[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7169-7171]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        ADMINISTRATION FAILURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  I certainly appreciate and agree with the gentleman's concerns about 
the failure of the administration to secure the border. We are quite 
aware that the border did not get as secure as we would have hoped 
under the prior administration, but there is no excuse for not getting 
it done now, and especially when the claim is made that we'll secure 
the border when you basically give amnesty to people that were already 
here. That's like putting the cart in front of the horse as the cart is 
going off the cliff. It's a problem.
  There are other problems, Mr. Speaker, as you've surely noted with 
regard to this administration. An article that came out today, May 17, 
from The Daily Caller points out that the homeland security guidelines 
advised deference to pro-sharia Muslim supremacists.
  Of course, Mr. Speaker, we are familiar with the fact that Homeland 
Security has had reports warning their employees about the dangers of 
people that may be involved in such heinous activity as being 
classified as evangelical Christians, or as being concerned about the 
Constitution and that people should be following the Constitution, and 
concerned about people who may have Tea Party in their name.
  Thank goodness the IRS was not around to help the Founders when they 
founded the country or otherwise they probably would have shot the 
Boston Tea Party participants. They would have killed off over half of 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and this country would 
have never gotten started, if this Homeland Security would have been 
around to be helpful, so called, to our Founders.
  But in looking at the guidelines, this article says:

       The Department of Homeland Security, which under Janet 
     Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and 
     warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different 
     approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 
     2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-sharia 
     Muslim supremacists. In a checklist obtained by The Daily 
     Caller titled, ``Countering Violent Extremism, Dos and 
     Don'ts,'' the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 
     notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it 
     is Obama administration policy to consider specifically 
     Islamic criticism of the American system of government 
     legitimate.

  I must insert parenthetically, it is so interesting that people who 
believe the Constitution means exactly what it says are deemed by our 
Secretary Napolitano and her Homeland Security as being threats to the 
country because they believe what the Founders did. How dare they.

                              {time}  1520

  And someone who believes the teachings of Jesus Christ is somehow to 
be feared--wow--because they may go into all the world baptizing them, 
making disciples. They may end up being like Mother Teresa and helping 
the poor and needy. They may actually do things without the government 
telling them they can do that, like Mother Teresa, just going in and 
helping.
  Well, you've got to watch those evangelical Christians, if they are 
true Christians, if you're part of this Janet Napolitano Homeland 
Security Office.
  The article points out this policy stands in stark contrast to the 
DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis 2009 memo: ``Right wing 
extremism, current economic and political climate fueling resurgence in 
radicalization and recruitment,'' which warned of the dangers posed by 
pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage, and groups concerned 
with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.
  The advice of the do's and don'ts list is far more conciliatory. 
Don't use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, 
freedom to protest, or other constitutionally protected activity, 
including disliking the U.S. Government without being violent, the 
manual's authors write in a section on training being sensitive to 
constitutional values.
  The manual, which was produced by an interagency working group from 
DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center advises:

       Trainers who equate the desire for shari'a law with 
     criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First 
     Amendment.

