[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 88 (Thursday, May 20, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2639-H2643]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1315
                           SUPPORTING ISRAEL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I was speaking with my friend, Congressman 
Green. And he is my friend. We have differences on issues, but he is a 
brother, and, anyway, it is nice to have friends.
  I appreciated my colleague, Mr. Raskin, pointing to the violence in 
the Middle East. That is a tremendous problem. I am going through a new 
book right now by Os Guinness, ``Magna Carta of Humanity,'' and one of 
the points he makes early on in the book is that Christians should take 
note when Jews are under attack. When Israel is under attack, 
Christians are going to be next. And Israel should take note that when 
Christians are under attack, Israel is going to be next.
  Certainly, in my lifetime, what I have seen when the United States 
blesses, does things helpful to Israel, we seem to be blessed, and when 
we betray our ally Israel, we don't seem to be blessed. I have looked 
for a verse like that, that says those who betray Israel will be 
blessed, and I haven't found that one in the Bible.
  The Bible--those of us that have looked into the history of the House 
of Representatives and the Senate--is the most quoted book in the 
history of Congress in session on the Record. So it is worth looking to 
things like that.
  When I said that running for Congress years ago was a calling, a 
reporter asked if I heard voices, I told the reporter: ``I wish I heard 
voices.'' Life would be so much easier if I heard an audible voice 
telling me what to do. But since I don't hear voices, under my 
religious beliefs, I seek wisdom by reading the Bible, by praying, and 
by seeking wise counsel. That is what some of the leaders of Israel 
obviously have been doing, but they get put into a box.
  Four thousand rockets launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and 
why are there people in the Gaza Strip who would do such a thing? It is 
because Israel, in the hopes of peace, made the unilateral gesture of 
giving the Gaza Strip, a place where there were so many Jewish Israelis 
living there--they had wonderful homes, many had greenhouses. They 
could live there. They could provide for their food there.
  Thinking a unilateral gesture would be recognized as an ultimate 
effort at true peace, Israel handed over the Gaza Strip to 
Palestinians, and that is not necessarily the Palestinian homeland. But 
they handed it over, and it wasn't too long before most of the 
greenhouses were destroyed and tunnels were found. I think 9 miles of 
tunnels have recently been destroyed that were being used to smuggle 
things into Israel itself.
  That unilateral effort for peace by Israel has ended up being one of 
the worst nightmares for Israel.
  Most days, as I understand it, the rockets are launched. They never 
know when they are coming. Children live in fear every single day, not 
knowing if a rocket is going to come their way and kill them. Parents 
have to have a safe room where, when they hear the siren signaling that 
bombs are coming, they have to grab their kids and run to the safe 
room.
  Some years back, when I was in Israel and was having a conversation 
with a mom who lived in Israel, and they had had many rockets come 
their way, the siren went off. She was in the car. There was no safe 
room to run to. So her tiny boy--I think he was 5 or 6--she just leaned 
over and covered him with her body in case the car was hit. It wasn't 
hit.
  When the rocket attack was over, her son was really upset and said: 
``Mama, please don't ever do that again. If you are going to die from a 
rocket attack, I want to die with you.'' That is something the Israelis 
live with every day.
  Rockets are far more sophisticated now than they were when the rocket 
attacks first started. But as I have pointed out to Prime Minister 
Netanyahu before, there has never been a time when Israel gave away 
land trying to buy peace that that land was not used as a staging area 
from which to attack Israel. That is the way they are rewarded every 
time they give away land that is under their control.
  In the Sinai attacks, they are not launching with rockets from there, 
but President el-Sisi told me that there were probably more guns per 
person in the Sinai when he took over as President than any other place 
he was aware of. There were so many weapons. Once Israel turned that 
over, it just became a place where there were lots of weapons. There 
were tunnels into Israel. So, of course, when there are tunnels that 
allow people to come into Israel with weapons, with ways to kill 
Israelis, then the Israelis have to use what is known as self-defense.
  As far as our history, I read last year that one of the basic goals 
of BLM was to destroy Western-Style families. And I shrugged to myself, 
Western-Style families? Those aren't Western-Style families. That came 
from Moses. Moses said it came from God.
  It wasn't Western civilization-style families. It was what Moses said 
when he said a man shall leave his father and mother, and a woman will 
leave her home, and the two will become one. Then when Jesus was asked 
about marriage and divorce, he quoted Moses verbatim, a man shall leave 
his father and mother, the woman will leave her home, the two will 
become one flesh. Then Jesus added a line that Moses had not used, and 
that is when Jesus said, and what God has joined together, let no one 
separate or put asunder. Later, the Apostle Paul quoted Moses and 
Jesus.
  So knowing all that, when I hear BLM wants to destroy Western-Style 
families, they are not Western style. They are Mosaic. They are from 
Moses, as confirmed by Jesus. This is the best building block for a 
society, for a civilization.
  Naturally, if anyone is going to take us into a totalitarian 
government, an Orwellian government where--we don't say Big Brother 
anymore. Orwell called it Big Brother, I will say that. But now, under 
the current rules of the House, we would say big sibling, big sibling 
totalitarian government with a ministry of truth that every day 
rewrites history to make the government look better.

