[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 83 (Monday, May 21, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H4280-H4282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, Dr. Burgess, for 
all the hours of work. It is not just a lot of fun up there on the 
Rules Committee, but I appreciate the work on behalf of our Conference.
  Mr. Speaker, it has been a tragic number of days emanating from Santa 
Fe, Texas, due south of my home in east Texas, down in Randy Weber's 
district. It truly is tragic.
  It is tragic, as well, when people in this country have become so 
comfortable persecuting Christians, demeaning Christians, that they put 
no stock, in fact, belittle anyone's mentioning of praying for the 
families or even praying for the country, which is where we have got to 
be.
  There is a God. It is the same God that is referenced above my head 
and behind me, that same God in whom a lot of us trust. It just says: 
``In God we trust.'' That is the national motto, but I guess it would 
be more accurate to say, ``In God, whom a lot of us trust'' because of 
the condescending, demeaning comments made about Christians, about 
praying.
  Prayer does work, it does matter, but not when a majority of the 
country is prevented from discussing Christianity publicly. I mean, 
this was a country where Christians from different parts of the world 
fled to. It was a destination, a glorious destination where people 
could come and live as Christians and not be persecuted, because Jesus 
himself said we would be hated, but he said: Remember, they hated me 
first.
  We were told we would suffer for His sake, and He has certainly shown 
how brutal that could be. But as the oligarchs in black robes have 
taken over legislating, executive activities, as well as their own 
judicial activities, they have walked our country to the brink of 
despair. They have taken prayer--and I am talking about the oligarchs 
in black robes, the judges.
  I was once a judge, felony judge, then a chief justice of a court of 
appeals, and I know how easy it is to think so highly of oneself. When 
a black robe is donned, our imperfections are covered up. And by our 
office, we are supposed to have some higher form of reason than our 
fellow people.
  It is just not so. It is not so.
  People have had it forced down their throats that, when it comes to 
education, it can't be education about religion, particularly 
Christianity. Oh, you can talk about Islam. You can talk about 
Buddhism. You can give glowing reports about such things and what it 
takes to believe about the four pillars of Islam, but you don't dare 
talk about Christianity, because that is when the courts go nuts, say 
you have exceeded your bounds.
  Schools have been told that they need to reinforce in a child's mind 
the relativism of different positions, where right to some may be wrong 
for others, and wrong for some may be right for others. There is no 
black and white, right or wrong. There is simply relativism.
  John Adams, in 1797, as our second President of the United States, 
gave a warning that cries through over 200 years, over 220 years. He 
said it clearly:
  This Constitution is intended for a moral and religious people. It is 
wholly inadequate for the government of any other.
  He was a very wise man. This Constitution of ours, the one we took an 
oath to follow here in this very Chamber, it doesn't work in a country 
where the people are not taught morality.
  When John Adams said morality and religion, he was particularly 
talking about Christianity and Judeo-Christian morals as one finds in 
the Ten Commandments, as symbolically evidenced by the fact that Moses' 
supposed likeness directly above and in front of me is the only face of 
all of those profiles that is full face and not the side, because at 
one time he was considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all times.

  At the time, it was the Ten Commandments that were considered to be 
so vital that those who came before us believed were the greatest laws 
ever given. But through the oligarchs across the street in black robes, 
they have said: Don't mention God. It is okay to use ``Jesus'' as long 
as you use it as a one-word exclamatory statement. It is fine to take 
God or Jesus' name in vain, that is fine, that is okay, but don't use 
it in a statement that you have sincerely with all your heart chosen to 
follow Jesus. That is just too inappropriate.
  So Adams, he was right. Whether you call them oligarchs, multiple 
monarchs, they have helped lead this country in a direction it really 
didn't want to go, been ahead of the country forcing us down this road 
to the dustbin of history.
  It is just so clear. If you are not going to teach the Judeo-
Christian morality on which this country was founded, on which the 
revolution came about--without the churches of the day and the Great 
Awakening of the 1700s, there would not have been a revolution. Without 
a Second Great Awakening in the 1800s and some of the churches' 
leadership, we would never have seen the end of slavery in America.
  The world will never see the end of slavery. There will always be 
slavery in the world, but it is such a hideous form of people 
mistreating other people, I literally pray that it will not revisit 
this Nation, this once great Nation.

[[Page H4281]]

  I do believe we can be great again, but not when we fail to bow our 
head in reverence to the God that we once trusted, most of us.