  And that is interesting. And it goes back to my point about how 
problematic it must have been for an FBI who've had their lexicon 
purged, where they can't really talk effectively about jihad because 
that might offend someone, even though it is critically important to 
know what someone believes about jihad.
  Does an individual believe, as an Islamist, that jihad is just the 
internal changing of one's self into being more Islamic?
  Or is jihad actually a violent jihad that, as the 9/11 bombers and 
killer believed, you kill as many innocent people, especially 
Americans, especially Jews, as you possibly can.
  But this administration is concerned that to ask about jihad may 
certainly offend someone. And it was intriguing to inquire of our 
Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the country, 
about just what the FBI did ask of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
  What did they find out that he believed about jihad?
  What did they find out that he supported in the way of jihad?
  What favorite authors did he have about jihad?
  And the Attorney General didn't seem to know, but by the end of his 
testimony, he says, I don't--obviously I've said something untrue 
because, all of a sudden, now, even though he testified he didn't know 
what they really asked, all of a sudden, apparently he felt like he did 
know.
  But here's the interesting chart to which the article was referring, 
very interesting. It's from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security 
Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And it is important to 
know, we call it countering violent extremism, just as Ms. Napolitano 
calls not countering terrorism, she had this set up as the Countering 
Violent Extremism Working Group, even though she couldn't previously 
answer my question as to how many members of the Muslim Brotherhood 
were part of her Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism Working 
Group, or even her Homeland Security Advisory Group.
  And I found it interesting that a publication in Egypt knows more 
about the Muslim Brotherhood members of this administration than our 
own Homeland Security Secretary knows. She didn't even know, when I 
asked her at a prior hearing, that there was a known member of a known 
terrorist group that had been allowed to go in the White House. But she 
did find out before she went before the Senate so she could say, oh, we 
vetted him three times. Well, yeah, probably about the way the FBI 
vetted Tamerlan and said, oh, there's nothing to see. We'll just move 
on here, which left him able to plot and plan to kill people, innocent 
people, men, women and children in Boston.
  But it's interesting. When you look here, it says talking about the 
things you should not do, don't use training with a political agenda. 
This is not the time to try to persuade audiences, for example, on 
views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reformation within Islam, 
or the proper role of Islam in majority Muslim nations.
  Don't use trainers who answer primarily to interest groups. For 
example, trainers who are self-professed Muslim reformers may further 
an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted, 
unbiased information.
  Very interesting, you know, because if you can't inquire about what 
people truly believe about jihad, about radical Islam, about killing 
infidels, if you really can't get into the weeds on this thing, then 
how in the world do our officers know which Muslims will be good to 
have training and which ones won't be good to have training our own 
officers?
  We do know from a couple of years ago when the administration stopped 
a seminar that was about to take place over at the CIA because there 
were

[[Page 7170]]

some people who had spent their lives studying radical Islam and were 
classified as experts around the country, unless perhaps you were part 
of the Organization of Islamic Council, who actually came up with the 
term ``Islamaphobe'' and pays money to major universities to have 
seminars and courses on Islamaphobia and characterize people that way 
so that they can try to scare people away from talking about radical 
Islam.
  But it's interesting though, I mean, this is our own Homeland 
Security. This is the kind of stuff that led one of our intelligence 
agents to tell me, Congressman, we are blinding our own ability to see 
the enemy that wants to kill and destroy us. We're blinding ourselves 
from our ability to see the people that want to destroy us.
  And if we'd be more realistic, there would be people alive in Boston 
that are not.
  When the Russian Government gives us a heads-up and says, this guy 
has become radicalized, that can't be normal. Man, this is a big deal. 
You'd better look thoroughly into it.
  This is an outreach from the Russians. Hey, I'm not sure you realize 
just how radical this guy's become. It wasn't enough clues that he and 
his family got asylum from a country that they were comfortable going 
back to.
  Wait a minute, if they got asylum, how in the world would any of 
their family be comfortable going back there? Perhaps they didn't need 
asylum.
  Well, if they didn't need asylum, why don't we send them back?
  Well, no, we wouldn't want to do that. Gosh, we might offend somebody 
that wants to kill us. Heaven help us if we were to offend somebody 
that wants to kill us.
  Don't use training that equates radical thought, religious 
expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally protected 
activity with criminal activity. One can have radical thoughts, ideas, 
including disliking the U.S. Government, without being violent. For 
example, trainers who equate the desire for shari'a law with criminal 
activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.
  Well, I would submit to whoever put together this chart, those who 
want to do away with our Constitution and, instead, impose shari'a law 
on all Americans, are acting with treasonous intent because you can't 
want to replace our Constitution with shari'a law and still be wanting 
the America where everyone has freedom to worship as they wish.

