[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 34 (Friday, February 28, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2088-H2093]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CONSTITUTIONALITY OF EXECUTIVE ACTIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are interesting times in America. For
most of us who went to law school, we were taught that for an
adversarial system of justice of law to work, there has to be active
participation on both sides of an issue, of a person charged with a
crime, on defense, or litigation over a law itself. So Chairman
Goodlatte from just across the river in Virginia called a hearing in
the Judiciary Committee this week. We had another hearing about the
constitutionality, or lack thereof, of actions by this administration,
and it is very alarming.
{time} 1200
Professor Jonathan Turley, with whom I have disagreed on many policy
issues, has a wonderful grasp of the Constitution; and he recognizes
the dangers when an administration decides to pick and choose which
laws will be enforced and goes further and issues executive orders, not
like prior administrations that simply explain on most occasions or
illuminate some law as to how they think it is to be interpreted, but
to actually make law and executive orders. That is just unconscionable
for somebody that took an oath to defend the Constitution.
I can't recall times that I have agreed with The LA Times before, but
they had an editorial that indicates even The LA Times understands the
danger of what is going on right now in this country with this
administration.
We have an Attorney General who has been requested to produce
documents lawfully, informally, refused to do so, been subpoenaed to
produce information documents, has refused to do so unlawfully, to the
point that the committee had a hearing and ultimately found the
Attorney General of the United States in contempt of Congress, which
came to this floor and, in a very unusual action found, the Attorney
General, the highest law enforcement officer in this country, in
contempt of Congress, basically in contempt of the Constitution.
This has far wider implications than most in America seem to grasp
because, when the highest law enforcement officer in America refuses to
comply with the law, holds himself out as being above any law, creates
laws that he wants to defend--at least the administration creating laws
that they want to defend or follow--and actually saying in this room--I
just had the President of the United States say in this room: I am
going to go around the Congress--if you don't do what I want, I am
going to go around the Congress.
The ramifications for that are so staggering to anyone who has
contemplated the founding of this country that it is beyond words. The
Founders set up these checks and balances believing that, surely, there
would be people in the judiciary--although they
[[Page H2089]]
saw that as the least powerful branch, though it has now become the
most powerful--they saw Congress as always being willing to defend its
own laws, even to the point of defunding anything in the administration
that did not protect and defend the law.
They saw a President as standing up and refusing to follow things
that were not the law. They felt like each branch would judiciously
protect their own powers under the Constitution, and that balance would
allow this Nation to go forward as the freest Nation in the history of
the world.
But today, we are living in a time where all of that is in jeopardy,
when one branch can act to the total disregard of another branch or
other branches. We have seen that with executive orders that just
completely change the law as written and completely intentionally
disregards the law of the land. It is staggering.
The LA Times had an editorial on February 27 that talked about the
Attorney General's posture on just picking and choosing which laws he
would provide a defense for.
Mr. Speaker, I stand here as someone--as a prosecutor, as a lawyer,
as a judge, as a chief justice--who at times absolutely did not like
laws--particular laws--but knew if this Nation were to remain for years
to come, we had to either change the law legally; or as lawyers, as
officers of the court, as judges, as chief justices, we had to follow
the law.
Back in the '80s, I was ordered by a State district judge to file an
appeal--to represent a man on appeal after having been convicted of
capital murder. I was then, as now, a very conservative person.
I went to the judge after I got the call that I was going to be
appointed and begged the judge not to appoint me, that I was doing
civil trial work, I wasn't doing criminal work, please don't appoint me
to appeal a criminal conviction because I will have to go back to
school to do a proper job of representing a man on appeal of the death
penalty.
I knew if he appointed me--because I took an oath to support and
defend the Constitution of the United States, I would spend incredible
hours to make sure I properly represented the man on appeal, even
though I didn't know any more about the facts of the case than I had
read in the papers. From the papers, I got the impression that he had
probably gotten what he deserved.
