish, Buddhists, I 
forget who all I named.

                              {time}  1540

  But anyway, it was interesting, there's no such outreach group 
specifically for them, but there is a specific outreach group that 
didn't want to offend people who are radicalizing and being 
radicalized.
  So it is pretty clear, we need to protect our borders from people who 
want to come in to destroy us, all avenues of entry. We need to deport 
those who overstay their visas. We need to reform our immigration 
service and our immigration process so that it is more effective, more 
efficient, and gives people proper answers more quickly.
  We must stop allowing members of terrorist groups to consult with 
this President or his administration. We must stop discarding our 
allies who have fought with us and for us and throwing them under 
figurative buses.
  We've got to stop rewarding our enemies so that when they say they 
want to destroy us, that we're our enemy, we don't send them $1.3 
billion and tanks and jet planes.
  And then, also, we have got to educate our Federal protection 
agencies on whom the enemy truly is.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________