  Then, of course, they had the Ministry of Love, so that if you say 
anything that is different from what the Ministry of Truth said you had 
to say, then you are picked up by the Ministry of Love and tortured for 
hours, days, weeks, months, or years until you disclaim what you said 
about the Ministry of Truth's inaccuracy.
  Those are the kinds of things that Orwell wrote about in the late 
1940s. He had been through cancer treatment, so some think that is what 
gave him inspiration for the kind of torture that the Ministry of Love 
was putting people through. But he went up, as I recall, to Scotland 
and wrote from a friend's home there the book 1984. As I have said 
before, the only thing he appears to have gotten wrong was the year; it 
wasn't 1984. But we are seeing these tactics.
  We even have people proposing here at the Capitol that we should have 
a ministry that specifies exactly what truth is, and then anybody that 
says anything different than truth that the ministry here or the 
Federal agency here puts out, they should be able to be arrested for a 
crime. And I am like, wow, that is right out of Orwell.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Owens). I love 
Burgess Owens. I am thrilled that he is a Member of Congress, and every 
day I serve with him, I am more grateful he is here.


                         Honoring Roger Morgan

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I honor a great man, public servant, and Vista Heights 
Middle School's head custodian, Roger Morgan, from Saratoga Springs, 
Utah.
  When COVID-19 disrupted normalcy last year, Roger did what he always 
does: He anticipated the needs of others and sprang into action.

[[Page H2640]]

  He installed plexiglass and hand-sanitizing stations. He stayed late 
each night to disinfect the entire school. During the summer, he 
cleaned out the air vents to increase filtration.
  He was proactive and diligent in filling PPE from district, State, 
and school funds. As shipments arrived, he organized and distributed 
the supplies.
  When the State of Utah requested a rapid testing site at Vista 
Heights, Roger worked overtime to set it up and cleaned the units every 
day to help facilitate the accessibility of this testing option.
  The praise for Roger is overwhelming. He is a team player, and he 
represents the Fourth District's spirit of service and compassion.
  Mr. Speaker, I congratulate Roger, District Four's first hometown 
hero.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as I have told my friend--he wears that big 
shiny Super Bowl ring; he hasn't let me wear it yet--any time he comes 
to the floor, I will always yield to him. I appreciate anything he has 
to say.
  Having talked with Prime Minister Netanyahu on multiple occasions, I 
have very high regard for him. He is in such a difficult situation, and 
I don't think there is anybody who characterizes the situations that 
arise in Israel better than my friend--hopefully, it won't hurt her for 
me to say she is a friend--but Caroline Glick, just a wonderful 
perspective on the things in Israel.
  I know they were going through a tough time as far as organizing 
government. I hope it works out. But Israel needs a strong leader, in 
my humble opinion, like Prime Minister Netanyahu because they are under 
attack. Every time Israel has tried to placate people that hate them, 
it hasn't worked out well.
  In the Gaza Strip, it is controlled by Hamas. I bet there is an 
excellent chance that money that the United States has sent to Iran, 
and we know money that the U.S. has sent to the Palestinians, ends up 
funding schools that teach hate for Jews, to name holidays and streets 
for people that have effectively blown up innocent Israelis.
  But it is scary here in the United States to hear more and more anti-
Jewish, anti-Israel rhetoric. That does not bode well for the future of 
the United States.