But the judge appointed me to appeal a capital murder conviction in
which the defendant was sentenced to death. I didn't want the case,
didn't ask for it, begged not to have it.
But I knew that if our system was to work, I had to do everything
ethically and legally I could to present my client's side of the case.
As I got into it and I read the entire long, long transcript--every
word of it--I realized the man had not gotten a fair trial, and unknown
to the district attorney, an assistant district attorney had acted
inappropriately, and it caused great harm and jeopardy to the case for
the defense.
I did the very best I could for my client legally and ethically, and
the case was reversed at the highest criminal court in Texas.
Even when, as attornies, we would disagree with the law--and as we
have heard from this Attorney General and people in this Justice
Department over and over--even when someone is absolutely convicted,
clearly is a criminal, they deserve a proper defense.
So how this administration and this Attorney General and this Justice
Department can justify picking and choosing which laws they will defend
and which laws they will let fall without a defense is unimaginable.
For people who have learned anything about our Constitution, we have to
zealously represent the clients, the laws that are put before us to
represent.
This administration has now repeatedly chosen not to defend some laws
when the highest law enforcement in the land, we know, actually was
willing to help convicted absolutely-known criminals to get pardoned,
to get lighter sentences.
We bring people in who have fought--or at least one individual who
fought to get a convicted murderer of a police officer--who the
evidence indicated stood over him after he shot him and shot him
repeatedly--a police officer--and yet, the Attorney General can justify
bringing someone in; the President justified bringing someone in by
saying: Oh, no, but everybody is entitled to a defense, that is how our
system works.
Then when he has a constitutional obligation to produce documents to
Congress and just says: I am going to ignore that requirement of the
law, I don't care, and not only am I going to ignore that requirement
of the law, even after the extraordinary event of having the United
States House of Representatives declare the highest ranking law
enforcement officer in the country to be in contempt of Congress--which
is really in contempt of the Constitution--still has the nerve to come
in here during the State of the Union, which is really thumbing the
nose at the Constitution--at Congress--that: I will ignore the law, I
won't follow the laws I don't like, I won't defend the laws I don't
like; and then this week actually go out and tell State law enforcement
officers--highest ranking State law enforcement officers that, in
essence, if they don't like a law, then just don't defend it.
So this editorial, just in part, from the LA Times, points out that:
The six State attorneys general who have declined to defend
their States' bans on same-sex marriage in court got some
encouragement this week from U.S. Attorney General Eric H.
Holder, Jr. In a speech to the National Association of
Attorneys General, Holder said that it was sometimes
appropriate for attorneys general to abandon their usual
obligation to defend the constitutionality of State laws.
This page supports same-sex marriage unreservedly. But even
so, we worry that Holder's comments will embolden additional
State attorneys general--Republicans and Democrats, liberals
and conservatives--to pick and choose which of their States'
laws they will defend in court.
It also says further down:
Yet when attorneys general are elected, as in 43 States,
the temptation will be to transmute a popular political stand
into a constitutional objection.
Even if Holder is right that attorneys general should
refuse to defend State laws in ``exceedingly rare''
circumstances, those laws ought to be defended by someone.
Further down they point out that:
They probably would react differently, however, if a future
Attorney General refused to defend the constitutionality of
statutes that treat attacks on gays and lesbians as hate
crimes.
I would imagine this Attorney General would find that unconscionable;
but once we began to ignore the law and become a Nation of men--and
that is generic, including men and women, whoever is in authority--
instead of a Nation of laws, then we become like the nations that so
many people try to flee to come to America because there is graft,
there is corruption, because the rule of law is not followed.
It is whatever the dictator, the drug group, whatever the people in
power think should be the law will be the law, and it becomes an
unbearable place to live.
There is a reason that fences end up being built around a country not
to keep people in, as in the Soviet Union days, but because people want
to come flooding in, which would overwhelm our country, overwhelm our
ability to provide government services, and end the ability to be a
Nation where people want to come.
