[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 102 (Wednesday, June 24, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H4645-H4647]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        FAITH THROUGH THE BIBLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I enjoy hearing my friend from Texas, a 
former judge down in Houston, talk about love. I do love him as a 
Christian brother. We can disagree and still love each other.
  I have been surprised in recent years to find some of those of us who 
believe in the Book that used to be read here. It was a pretty common 
practice on the floor of the House on Sundays down in Statuary Hall, 
and even in this room, back when church services were held in the 
former House Chamber.
  It was attended by the man that first coined the phrase, ``separation 
of church and State.'' It is not in the Constitution. It was in his 
letter to the

[[Page H4646]]

Danbury Baptists. He came to a nondenominational Christian worship 
service down the hall. Of course, Thomas Jefferson would even bring the 
Marine Band and have them play hymns. Because although he made clear he 
believed in separation of church and State, and used that phrase, he 
didn't see any problem with singing hymns and having the Marine Band 
play the hymns to accompany right here in the U.S. Capitol.
  I have been surprised in recent years at how prominent the Bible was 
in our founding, so much so that toward the end of June 1787, the 
Constitutional Convention was at wits' end, having a great deal of 
trouble, and Randolph from Virginia made a motion that they all convene 
together on the Nation's birthday and worship God together in services 
under the auspices of the Bible. They came back and were able to reach 
a conclusion that we call the Constitution. People like Alexander 
Hamilton said that clearly the finger of God was in that, and it all 
came into place after they worshipped the Lord and used the Bible in 
worship there in 1787.
  But it is amazing now, after the Bible was such a prominent part of 
our founding throughout our history, now those of us that believe what 
is in the Bible are the ones who are now discriminated against. I have 
suffered it right here in this town, not to the extent of being harmed 
physically, of course. Physical threats are not uncommon, but they were 
there when I was a judge as well.
  So I am just going to read without comment the Book that has been 
read in this Capitol throughout our history, Romans 1:16:

       For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of 
     God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first 
     and also to the Greek. For in the righteousness of God is 
     revealed from faith for faith, as it is written ``The 
     righteous shall live by faith.''
       For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all 
     ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppressed the 
     truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about 
     God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. 
     For since the creation of the world, His invisible 
     attributes, His eternal power, divine nature, have been 
     clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so 
     that they are without excuse.
       For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as 
     God or give thanks, but they became futile in their 
     speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 
     Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the 
     glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of 
     corruptible man and of birds, four-footed animals, crawling 
     creatures.
       Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts 
     to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them, 
     for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped 
     and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is 
     blessed forever. Amen.
       For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions. 
     For their women exchanged the natural function for that which 
     is unnatural; and in the same way, also the men abandoned the 
     natural function of the woman and burned in their desire for 
     one another, men with men committing indecent acts.

  Because I believe the Scripture--love those who don't, love those 
because we have all sinned one way or another--there is no room to hate 
anybody that has sinned, because we all have. We have all fallen short.
  But I am sure my office, Mr. Speaker, will be getting nasty, angry, 
bitter calls, as we often do when we refer to the Bible that helped 
give us our founding.