                              {time}  1330

  John Adams had some great writings on importance of the Jewish 
people, and the importance of their existence to civilization. And 
there is a good chance if you see people that think the answer to their 
problems is blowing up innocent people that they hate, they are badly 
mistaken.
  And so, coming back around to January 6, anybody that engaged in 
violence here on January 6 should be punished, and any such violence 
should not be minimized. If I were still a felony judge and people that 
had engaged in violence on January 6 here came before me, I would have 
no problem sentencing them. We can't have that kind of conduct.
  And as I and so many of my friends have said repeatedly, the most 
effective protest is peaceful protest--learning from the incredible 
Christian man, a Christian minister named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
The Weather Underground, Bill Ayers' friends, they tried violence. It 
didn't work. They didn't accomplish anything. Of course, when they 
started moving into universities and getting tenure and teaching 
children to love socialism, they became much more effective than those 
days when they were blowing things up trying to kill people.
  But there is so much more to be helped by peaceful protest. Make your 
voices heard. And just as the President said on January 6, it needs to 
be peaceful, but make your voices heard.
  I would love it if our friends across the aisle had been as 
condemning of people in Antifa or BLM that engaged in violence, or 
people that chased my wife and I down the street after the President's 
speech at the White House last year. I wish the people on the other 
side of the aisle would condemn those things as well. Some of us 
condemn violence on both sides, no matter who it is supporting. It is 
wrong, and should be. But it turns out it wasn't all violence here at 
the Capitol.
  This is an article by Julie Kelly. She has probably done greater 
research and reporting about January 6 than anybody that I have seen. 
This article from May 16 says, ``Video shows U.S. Capitol Police gave 
protestors okay to enter.''
  Now, we know that there was some violence here at the Capitol; there 
was. Of course, it was a Capitol Police that shot Ashley Babbitt, 
killed her, I think a Navy veteran--but a military veteran; she was 
unarmed. But we also know that after hearing they were armed, that 
these people came ready to shoot Members of Congress, that at least for 
weeks, there was no arrest, no charges of anybody in the Capitol for 
having a firearm.
  Some apparently used a flag, a couple other things, in an aggressive 
manner. And if they assaulted someone with those, they should be 
severely punished. But it wasn't an ``armed,'' as we think of now. 
Maybe if you were back in the 1500s, you would say they were armed if 
they had a little battalion like one 18-year old had that stayed in 
jail for weeks and weeks and weeks in solitary confinement, 23 hours a 
day, while people that have burned and looted and killed in other 
cities, part of Antifa and those protests, even the Vice President back 
then was trying to raise bail money for them to help get them out. Not 
so. No help for people that were jailed from the January 6 incident.
  And as I understand, there have been over 450 arrested, and many of 
those, it has been reported, we had many Federal agents show up. A 
couple from Alaska had their homes ransacked before the Federal agents 
finally accepted the fact that the woman was not the woman they had a 
picture of, who had stolen Speaker Pelosi's laptop.
  You would think as sophisticated as law enforcement is now, that our 
Federal agents, FBI would have been sophisticated enough to know 
whether somebody in the picture was the person whose house they were 
ransacking. But then again, FBI, it is the only law enforcement entity 
I am aware of that doesn't like to have any video of statements made by 
potential defendants. They prefer to write their own version of what 
the defendant or target says so they are not contradicted by having 
audio or videotape somewhere.
  But in any event, Julie Kelly's article says, ``newly obtained video 
shows United States Capitol police officers speaking with several 
January 6 protestors, including Jacob Chansley, the so-called Q Shaman, 
inside the Capitol that afternoon.''
  One officer identified in the video and confirmed by charging 
documents as Officer Keith Robishaw, appears to tell Chansley's group 
that they won't stop them from entering the building: ``We are not 
against, you need to show us . . . no attacking, no assault, remain 
calm, Robishaw warns.'' And Chansley and other protestors instructed 
the crowd to act peaceful. ``This has to be peaceful,'' Chansley 
yelled. ``We have the right to peacefully assemble.''
  The video directly contradicts what government prosecutors alleged in 
a complaint filed January 8 against Chansley. In the complaint: 
``Robishaw and other officers calmed the protestors somewhat and 
directed them to leave the area from the same way they had entered. 
Chansley approached Officer Robishaw and screamed, among other things, 
that this was their House and that they were there to take the Capitol 
and to get Congressional leaders.''
  Well, that is not on the video. And then when you see that, you have 
Feds that have made these allegations in writing and actually signed 
their name to them, well, that kind of gives us an indication why they 
don't want the 14,000 hours of video that would show everything that 
happened here at the Capitol. They don't want them released. They are 
fighting against releasing them. They don't want people to see them, 
which is a bit unusual because in the United States, one of the points 
of the revolution was to have an open government where you didn't have 
secret prosecutions and secret evidence like the Soviet Union would 
use, like Kafka talked about in his book, The Trial.
  And yet, often these days, you will have a SWAT team of Federal 
agents swarm and arrest people, like we had a hearing some years back. 
My friend,  Bobby Scott, Democrat from Virginia, and I were both very 
concerned about the civil rights. And we didn't know