                              {time}  2115

  But if we are not going to teach the morality that would lead to a 
revolution, that would lead to an end to slavery, that would lead an 
ordained Christian minister to bring about another peaceful revolution 
of civil rights--read letters from the Birmingham jail. This man, 
Martin Luther King, Jr., was an ordained Christian minister. It was the 
biggest part of who he was and whose he was.
  And as we have removed those things that motivated a country toward 
freedom and motivated a Nation toward freedom for everyone, and an end 
to slavery, and then motivating them yet again through the words of the 
Bible through leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., we are headed in a 
moral declination that ends in the dustbin of history.
  I just caught a few things that were said by my colleagues across the 
aisle before I came up. My friend Bobby Scott from Virginia indicated 
something to the effect that the lack of discipline robs students.
  We have come a long way from the days where students got paddlings. I 
have been paddled. I was an A student, honor student, head of the 
National Honor Society. I still got paddled.
  I had friends on the football team and other athletic teams, who had 
coaches that cared about them enough to take the time out of their busy 
schedule, not to give a time out to the offending student, but actually 
apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge.
  And I really believe that I had friends, both white and black, in 
sports that would have headed for prison if not for a coach caring 
enough to paddle them when they got out of line, even though they were 
grown; not adults by law, but certainly full-bodied adults. They got 
them on the path that would lead them away from prison and lead them to 
being productive.
  So when we claim, well, we have a Second Amendment right to bear 
arms, we have a First Amendment, very first amendment we have, a right 
to freedom of religion and freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, 
but when we have forsaken God and the teachings found in the Bible that 
were such a foundational part of our Nation's founding, then the 
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, don't work.
  You have got to give up the freedom of speech because some things you 
say motivate others to commit acts of violence. So instead of 
condemning and punishing the violence, we silence the offending 
speaker, because those days when we defended what others said that we 
disagreed with them, those appear to be a distant memory.
  Not only do we disagree with what others say, but we will offend to 
their death to try to prevent their right to say them. It is a long far 
cry from the calls during the Revolution often attributed to Voltaire, 
maybe it was him, maybe it was some other, but ``I disagree with what 
you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.'' They 
thought this would be a country where that could happen.
  But schools, public schools at least, are not allowed to teach the 
kind of morality that was taught for at least the first half of our 
country's existence.
  Yes, Thomas Jefferson had slaves. I have often pondered the 
incredible irony how Thomas Jefferson could have slaves, and yet in the 
first draft of the Declaration of Independence, put on paper how 
offensive slavery was and make that as an enumerated grievance against 
King George for ever allowing slavery to begin here in the United 
States.
  That was taken out before the Declaration of Independence was finally 
agreed to and signed.
  But the only discussion, it seems, about the Bible in public schools 
is when it is demeaned and belittled.
  So are we shocked that there is violence? Yes, we are still shocked. 
We still grieve for the families that have lost loved ones that will 
never be there again.
  Put ourselves in their places. Think what could have been done 
differently.
  Well, everybody is pretty safe in this building. Going back to 1998, 
when two law officers were killed, when it was so easy to come into the 
Capitol, they were by the majority leader's office, and one was able to 
shoot the shooter, though it cost him his life.
  So we have had metal detectors. We have had people screened to come 
in here, but not in the schools.
  It is unfortunate, but if we are not going to teach biblical 
morality, then to be free, we just can't be. We have got to give up 
freedoms of speech, religion, assembly. We have got to give up our 
right to bear arms. Not only give up our right to keep and bear arms, 
but we have got to give up our right to keep pressure cookers, our 
right to have fertilizer that could be used for bombs. We have got to 
give up knives.
  It is amazing to me. I went to school in elementary school where we 
prayed most days, said the pledge of allegiance every day, were not 
afraid to talk about lessons from the Bible, and I carried a 
pocketknife to school. There probably weren't 5, 10 days in all my 
growing up where I didn't carry a pocketknife to school.
  And I just noticed in my bedside stand I have got three knives that 
belonged to my grandfather that he carried for much of his life, 
because they didn't have a problem with kids having knives in school.
  But when you don't teach Judeo-Christian morality, then you better 
take people's knives, guns, anything that might be used as a weapon. 
Vans. We will have to make it tougher to ever get a van. Maybe have a 
cooling off period before you can apply for and get a van or something 
that can run people down.
  Eventually we will have to have cars that are driverless that only 
the government can set in motion so that we can protect ourselves and 
only go where the government will allow us to go. That is where we are 
headed. And it is where you have to go if you are not going to teach 
the morality and the religion that John Adams spoke of as our second 
President in 1797.
  But that has also seen its way into our Federal Government. It is 
okay to lie if it helps your political team. It is okay to violate the 
law if it is for your team. It is okay to violate the Constitution and 
your oath to the Constitution if you are the head of the CIA or are 
intelligence and you want to stop the opposing party's candidate from 
winning or remove that candidate from office after he has fairly won.