{time} 1215
There is a reason. It is because we have been a Nation of laws that
has applied the law fairly across the board.
Clearly, because the government is composed of human beings, there
will be mistakes and there will be abuses, but in abuses, even
Presidents have been held to account. That keeps us being a Nation of
laws. Yet, when the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the
country refuses to provide information to Congress that he lawfully is
required to produce, this country is in grave jeopardy. I am pleased
that even the LA Times has gotten a glimpse of the potential problems
here.
In a couple of different hearings, I have asked the highest-ranking
law enforcement officer in our country for the production of documents
provided to the defendants, to the defendants who were convicted of
supporting terrorism, making them terrorists. I have asked for the
copies of the documents that were provided in discovery to convicted
terrorists. I have been told there could be classification problems,
and as I have pointed out, if you gave them to the terrorists, you can
give them to Members of Congress.
[[Page H2090]]
After yet another request last June, in writing--months and months
later--I finally get a response that, in essence, says, Here is a Web
site where you can go look at some of these documents. We have got 500
documents that were introduced at trial, and so that should take care
of it.
No, it doesn't.
The Justice Department gave terrorists thousands and thousands of
pages of documents, and even in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals'
opinion, the Fifth Circuit, they point out that there were 9,600 or so
transcripts of recorded conversations. Those were given to the people
convicted of terrorism, and yet this Justice Department refuses to
allow Members of Congress to see those.
The Founders had the idea that there would be oversight and that
Congress would supervise what happened in the executive branch. That
provided that balance of power to keep us from moving in the direction
of a monarchy or of a totalitarian government. Yet, when this body
finally gets around to some oversight, it is dismissed. What do we do?
We vote to hold the Attorney General in contempt and then allow him to
remain in contempt without consequences.
Perhaps the proper remedy, under the thinking of the Founders, is, if
an Attorney General refuses to enforce the laws that Congress passes
and other Presidents sign into law, then you defund the particular
individuals in the Department of Justice until such time as they start
doing their jobs. You don't defund the people who are out enforcing the
law, protecting the country, but you defund those people who are
thumbing their noses at the Constitution and at proper, legal,
constitutional oversight. We haven't done that.
So the American public, the laws, and the Constitution remain at risk
because people who have defended terrorists and who have worked to get
even terrorists lighter sentences and pardons and things like that
don't think laws duly passed by Congress, signed into law by the
President and upheld by the Supreme Court are worth defending. Then
don't stop there. Not only actually start telling the highest law
enforcement officers in the country that they should start ignoring
laws in rare cases but to ignore the laws when you don't think they are
appropriate.
We also know we have a Justice Department that, in their efforts to
avoid making radical Islamist terrorists think that we might not like
them, started outreach programs under the prior administration. I asked
the prior FBI Director: Since you say that this Muslim community is
like every other community in the Nation, how are the other outreach
programs going with the Baptists? The Catholics? The Jews? The
Buddhists? There is no other outreach program to any other religious
group, so that would seem to indicate there is something special here.
There are violent people in every religion, but as Thomas Jefferson
was so shocked to find out, there is one religion that has a small
component of it that believes that a sure way to paradise is to kill
innocent men, women, and children because they don't believe
religiously like those radicals do. That is the reason Thomas Jefferson
got his own copy of the Koran that the Library of Congress still has.
He wanted to see for himself. He was so well read. He couldn't believe
there was a religion that had a holy book for a basis that would allow
anyone to interpret it in such a way as to kill innocent men, women,
and children.
There have been, to be sure, purported Christians over the ages who
thought it was their duty to go about brutalizing people who were not
Christians, but anyone who studies the teachings of Christ about how we
are to individually act knows those would not have been Christians
doing the kind of violence that they did. It is not supported by the
Bible. What is supported in the Bible is that if you do evil, be
afraid, because God does not give the government the sword in vain.