[[Page H2641]]

what political party, if any, that these people that were being abused 
claimed, but we knew they were being abused regardless of race, creed, 
color. They were being abused and the Federal process was being abused. 
And that has gone on in Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Republican 
administrations. It ought to be a concern to everybody.

  And so, secrecy surrounding January 6 just should not exist. There is 
no reason for it. Let everyone see exactly what happened. Don't try to 
hide the facts. Don't pull an FBI and only give us a written account of 
your interpretation of what was said and done. Let us see the video. 
And don't edit it. Let us see the video. Quit trying to hide the 14,000 
hours of videotape. Who are you trying to hide? Why are you trying to 
hide it?
  Well, this story gives an indication, perhaps, why these things would 
be hidden. And, yes, I am extremely conservative, but it doesn't matter 
who is being abused by abusive law officers. Truth and justice need to 
rule out. And this raises great concerns.
  So, under the rule of the House, we are not allowed to run videotape 
or audiotape, so the best we could do is have blowups. This is Mr. 
Watson--he doesn't look a whole lot like me--but Mr. Watson, and it 
says: ``The police here are willing to work with us and cooperate 
peacefully like our First Amendment allows.''
  And the video reveals Officer Robishaw, and he is saying, ``We are 
not against--you need to show us . . . do you understand. No attacking, 
no assault, remain calm.''
  And then you have Mr. Watson, who comes back, and he turns to the 
group there and says: ``We are not going to assault, we are going to be 
heard. Everybody--this must be peaceful.''
  So there were people engaging in violence for which they need to be 
punished. And there were people who were trying to engage peacefully. 
And that was most of the tens of thousands who were outside the Capitol 
that didn't come into the Capitol, that had been down for the 
President's speech at the other end of Constitution or Pennsylvania 
Avenue that didn't even have time to get up here to the Capitol before 
some folks entered the Capitol.
  So there is a lot that needs to be learned, and I hope that we will 
have friends on the other side of the aisle who will join us in 
demanding the release of the 14,000 hours of videotape.
  There is a story from FOX News that a Politico reporter falsely 
suggests U.S. Capitol Police condemned GOP lawmakers for opposing the 
January 6 commission. That was an anonymous letter. We don't know if it 
was more than one, who it was, were they all Capitol Police, was there 
more than one. We don't know, because it was anonymous. And then the 
Capitol Police came out and said we are not taking a position in this 
whatsoever.
  Now, a New York Post reported--and this is Elizabeth Elizalde--she 
reported back January 13 that Mr. Watson was out on bond for 
trafficking marijuana and LSD at the time he traveled to Washington, 
D.C. He had been out on $103,000 bond on a drug trafficking case. Well, 
that is not somebody that should have been leading a protest here in 
Washington. But yet, here he was. And even then, he did not want to 
engage in any violence.
  But then, I ran across this story from May 7, and I had not seen this 
story until this week. I somehow missed it. The lame stream media did 
not appear to be reporting it. It is from The Orlando Sentinel, and it 
is an AP story, so I don't know why more places didn't get the story 
out there, but it is from Tallahassee.
  ``A Florida man was convicted Thursday of trying to organize an armed 
response to supporters of former President Donald Trump for an expected 
gathering at the State Capitol in January ahead of Joe Biden's 
Presidential inauguration.
  ``Daniel Alan Baker, 33, of Tallahassee, was convicted of two counts 
of transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a 
threat to kidnap or injure another person. Baker used social media to 
recruit people in a plot to create a circle around protestors and trap 
them in the Capitol, according to the FBI. The court documents describe 
what it said were a series of threats of violence made by Baker, along 
with a prediction of civil war. Baker was described as anti-Trump, 
anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police.

                              {time}  1345

  Anyway, that is an interesting story that I didn't see played up by 
the media too big. This is an important story, and it does need to be 
addressed.
  Unfortunately, when we talk about rules violations, it turns out, on 
June 22 of 2016, Republicans in the majority were prevented from having 
an official proceeding. I didn't realize it back then, but I knew it 
violated all kinds of House rules, but when Democrat Members of 
Congress took over, and one of the Democrat Members grabbed the 
microphone and would not let a Republican have it.
  Anyway, we were prevented from having an official session of 
Congress, and they held the floor, held a sit-in down here for over 24 
hours. And it turns out that a charge that is being leveled at some of 
the people, including people who were peacefully here, like some of 
those in Watson's group who actually were here peacefully, they are 
being charged with impeding an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 
1512.
  I didn't realize it, but when that was signed into law before I got 
here back in 2002, it carried a 20-year potential sentence for impeding 
an official proceeding. It says ``corruptly,'' which in the definition 
of the statute means with intent to keep the official proceeding from 
happening.
  So it seems there were many violations of that criminal law back 
then. Probably the limitations has run out, and I am not suggesting we 
go back and arrest people for violating that law back in 2016. I am 
suggesting that when people violate the law that are in Congress--not 
just rules, but actually violate criminal laws--I would hope they would 
be a little less condemning of others for violating the same law that 
they did.
  Hopefully, we will see a little more bipartisan work. We had friends 
across the aisle saying, gee, the 9/11 Commission was completely 
bipartisan, both sides worked together well and wanted to get to the 
bottom of it. But it was clear the way the January 6 commission was 
being set up, where Democrats pick all of the staff, that this is not 
going to be a fair situation. It is not going to work out like the 9/11 
Commission because this is a different time. I never thought I would 
see times like this when we really do have different goals.
  Some in this body will condemn Israel for defending themselves like 
they have, and not say one word about the rockets--the 4,000 rockets 
that have flown and killed innocent Israelis. And I know there are 
people in the United States who say there is no such thing as an 
innocent Israeli, we need to wipe them all out, we need to kill every 
one of them, the area from the river to the sea should be free of Jews.
  That gets really scary when people in America say that, feel that, 
because that really falls right into the same type of things that were 
being said in the 1930s in Europe, and we know what that led to.
  As Barney Fife used to say, that needs to be nipped in the bud. That 
needs to be stopped. It is getting dangerous not just for this country, 
but for all of civilization.
  There are people who want anarchy, including Antifa. There are people 
within Antifa who that is what they want. And then there are people who 
are Marxists, socialists, and BLM, their ultimate goal is to create a 
Marxist government.
  It is interesting, because Marx was so wrong about so much. He just 
missed it. He totally missed the idea that you could have a middle 
class that would be the real strength in a country, as it has been in 
the United States. He thought it was going to be a class revolution, 
that the workers of the world would unite and rebel against that small 
thin veneer of a ruling class.
  He didn't foresee that the real rulers would be the middle class. But 
as this country has progressed, we have seen billionaires arise, who 
think they are above the law; who think that, gee, if we move into a 
totalitarian government, they will be part of that thin veneer of a 
ruling class.
  Unfortunately, though, they are brilliant in business, creating 
monopolies and making billions of dollars, even though some don't even 
pay their workers enough that they can avoid food stamps. But they 
don't know