  This May 12 article from Andrew McCarthy, National Review, he points 
out that ``The Steele dossier author told Fusion GPS' Glenn Simpson 
about a human source.
  ``Something tells me Glenn Simpson did not make a mistake. Something 
tells me the co-founder of Fusion GPS was dead-on accurate when he 
testified that Christopher Steele told him the FBI had a human source, 
i.e., a spy inside the Trump campaign, as the 2016 Presidential race 
headed into its stretch run.
  ``When he realized how explosive this revelation was, Simpson walked 
it back: He had, perhaps, `mischaracterized' what he had been told by 
Steele, the former British spy and principal author of the anti-Trump 
dossier he and Simpson compiled for the Clinton campaign.
  ``Simpson gave his testimony about the FBI's human source at a closed 
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on August 22, 2017. He did not try 
to retract it until the uproar that followed the publication of his 
testimony on January 9, 2018. The latter date is significant for 
reasons we will come to.
  ``Simpson's testimony on this point is worth revisiting because of a 
pitched battle between the House Intelligence Committee and the Justice 
Department. Essential reporting on the controversy has been done by The 
Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel. On Thursday, she related that, yet 
again, Congress had faced down a DOJ/FBI attempt to stonewall the 
committee's probe of investigative irregularities during the 2016 
election season--particularly, abuse of government surveillance powers, 
which the Obama-led agencies used to monitor the Trump campaign.
  ``Unable to get voluntary cooperation, committee chairman Devin Nunes 
issued a subpoena demanding the Justice Department disclose information 
by the top secret intelligence source who is said to have assisted the

[[Page H4282]]

Russian investigation. That investigation is now being run by Special 
Counsel Robert Mueller. But more interesting is how it got started.
  On that question, officials have been surprisingly fuzzy in their 
explanations, and hilariously inconsistent in their leaks: initially 
settling on an origination story that hinged on the Steele dossier and 
a trip to Moscow by the obscure Trump campaign adviser Carter Page; 
later pivoting to a tale of boozy blathering by an even more obscure 
Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, when the first story 
proved embarrassing--the dossier allegations having been unverified 
when the Justice Department included them in warrant applications to 
the FISA court.''
  Mr. Speaker, it has become clear to me, as a former judge, that the 
FISA courts have got to go.
  For some reason, these judges that have been nominated by a 
President, confirmed by the Senate, do an okay job when their court 
proceedings are open, obvious, and they have some accountability, 
reaction from the American public. But apparently, when they act in 
secret, they don't care so much about the Constitution. They have no 
pride in their own courts so that people can come in, take an oath, lie 
to them, create a fraud upon the court, and we don't hear a peep out of 
those judges. Not one lawyer or witness has been held to account by the 
courts that they offended by their fraud and deception.

                              {time}  2130

  And that includes Rosenstein and, apparently, at least the fourth 
application to renew the warrant that should never have been issued in 
the first place--and surely would not have been if the FISA court had 
not been meeting in secret away from public eyes.
  Is there any secret this country has that is worth the destruction of 
our judicial system as we have seen through the fraud and the 
misrepresentations that have been allowed with no consequence? No 
offended judge is offended.
  It tells me that this pitiful little gathering we have allowed to be 
called the FISA court needs to stop. They are doing more damage to our 
country than they could ever possibly help by their secrecy. And the 
more we find out about what has been kept secret, the darker it appears 
for this country and for our future.
  We have Brennan and Clapper who perjured themselves multiple times 
before Congress and didn't seem bothered by it in the least. And then 
Brennan makes clear that, if you come up against them, you can do so at 
your own peril because they have ways of making you pay the price.
  That is exactly what our Founders were concerned about. The King had 
his ways, too, King George III. And, apparently, that is the kind of 
kingdom we have come into here in the 21st century when an opposition 
campaign for President can pay for a warrant to be issued for no just 
cause, no probable cause, and no consequences.
  We have seen the Justice Department, these career people, they 
weren't interested in ensuring that justice was done. If they had been, 
they would have gotten some Republicans to investigate. They were 
interested in being political to the damage of this country and our 
judicial system. It has got to stop. Mueller needs to resign, and 
Rosenstein needs to be fired.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________