                              {time}  1930

  But that is what the Bible said, and I am deeply concerned that we 
have Supreme Court Justices, two of whom who have actually participated 
in same-sex weddings, thereby showing how biased and partial they are 
in favor of such things, against the dignity and history of marriage in 
the country, marriage in the Bible.
  It has been said many times here over our history, Moses said it came 
from God, that Moses, depicted right up above the center door, that a 
man shall leave his father and mother and a woman leave her home and 
the two will become one flesh.
  When Jesus was asked about marriage, he repeated it: For a man shall 
leave his father and mother, and a woman leave her home, and the two 
will become one flesh. And Jesus added: What God has joined together, 
let no man put asunder.
  So we have two Justices that have already indicated they believe 
otherwise than the law of Moses and Jesus, and they have shown 
themselves to be anything but impartial.
  So, under the law, 28 United States Code 455, it is mandatory, they 
shall disqualify themselves. And if it turns out that they sit in 
judgment on a case in which they are clearly disqualified and a part of 
the majority, that cannot possibly be a legitimate law change, judges 
substituting their law for the law that this country has utilized 
throughout its history.
  Yes, courts all over the country have substituted their judgment for 
State constitutions and laws. And for those who don't believe the 
Bible, you have got nothing to worry about. But the indications are, in 
Romans 1, God's protective hand will be withdrawn when we continue to 
abandon the Nation's founding.
  Thank God churches fought for, so many were involved in, the movement 
to make the Constitution mean just what it said. We really shouldn't 
have had to have a 14th Amendment. Everybody should have been equal 
under the law. But it took an amendment, took a civil rights movement, 
to apply it across the board.
  Now we have judges that will be oligarchs, as they have been, and 
they will be making decisions, rather than elected officials, and we 
will see how much longer the Nation lasts.
  There is no hate, just a broken heart in me, but I will be accused of 
being hatemonger this, hatemonger that. That is not the case.
  I would like to congratulate our own leadership, Mr. Speaker. This is 
The Hill: ``Obama Poised for Huge Win on Trade.''
  I would like to congratulate our Speaker, our Republican leadership, 
for pushing through the trade deal, leader McConnell, down the hall. 
The President could not have gotten this ability to fast-track, to make 
deals that we won't know about, without the Republican leadership 
making that happen for him. Of course, nobody that I know of on the 
Republican side ran promising that we would get such ability for 
President Obama, but congratulations go there.
  Some people say I am not quick enough to congratulate my own 
Republican leadership. I mean, I have congratulated our Speaker before 
when he was chairman of the Education Committee. As President Bush 
cited in his book, our now-Speaker was very important, very 
instrumental in getting No Child Left Behind pushed through.
  Of course, when we won the majority in November 2010, got it back 
that December, deals were worked out that cost the country a lot of 
spending, raised the debt a great deal. Since then, although we 
continue to promise that we are going to do something about the debt, 
we continue to give the President almost a blank check.
  But congratulations on all these. Congratulations on enabling the 
President to make these kind of deals. Then we will see if this law, 
TPA, is finally one the President abides by and gives us notice, 
timely, as he hasn't done in so many other areas, like Guantanamo and 
releasing people from Guantanamo.
  But we have an article here, I guess, congratulations then would go 
to the Commander-in-Chief. Because I don't know that this would be the 
lion lying down with the lamb, if this lamb is the Iranian military-
backed forces.
  But this article from Bloomberg, June 22, Josh Rogin and Eli Lake, 
says:

       The U.S. military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are 
     getting closer and closer in Iraq, even sharing a base, while 
     Iran uses those militias to expand its influence in Iraq and 
     fight alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime in neighboring 
     Syria.
       Two senior administration officials confirmed to us the 
     U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the 
     Taqaddum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where 
     President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military 
     personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the 
     Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the 
     base have killed American soldiers in the past.
       Some inside the Obama administration fear that sharing the 
     base puts U.S. soldiers at risk. The U.S. intelligence 
     community has reported back to Washington that 
     representatives of some of the more extreme militias have 
     been spying on U.S. operations at Taqaddum, one senior 
     administration official told us. That could be calamitous if 
     the fragile relationship between the U.S. military and the 
     Shiite militia comes apart and Iran-backed forces decide to 
     again target U.S. troops.