[[Page H2642]]

enough about history. They don't know enough about Marxist movements. 
Because, sure, people who want a totalitarian, Marxist, socialist 
system, they are glad to have that money. $500 million to help in the 
Democrat effort to win the last election by just one of those 
oligarchs, they are glad to have that money.
  But history tells us that if the Marxists take over, the first thing 
they do is take all that money.
  Do you think Bernie Sanders is kidding about his disgust at 
billionaires?
  No. They will take your money. They will use it to win. And then 
after they win, they will take your money and you will either go to a 
Gulag or you are put to death. They are not going to leave billionaires 
around to manage things. They will take your money and you will go the 
way, as so many Soviets did. I hope they wake up in time to realize.
  But Marx was so wrong. Why are people following him? He was proven 
wrong in the Soviet Union. He was proven wrong in Venezuela.
  And then along came Gramsci. Back in the 1940s, he was put in Italian 
jail. He figured out, okay, Marx had it wrong; we can't get our 
revolution and overthrow Democratic Republic, like here in the United 
States, by having the middle class unite and overthrow the most 
wealthy.
  The only way to get it done in a place like that is not workers of 
the world unite, but it is to go into institutions and create an 
institutional war where you take over institutions. You pit institution 
against institution. You go to war against the culture. That is what we 
are seeing in America. That is what is being utilized.
  Things like the family, no matter how many studies repeatedly show 
that the best odds for a child to be very successful is to come from a 
two-parent family and a well-grounded family. That is it. That is the 
best chance to succeed in life. Thank God, there are so many of the 
most important people in the history of the United States who have come 
from single-mom families, single-parent families. But the odds are best 
if it is a traditional family, like Moses, Jesus, and the Apostle Paul 
talked about.