Individually, we are not supposed to judge and be vigilantes, but there
is in an orderly society a need to have a government that will punish
evil and encourage good conduct.
This little experiment in a democracy, in a republic and
representative form of government, is so fragile. It bothers me when I
read and hear those words from Ronald Reagan that freedom is never more
than one generation from being gone and, even more troubling, that a
generation that loses liberty does not get it back in that same
generation. I have hoped that I would find a time and place where
Reagan was wrong about that, but I have not yet.
So, when we see liberties being lost, privacy rights being violated
right and left by our Federal Government, all kinds of snooping on
American citizens without probable cause, not only by the NSA--and
certainly they have the highest cause for which they are working, which
is for our protection, but yet, when our privacy is completely eroded,
is our safety worth losing all of our privacy completely?
We lost a dramatic amount of our privacy when, without a single vote
from the Republican side of the aisle, the Democrats in the House and
Senate passed what they called the Affordable Care Act, which has
become so unaffordable, because the Federal Government will get
everyone's medical records.
I was a bit staggered and maybe too naive. After I had heard people
speak so emotionally from the heart about the protection of privacy and
what happens in the bedroom, I was a little staggered over these years
to see people on the Democratic side of the aisle--my friends over
here--who were so thrilled to be giving every bit of private
information about their most private body parts, about their most
private activities, to the government in whole and bulk, and even said,
That is not violation enough; let's do a contract with General
Electric, and let them keep these records for us.
It is not like the government and private industry can't be hacked.
Talk about loss of privacy. I don't really have anything to hide in any
of my medical records, but it is nobody else's business. Yet,
wholeheartedly, people rushed and applauded the giving of all of that
most private information to the Federal Government.
This week, I have been so proud of my friend Jeb Hensarling, as
chairman of Financial Services, who has been trying to rein in this
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--wow, what a misnomer--that is
gathering information about our credit cards, our debit card activity,
our loans when these were supposed to be private between us and our
lenders as long as there was proper oversight to make sure they were
not violating the Constitution. Yet the Federal Government, as they
are, starts getting all of our debit card and credit card information.
They now have all of our medical records that they are getting. They
are now watching and have the ability to check every email, to check
Web sites you visit. They have the ability to examine every log of
every call that you make. People who once said I was crazy for giving
this example some years back may begin to realize I wasn't so crazy.
The example was this:
When the Federal Government has the obligation to supervise every
aspect of your health care--when you force government-run health care
on the people of this Nation--and when you have that same Federal
Government that can monitor every credit and debit card purchase you
make and when they know where you go online and when they can go into
your emails, is it so hard to believe that at some point some American
citizen would not get a letter from the Federal Government, saying:
We noticed that you purchased bacon and butter at the grocery store
this last weekend, and we also noticed that your cholesterol level is
over 200. What were you thinking? We can't let you do something like
that, so we are going to have to punish you. We are going to have to
start charging you more money. We are going to have to start
supervising your activity. You are going to have to start going and
working out. We saw that you let your membership at the gym lapse, and
you are not going anymore. We can tell by where your car goes, by
following the GPS on your car, that you are not going to the gym like
you used to. You need to start going back to the gym. You need to quit
buying butter and bacon, and then we won't punish you financially like
we are now.
[[Page H2091]]
{time} 1230
Is that so hard to believe that that would start happening, could
start happening? When you give the government this much private
information, then liberty is sure to go shortly thereafter.
In quoting Benjamin Franklin, it has been written different ways over
the years--some say he didn't say it--but basically, he certainly
advocated that those who are willing to give up liberty for their
safety deserve neither.
How much of our privacy and our liberty are the American people
willing to give up just so that we can feel a little safer? Because
when you do that, you will not be safe from your own government. Your
own government then becomes the biggest threat to your liberty, to your
freedom.