[[Page H4647]]

       American critics of this growing cooperation between the 
     U.S. military and the Iranian-backed militias call it a 
     betrayal of the U.S. personnel who fought against the 
     militias during the 10-year U.S. occupation of Iraq.
       ``It's an insult to the families of the American soldiers 
     that were wounded and killed in battles in which the Shia 
     militias were the enemy,'' Senate Armed Services Chairman 
     John McCain told us. ``Now, providing arms to them and 
     supporting them, it's very hard for those families to 
     understand.''
       The U.S. is not directly training Shiite units of what are 
     known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, which include tens 
     of thousands of Iraqis who have volunteered to fight 
     against the Islamic State as well as thousands of hardened 
     militants who ultimately answer to militia leaders loyal 
     to Tehran. But the U.S. is flying close air support 
     missions for those forces.
       The U.S. gives weapons directly only to the Iraqi 
     Government and the Iraqi Security Forces, but the lines 
     between them and the militias are blurry. U.S. weapons often 
     fall into the hands of militias, like Iraqi Hezbollah. 
     Sometimes the military cooperation is even more explicit. 
     Commanders of some of the hard-line militias sit in on U.S. 
     military briefings on operations that were meant for the 
     government-controlled Iraqi Security Forces, a senior 
     administration official said.
       This collaboration with terrorist groups that have killed 
     Americans was seen as unavoidable as the U.S. marshaled 
     Iraqis against the Islamic State, but could prove 
     counterproductive to U.S. interests in the long term, this 
     official said.
       The militias comprise largely Shiite volunteers and are 
     headed by the leader of the Iraqi Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-
     Muhandis. He was sanctioned in 2009 by the Treasury 
     Department for destabilizing Iraq. Al-Muhandis is a close 
     associate of Qasem Suleimani, the Iranian Quds Force 
     commander, who has snapped selfies with the militia leader at 
     key battles.
       Other militias that have participated in the fighting 
     against the Islamic State include the League of the Righteous 
     which, in 2007, carried out a brutal roadside execution of 
     five U.S. soldiers near Karbala. The group to this day boasts 
     of its killing of U.S. soldiers. In an interview in February, 
     a spokesman for the militia defended the killings and said 
     his militia had killed many more American soldiers.
       Members of these groups have also been deployed by Iran to 
     defend the Assad regime in neighboring Syria. James Clapper, 
     the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed in a June 3 
     letter to seven Republican Senators, which we obtained, that 
     ``Iran and Hezbollah have also leveraged allied Iraqi Shia 
     militant and terrorist groups, which receive training in 
     Iran, to participate in the pro-Assad operations.''
       The militias also stand accused of gross human rights 
     abuses and battlefield atrocities in Sunni areas where they 
     have fought. The State Department heavily criticized Iran's 
     support for the Iraqi militias and those militias' behavior 
     in its annual report on worldwide terrorism, released last 
     week.
       Further down:
       With the deadline approaching for a nuclear deal that would 
     place up to $150 billion in the hands of Iran, the U.S. is 
     now openly acknowledging in its annual report on 
     international terrorism that Iran is supporting a foreign 
     legion, comprising Afghans, Iraqis, and Lebanese fighters to 
     defend Iranian interests throughout the Middle East.
       But the U.S. response to this is inconsistent. In Iraq, 
     America is fighting alongside Iranian-backed militias. In 
     Syria, U.S.-supported forces are fighting against those same 
     militias. The tragedy of this policy is that the Islamic 
     State has been able to hold and expand its territory in Iraq 
     and Syria, while Iran has been able to tighten its grip on 
     Baghdad.

  Then another article from Daniel Horowitz, Conservative Review:

       Anyone who visits Walter Reed Hospital will immediately see 
     the irrevocable destruction of Hezbollah. Thousands of our 
     troops have been incapacitated and mangled by IEDs from 
     Hezbollah and other Shiite groups in Iraq, all funded by 
     Obama's ally, Iran. Anyone who was around in 1983 will 
     remember the 241 American servicemen who were killed in the 
     Hezbollah terror attack in Beirut.
       Guess what Obama is doing with them?
       Eli Lake reports at Bloomberg News that our troops are 
     sharing a base with Hezbollah-controlled Shiite forces, and 
     we are bailing them out of their humiliating loss to the 
     Islamic State.