  And I will never forget a murder trial of the leader of a gang, over 
which I presided as judge. He didn't testify on the merits of the case. 
He was charged with murder. He murdered a Hispanic friend, but he 
thought that this guy had ratted him out to the police. He was 
convicted of killing this guy.
  As people testified during the trial on the merits of guilt or 
innocence, they were disparaging his gang and the gang members, and the 
violence in which they were engaged. So once he was convicted, his 
attorney, smartly and wisely, advised his client not to testify on 
sentencing, because once you start testifying, as I warned him outside 
the presence of the jury, you waive your right to remain silent.
  At that point, once you waive your right to remain silent, you are 
subject to cross-examination. You do have to answer the questions that 
are relevant and material. And you if you don't, you can be put in jail 
and kept in jail for not answering those questions.
  He understood all of that and he went against the advice of his 
attorney. He explained the reason he had to get up there and testify. 
He sat through the whole trial hearing people talk badly about his gang 
members, and it was an emotional thing to him.
  He told us, everybody in the courtroom, that he was sick of hearing 
the gang members being called names, being accused of things. And he 
said: They are the only family I ever had. They are my family.
  He didn't have a father, that he knew of. His mother was working and 
she was gone much of the time. And, as he said, that gang was his 
family.
  And I was thinking, that is what happens when you have a war on 
poverty that starts by bribing families to get the father out of the 
home. Now, I know that was not the intent. The intent was to help 
single moms, but the effect of the Federal Government paying people to 
not have fathers in the home, going back to the mid-60s, has changed 
this society, has eliminated fathers from the lives of children, and 
has prevented many from getting the education that was once so highly 
sought in America.
  When my youngest daughter was going into high school, one of the high 
school leaders, employees there, indicated that about 40 percent of her 
class would not graduate and would drop out of school. I couldn't 
believe those numbers. Forty percent in Tyler, Texas, will not likely 
graduate and drop out of school.
  You can't maintain an advanced society when 40 percent of a 
generation are not learning to read and write, and they are not 
finishing even a secondary education. You can't maintain a society like 
that.

                              {time}  1400

  We are doomed unless we get that turned around. That is still the 
case if we don't get this turned around, where they get a better 
education.
  People will say: Well, more Federal Government is the answer.
  It hasn't been. Back when the States and local government were 
totally in charge of the education of students through high school, we 
had a higher percentage graduating back then. They were doing better on 
tests back then.
  I remember in the early nineties--I believe that is when it was--that 
there was a report that SAT scores had been getting lower than they 
were back in the seventies, when I took the SAT. So they had made an 
adjustment in the scoring of the SAT so that the scores appeared to be 
better.
  Back then, I asked the president at Texas A&M, when I was down there 
on the board of directors of the former student association: When they 
adjusted the scoring of the SAT, what did that do?
  He said: Well, there was a formula so you can't say it added a 
specific number of points, but, on average, it probably added 200 
points or so to the current takers of this SAT scores.
  Also, that it wouldn't look so bad since the Federal Government 
basically started telling the States and local governments what to do 
about education. So apparently we were doing better back in the late 
sixties and seventies on our SATs until the Federal Government got more 
involved. We were doing better on our SATs until President Carter 
created a Department of Education.
  When I took it, I did very well. It got me into the honors program at 
Texas A&M. I am sure that shocks people who think that I am the dumbest 
guy in Congress. I was part of the honors program, and that was really 
nice. About 150 of the best scores on the SAT of the class of about 
3,500, I think we were.
  But how in the world do students not get as educated after we create 
a Federal Department of Education that starts dictating what students 
have to do to be educated?
  It sounds like maybe we need to get back to the 10th Amendment 
observation that those powers not specifically enumerated in the 
Constitution are reserved to the States and people. It seemed like 
perhaps the best education control is local control, where the parents 
can be more hands-on.
  But I understand when, at the same time, the Federal Government is 
paying to have only a single parent and not paying for two parents to 
be in the home that the studies were right. It helps to have a two-
parent home to increase the odds of success for the children.
  We are having a hearing that I left. I had finished my part in the 
hearing and came over here. But it is on guns and discussions about 
mass gun shootings that break your heart. Innocent people. There seem 
to be so many more now.
  But if you are going to have Weather Underground people in 
universities teaching that there is no right, there is no wrong, it is 
all relative; if you are going to have people teaching there is no God, 
there is no ultimate source of right, wrong, and justice; if you are 
going to be teaching that, then you are going to have what our Founders 
would have called an immoral and an irreligious people.
  John Adams was a fan of the Constitution, although there were lots of 
bitter fights. Back in those days, they could yell, they could fuss, 
and they could do like we do. I fussed at friends across the aisle, and 
I really like them. I just think they are wrong on some things. It 
doesn't keep me from liking them if we disagree. But as he said, ``this 
Constitution is intended for a moral and religious people; it is wholly 
inadequate for the government of any other.''