Things that brilliant colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle
have said over the years about our liberty and about our privacy are
really becoming an issue now, and I am not hearing my friends across
the aisle that raised those important points now talking about them.
And I know when you have someone in the White House that is from your
own party, it is kind of tough to stand up and say, This is a mistake.
This is wrong.
But it is time that friends across the aisle--Senators who are
Democrats--start standing up in numbers and saying: Enough. You have
usurped too much power that the Constitution gave to Congress.
Just because you don't like the fact that we take a long time and it
is not pretty to see laws being made doesn't mean you get to skip the
whole process. The Founders wanted gridlock. They wanted it tough to
pass laws. They didn't want us meeting year round like we do. I am sure
if the Founders were around today, they would be appalled that we meet
as much as we do. And when some people back in east Texas say: Gee, why
aren't you in Washington? I'm saying: You're safer when we're here
because it means we're not passing another law that takes your liberty
away.
The Founders wanted some gridlock. They didn't want it too easy to
pass laws. Because they knew when that happened, every little emotional
issue that came up would cause Congress to come in and pass something
even though the moment was fleeting and we should not be doing things
quickly and emotionally.
Thomas Jefferson was not part of the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia in 1787. He was amazed at how good the document was. But
he is reported to have indicated that if he could change one thing, he
would make it a requirement that before we could pass a law, it had to
be on file for a year to make sure people have plenty of time to
discuss it.
We see how good an idea that would be if we didn't just run in here
and do things out of emotion, and we would never, ever pass another
bill so we could find out what was in it. My party has not done
anything as blatant as ramming through bills. My copy of ObamaCare was
right around 2,500 pages. But we have had some bills that we have not
been given time to read and to properly go through.
We were going to take up a flood insurance bill yesterday, and I am
grateful that it got moved off because we haven't had enough time to
know what the bill has actually got in it word for word. Summaries are
not enough, on many occasions. Sometimes if it is not a big deal, a
summary may do it, but somebody besides some staffer needs to be
looking at every word.
That is one of the benefits of going through what we call regular
order. The subcommittee gets to have a markup where they discuss every
part of the bill, and anyone can offer an amendment to any part of the
bill. And then it goes to the full committee, and anyone at the markup
can offer an amendment to any part of the bill, and it gets debate and
discussion. That is a good process.
I believe that when we took the majority, we would do even better
than we have. We have done a lot better than the 4 years from January
of 2007 to when we got the gavel back in January of 2011. I was
appalled at the completely closed rules and how it was just staggering.
We had no input. Nearly half of the country basically had no
representation at all on all of the important bills because they just
rammed them through without any input from Republicans--who represented
Democrats and Republicans. They didn't get represented in those
districts.
It is important, no matter who is in charge, that if it is really a
critical issue that needs immediate laws passed, changes made, that we
fully vet every law that we pass.
We had an Over-Criminalization hearing today. One of the huge
mistakes--and it has been a very bipartisan mistake--is that over all
these years, when Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle want
to show how strongly we feel about something and how tough we are, we
slap a prison sentence on things, and one of the greatest injustices
that Congress has done is to pass laws that say any violations of the
regulations under this law will carry a term of imprisonment.
In our hearing today, there was an estimate that there are probably
300,000 regulations, the violation of which carries a prison sentence.
Congress has never seen them, never debated them, and knows nothing
about them.
We have heard testimony from people who have been sent to prison who
did some act and had no idea there was a law against what they did.
They did time in prison as a result.
There was a man from Houston who was doing business during retirement
by raising orchids. He ordered some orchids from South America. They
were sent to him, but the proper forms were not filled out by the
people that sent them to him, and under the law, any violation of those
postal regulations requires time in prison.
So what happened? He was arrested in his home in Houston. And since
the law gives choice of venue and it had been mailed through Miami,
they took him to Miami, where he didn't even know anybody, didn't have
the money for bail, and ends up doing 18 months in prison, during which
time he had a stroke. He couldn't testify. His wife had to.