                              {time}  1945

  The article goes on, but it is just exceedingly tragic; but it 
explains why the President has been unable to state that we have a 
clear strategy in the Middle East because, on the one hand, we have had 
the United States military give their lives fighting against the 
tyranny and the atrocities of Hezbollah.
  On the other hand, we now have the President, the Commander in Chief, 
who commands over our forces that he has put in the same camp with 
Hezbollah. The hope, apparently, of the administration is, even though 
they are still bragging in Hezbollah about killing American soldiers, 
that maybe by having them camp in the same camp, they won't be killing 
them now. You have got to love that optimism.
  As we see the Commander in Chief's troops being forced to come 
together with people like Hezbollah--that want to kill them, have 
killed them, have maimed them, Hezbollah is clearly supported by Iran--
then we get this, ``AP Exclusive: Document outlines big-power nuke help 
to Iran,'' George Jahn, dated today, from Vienna.

       The United States and other nations negotiating a nuclear 
     deal with Iran are ready to offer high-tech reactors and 
     other state-of-the-art equipment to Tehran if it agrees to 
     crimp programs that can make atomic bombs, according to a 
     confidential document obtained Tuesday by the Associated 
     Press.
       The draft document--one of several technical appendixes 
     meant to accompany the main text of any deal--has dozens of 
     bracketed texts where disagreements remain. Technical 
     cooperation is the least controversial issue at the talks, 
     and the number of brackets suggest the sides have a ways to 
     go not only on the topic but also more contentious disputes 
     with little more than a week until the June 30 deadline for a 
     deal.
       With that deadline looming, Iran's top leader, Ayatollah 
     Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday rejected a long-term freeze on 
     nuclear research and supported banning international 
     inspectors from accessing military sites. Khamenei, in 
     comments broadcast on Iranian state television, also said 
     Iran will sign a final deal provided all economic sanctions 
     now in Iran are first lifted--in a sign the Islamic Republic 
     may be toughening its stance ahead of the deadline.

  In any event, that is great news.
  Of course, the Senate and House passed a bill that turned 
requirements for authorization of treaties upside down. Instead of 
having two-thirds of the Senate required to approve a deal, we have 
flipped it. Now, it will take two-thirds of a vote in the House and 
Senate to disapprove a deal. That makes it easier for the President to 
give Iran the nuclear reactors they are hoping.
  Mr. Speaker, I brought this up in past years; but here, in 
negotiating with Iran, one of our lead negotiators was the same person 
who was involved in the Clinton administration negotiations with North 
Korea, where they cut this wonderful deal basically saying, in essence, 
we will give you nuclear reactors for power if you will just promise 
that you won't use them to make nuclear weapons.
  This dishonest, evil leader said: All you want is a promise from a 
dishonest leader that I won't use them to make nukes? Sure, I will 
promise you that. Bring on the nuclear power plants.
  Those came, and they were converted. Now, North Korea is helping with 
parts of the evil empire to develop nuclear weapons of their own.
  When you have somebody involved in that kind of deal with North Korea 
sent to negotiate with Iran, we should have known that this would be 
coming: Hey, we will give you nuclear reactors. We will help you make 
it happen. We just don't want you to use them to make nuclear weapons.
  Since Iran has been--at least the leaders have been so evil in the 
way they have pursued Israel, in the way they have pursued Americans, 
continuing to brag about killing Americans, I don't think anybody 
should really be surprised if this deal gets cut and then Iran goes 
ahead and uses what we provide them or the P5+1 provides them in order 
to make nuclear weapons more quickly than they could have without this 
kind of deal.
  But ``congratulations'' again go to the Republican leaders in the 
House and Senate for pushing through the authority for the President to 
have the ability to make these kinds of deals. Who says I can't be 
magnanimous and thank Republican leaders?
  I hope the American public will wake up and understand, the deal that 
has been negotiated is deadly to our ally Israel; it is deadly to the 
United States. Make it clear that any party that hopes to have any 
chance of having a President elected from their party better not be 
part of the deal with Iran because it is going to get more Americans 
and Israelis killed.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________