[[Page H2643]]

  He is right.
  We have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and it is not 
to be infringed upon by the Federal Government or the State Government. 
But the problem is when we quit teaching about right and wrong; when we 
started preventing the greatest, most purchased book in the history of 
the world, the Bible, from being utilized in schools, then it created a 
vacuum, it created a void. And that was filled by people who were a bit 
hedonistic and began teaching that there is no ultimate right or wrong.
  C.S. Lewis talked about he was proud to be an atheist. Or you could 
say agnostic, Mr. Speaker. He just didn't believe there was any way to 
determine that there really was a God. He used to like to goad people 
who would say they were Christians: Well, tell me, if there is a good 
God, how can there be so much injustice in the world?
  No matter what they said, especially these debates he would have with 
other Oxford professors or students when they would try to explain why 
there was a good God even though there was so much injustice, he would 
come back and say: Yes, that is all well and good, but wouldn't it be 
easier just to say there is no such thing as a good God?
  One day he realized, how could he possibly say there was injustice in 
the world if there was not somewhere some absolute source of right and 
wrong and justice and injustice?
  Because, as he said, it would be like a man blind from birth trying 
to describe light. You can't describe justice if there isn't an 
ultimate source of fairness and justice. And that ultimate source put a 
little of that in every heart.
  Some develop calluses. It is kind of like the olfactory. I have read 
that that is supposed to be the most sensitive sense, the best memory 
of any of our senses. I think Mr. Science or somebody was explaining 
one day on television that the olfactory nerves are a bit like a cup. 
Those cells fill up with a smell, and it is like filling up a cup with 
water. Once it fills up, you can't detect that there is more water out 
there because it is full. The olfactory, once it is full of a smell, it 
quits detecting the smell is there.
  It is the same way when we are around evil or wrongdoing long enough. 
I saw it as a judge many times. Mothers would say: Hey, don't hang 
around with those people, they are bad news. And they would hang around 
with them. And when I would sentence them, they would say: My mother 
said I shouldn't be hanging out with these guys; I did, and it ruined 
my life.

  Mr. Speaker, if you hang around with evil long enough, then you quit 
noticing the good. That has happened for too many people. They didn't 
have families and they didn't have churches and institutions that they 
were part of that taught them there is a right and wrong.
  Once C.S. Lewis realized there has to be some source of absolute 
right and wrong, then he realized there has to be a God, and then he 
went from there to becoming a Christian. As he said, just because there 
are different degrees of recognition and appreciation for justice 
doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute source of justice. He said 
that it is like music. Some people come closer to hitting the right 
note than others. It doesn't mean the music doesn't exist.
  But in this country, we had that as a solid basis. Our founding was 
not about 1619 or 1620. The Pilgrims didn't come over because of 
slavery. They came over for freedom of religion, as a place where 
Christians would not be persecuted. Despite different denominations 
battling and interdenominational battles, people, for most of our 
history, have not been persecuted for being Christians.
  Until recently, we didn't see a lot of anti-Semitism in the United 
States, but it is growing. As my friend, Brad Sherman, was pointing 
out, it is alarming to see the anti-Semitism growing in violence, as 
the event out in California.
  So I hope that we can come back to a place where people who may have 
violated the impeding and official proceeding, as happened January 22, 
2016, will be a little more understanding of people engaged in peaceful 
protest, who didn't and wouldn't engage in violence.
  We will agree on the violence: they need to be punished. But I hope 
that we can work together to advance this country to the point where 
there is fairness, there is justice, and we are not going to 
discriminate against people because of the color of their skin. We will 
be a colorblind society.
  Dr. King had a dream, and people are turning it into a nightmare. 
Let's get back to his dream and make it happen so that he can be the 
luminary that God intended him to be.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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