There was a poor guy from Washington State that was trying to create
a better battery. He had every chemical properly stored. One day,
driving home, the EPA SWAT team had black Suburbans come up behind him,
the side, in front, and forced him off the road, yanked him out of his
car, threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, threw him in jail, and
then drug him to Alaska.
His heinous crime was that when he mailed a chemical to Alaska,
legally, properly, he didn't know that it was not enough to check the
box that it had to go by ground. It couldn't go by air. He didn't know
that you needed a little sticker that had a picture of an airplane with
a red line through it. That sticker with the plane with the red line
through it had to be on there. And since he didn't do that, that caused
him to deserve to be run off the road by the EPA SWAT team, thrown to
the ground, handcuffed, hauled up to Alaska, and put in prison.
When he got acquitted of that, the Justice Department wasn't happy
with it, so they looked around and realized when they ransacked his
home he had every chemical properly stored, but there was a law that
says if you ever abandon these certain chemicals for over a certain
number of days, then you committed a Federal felony. And even though it
was the Federal Government that forced him to abandon those, and even
though they were properly stored, he was in jail in Alaska and away
from the chemicals beyond the time that the law allowed, so he went to
prison for abandoning chemicals because the government drug him away
from them.
These are the kind of laws that are out there. We ought to pass a law
in this body that says no criminal penalty may attach to a violation of
any regulation unless this Congress has passed a specific law putting a
criminal penalty on that specific regulation. We should not be able to
leave it to bureaucrats to decide what becomes an offense punishable by
imprisonment.
So when you take the violations of privacy that have now been passed
into law--all of our medical records, now our credit card and debit
card records, our emails, all of our phone logs all being usurped and
grabbed by the Federal Government--and couple that with abuses that we
have seen over the years by the Federal Government of people's rights
under color of law, and understanding that when this Federal
[[Page H2092]]
Government violates your rights, your privacy, your freedoms, you have
nowhere else to go and there is no appeal to anyone else, it is time
this body and the Senate took action to make sure the Justice
Department follows the law and doesn't just pick and choose. And also
that we make sure the White House doesn't just make up law out of whole
cloth and decide which laws they liked and which ones they didn't.
There are oaths involved here, and there should be consequences for not
following them.
Then, we need to investigate further these executive departments who
think they are above the law. And when Members of Congress duly request
documents that were provided to people convicted as terrorists and we
are told that terrorists can have them but you, Members of Congress,
cannot, then it is time to defund people that will not abide by the law
and will not participate in proper oversight.
It is also time we had a select committee that properly investigated
Benghazi. It is time we had a special prosecutor, not some big donor to
the President, to investigate this horrendous scandal in the IRS that
not only has smidgeons of evidence, it has overwhelming evidence of
people's rights being violated. It is time that we started making sure
as a Congress that people who enforce the law actually enforce the law.
We have seen the desire by this administration to embrace Islam as
closely as possible. And I know the attitude is that if we bring people
close from Islam into the administration, that will help us get across
that we mean no ill will. The trouble has been we have brought foxes
into the henhouse to give advice to the chickens.
We have a report from the last couple of weeks. The Clarion Project
had been making Freedom of Information Act requests. They finally got
some documentation that shows--and this article is from the Clarion
Project. The Clarion Project investigation has discovered a jihadist
enclave in Texas where a deadly shooting took place in 2002.
{time} 1245
Declassified FBI documents obtained by Clarion confirmed
the find, and show the U.S. Government's concern about its
links to terrorism. The investigation was completed with the
help of Act for America Houston.
The enclave belongs to the network of Muslims of the
Americas, a radical group linked to a Pakistani militant
group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Its members are devoted
followers of Sheikh Ali Mubarak Gilani, an extremist cleric
in Pakistan.
The organization says it has a network of 22 villages
around the U.S., with Islamberg as its main headquarters in
New York. The Clarion Project obtained secret MOA, Muslim of
America, footage showing female members receiving
paramilitary training at Islamberg. It was featured on the
Kelly File of FOX News Channel in October. A second MOA tape
released by Clarion shows its spokesman declaring the U.S. to
be a Muslim-majority country.
A 2007 FBI record states that MOA, Muslim of America,
members have been involved in at least 10 murders, one
disappearance, three firebombings, one attempted firebombing,
two explosive bombings, and one attempted bombing.
It states:
The documented propensity for violence by this organization
supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols
membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against
individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which
includes the U.S. Government. Members of the MOA are
encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and
military/terrorist training from Sheikh Gilani.
The document also says that ``The MOA is now an autonomous
organization which possesses an infrastructure capable of
planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas.''
Other FBI reports describe the MOA in similar ways with a
2003 file stating: ``Investigation of the Muslims of the
Americas is based on specific and articulate facts given
justification to believe they are engaged in international
terrorism.''
MOA members believe the holiest Islamic site in the country
is located at the Islamville commune in South Carolina. Other
MOA entities include the International Quranic Open
University, United Muslim Christian Forum, Islamic Post,
Muslim Veterans of America, and American Muslim Medical
Relief Team.
On further down it says:
The MOA referred to its Texas commune as Mahmoudberg in on-
line instructions for a parade in New York in 2010. A posting
on an Islamic message board in 2005 advertised a speaking
engagement in Houston by someone from Mahmoudberg.
According to the reports, the commune is 7 to 10 acres
large, is in an ``extremely wooded area'' and two or three
trailer homes moved there in December of 2001. However, ACT
members visited the area as part of Clarion's project or
investigation and interviewed one nearby local who
confidently said it is closer to 25 acres in size and spoke
of a presence dating back to the late 1980s.
Further down, the FBI reported in 2007 that:
One commune resident used to be a leader at the MOA commune
in Badger, California. That site was called Baladullah.
In March 2001, one of the Baladullah members was arrested
for transporting guns between New York and South Carolina.
Another was charged with murdering a police deputy that
caught him breaking and entering a home.
Interviewed residents all agreed that MOA members are
private, yet, when the ACT members were spotted in the area,
they were immediately and repeatedly approached. At one point
a commune resident gave them a final warning to leave,
despite the fact they weren't even trespassing or harassing
MOA MEMBERS.
``It was definitely very threatening and menacing,'' an ACT
member told me.
Multiple sources confirmed that one resident of the commune
is a police officer. According to a nearby neighbor, one of
the MOA members used to drive trucks for the U.S. Army in
Kuwait.
Further down it says:
``Police were denied''--this was after a shooting in 2002 out at the
site--``police were denied access to the trailer homes and were not
allowed to directly interview the women who covered their faces in
their presence. Communication with the women had to be done by passing
notes through a male intermediary.''
Anyway, this was the subject of an email from one of my college
friends, and one of my other college friends sent an email in response
saying, this could not possibly be true because the mainstream media
would have been all over this if this were really true.
Well, the report of these 22 villages is true, and the mainstream
media has not, does not, probably will not cover it because the
administration doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable who might be
radical Islamists.
Another article from FOX News Insider, February 20, talked about a
2007 FBI record stated that MOA Members have been involved in at least
10 murders. Talked about these things.
Other FBI reports describe MOA in similar ways, with the 2003 file
stating, based on the facts, this appears to be factual information. It
was obtained from FBI records. It seems to be consistent with the prior
administration.
Though they brought Muslims in to give advice on dealing with radical
Islam, they pursued terrorists, like in the Holy Land Foundation trial,
there were around 200 or so named coconspirators in the Holy Land
Foundation trial.
The goal, as one of the prosecutors told me, was to get those
convictions, if they could, and they knew it would be the most
important biggest terrorist convictions in American judicial history,
and if they got those, then they would go forward and start prosecuting
others of the named coconspirators who were not indicted but were
named.
We know there is plenty of evidence out there regarding
coconspirators because there were some coconspirators that filed a
motion with the Court to have their names struck from the pleadings.
The Federal District Court that examined the evidence in Dallas said,
no, there is plenty of evidence here to support that CAIR, Council of
American Islamic Relations, ISNA, Islamic Society North America, are
large front groups for Muslim Brotherhood.
Went up to the Fifth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit confirmed that
there was plenty of evidence to support their names being part of it.
Yet, this administration continues to coddle and get information and
instruction from CAIR, ISNA. The president of ISNA, Imam Magid,
continues to be a highly praised adviser to this administration.
So, when people across the country say this couldn't possibly be true
because the mainstream media would have been all over it, I can't
believe our Federal Government will allow this kind of thing to go on,
well, the reason it has is because, even though FBI reports continued
to say over the years that these appear to be violent and associated
with violent activities, the State Department, under this
administration, continues to refuse to list the Muslims of the Americas
as a terrorist organization, which means they get to continue to build
villages, to train in paramilitary fashion around the country, from
Texas, South Carolina, New York, California, across the country,
[[Page H2093]]
until such time as this administration gets serious about what is going
on.
Had the information from an article this week, this article from
National Review Online, ``Convicted Terrorist Worked As an ObamaCare
Navigator in Illinois.'' It shouldn't be a surprise this kind of thing
has happened because we found out that these so-called navigators,
under ObamaCare, what might be more appropriately entitled the
Unaffordable Care Act, these navigators are being allowed to gather
people's most personal and private identification information, but they
are not being vetted.
We have known from the beginning, when the law kicked in, that the
navigators were not vetted for prior criminal activity. So we shouldn't
be surprised that there was a convicted terrorist that worked as an
ObamaCare navigator in Illinois.
Then we have people, enrollees, finding it impossible to cancel their
plans. More than 6 weeks later, Weekly Standard reports, after spending
50 to 60 hours on the phone, this man's policy is still not canceled.
So much for freedom when it comes to health care in this country under
ObamaCare.
Another report published by foxnews.com: ``ObamaCare may increase
premiums for 11 million workers.''
Anyway, it should be clear that, even though we heard a staggering
statement by the Democrat Majority Leader in the Senate that people who
were reporting the horror stories about ObamaCare, pointing out how the
Affordable Care Act really isn't, it was devastating, that these were
lies, they were not true.
Well, proper investigation reveals they are true. There may be some
that have made stories up. When we get stories, we try to look into,
are these really legitimate, but what we find is most of them are
easily documented and easily legitimate.
ObamaCare is doing massive damage across the country to people's
employment, to their health insurance, to their ability to see the
doctor that they want and, in some cases, the doctor that has been
keeping them alive.
Another report: ``ObamaCare may increase premiums for 11 million
workers.'' Well, I know it has increased them a lot. I can't afford the
new policy that would be required. I liked my old one. I wasn't crazy
about it. Aetna had some problems we never got worked out. But still, I
had more freedom of choice before.
Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, when the Federal Government has
become so big and so intrusive that it gathers everyone's phone logs in
the United States, can check into any phone calls made by anyone in the
country any time, when the Federal Government gathers everyone's most
personal and private medical information, when the Federal Government
gathers people's debit and credit card purchases to protect them, when
the Federal Government can use drones to monitor, can monitor email
activity, Web sites visited, and then that same government can say we
are not going to follow these laws if we don't like them, don't think
they are proper, and we are going to change the law over here because
Congress didn't, and we prefer to have a law that says this so we will
follow that, then it is no wonder that a constitutional professor like
Jonathan Turley, liberal as he is, would express dire concerns about
how long we can maintain this country.
We owe the American people an obligation to proper oversight, force
them to follow the law.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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