                              {time}  1530

  What you are wanting is the kind of situation that you now find in 
Afghanistan, where the last public Christian church had to close, or in 
Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over and Coptic Christians 
have been persecuted mercilessly, or in Iraq where you have radical 
Islamists in charge who find it is a crime to believe that Jesus is a 
savior, a crime worthy of going to prison. They believe sharia law is 
the law of the land in those countries. So anybody that wants to 
replace our Constitution with sharia law should be looked at by our 
Homeland Security as being a threat, and any plots or plans to replace 
our Constitution with sharia law should be looked on very carefully and 
not be given a pat on the back or invited in to give advice to the 
White House on speeches or to give advice on how to train our 
intelligence agents or to give advice on how to train FBI and Homeland 
Security agents. But this is exactly what this administration is doing.
  And when you blind our intelligence agencies and you blind our 
protectors who are willing to lay down their lives for us to be free, 
when you blind them to their ability to see the enemy, then people get 
killed, and people that wanted to prevent it are left with guilty 
consciences because they wonder what could we have done more--and it's 
not their fault. It comes from the top of Homeland Security and the top 
of the Justice Department. And when it comes from the White House, as 
it did, to stop the seminar at the CIA, it comes from the very top. And 
the message is clear: We don't want to offend anyone who may be a 
radical Islamist because, gee, that might be bad. It's okay to offend 
evangelical Christians. Sure, they're the only group in America it's 
politically correct to persecute now.
  It's okay to persecute anyone who believes what most of humanity has 
for most of mankind and particularly the Founders, the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence, those who represented each of the States 
at the Constitutional Convention. They believed marriage was between a 
man and a woman. However, today, according to this administration, 
anyone who believes in that same type of traditional marriage is to be 
hated, vilified, despised, persecuted and to be watched out for by our 
Homeland Security because they're a threat, because they want the 
freedom to believe in traditional marriage that was taught in the 
Bible, the kind of marriage that Jesus himself attended and performed, 
his first recorded miracle. Yet those of us who believe in that are to 
be vilified.
  It's also amazing to me--I'm not pushing my beliefs on anyone else, 
but it's part of who I am as a Christian--there are people whose 
lifestyles I believe hurt them, hurt our society and degenerate our 
society. But I would give my life for them. As a Christian, I love 
them. I have no problem embracing them. I find it interesting that 
people who have come to hate me, and Christians like me, they can't 
understand how you can disagree with a lifestyle or disagree so 
profoundly with a political belief and yet love them through and 
through as an individual. I hope and pray some day they'll understand.
  But in the meantime, it is important if we're going to allow the 
people in our Federal Government who have sworn their lives to 
protecting all Americans, if we're going to allow them to do their job, 
they must be able to have a full, total and complete discussion on 
radical Islam that incorporates political belief from or into their 
religion and vice versa. And there are radical Islamists who want to 
destroy us; therefore, you have 9/11 of 2001, you have 9/11 of last 
year, you have 9/11 of the year before.
  We've got to wake up. There's still time, but people have been killed 
needlessly. And this kind of stuff, this kind of political correctness 
that ends up making it okay through some of the other documents we've 
seen to go after evangelical Christians and to fear them and 
potentially persecute them, and as we've seen from the IRS, it's good 
to persecute Tea Parties. People at the low levels didn't make that up. 
They were encouraged, allowed to do the kind of things they were, 
otherwise it could not have gone as long and as widely as it did. But 
these days are very, very telling. Very telling.
  Now, this is a helpful comment, note, too, that not all Arabs are 
Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. Yes, for example, there are 
Christian Arabs who are being persecuted in Egypt, in Iran, in Iraq, in 
Afghanistan and in places like Libya, where we helped radicals take 
over and people who just want to worship God are being persecuted. It 
is tragic what has happened and the blindness that has occurred.
  It's embarrassing. It's particularly embarrassing when I embrace 
family members who have lost loved ones in Benghazi or 9/11 of 2001. 
One family member told me that Secretary Clinton advised them--what we 
now know is what at that time she knew very clearly, Benghazi was not 
about a video. She advised them, hey, we're going to get the guy that 
made that video, as if that was going to give them some comfort. They 
weren't out to kill someone. They weren't out to get somebody. But they 
do want justice. And it turned out, the Secretary knew at the time she 
said that that it wasn't about a video. It was part of confusing or 
attempting to confuse the issues and the mistakes that were made by 
this administration.
  So it was worth noting, though, when we look at the IRS and the 
problems there, this article today by Labor Union Report Diary, May 16, 
yesterday, and it says:

       Meet the partisan union behind the partisan Internal 
     Revenue Service.

[[Page 7171]]

       Where do the anti-sequester, Federal Government workers-
     turned-protesters work? They work at the Internal Revenue 
     Service--and they are unionized.

  And the article points out that:

       As the scandal involving the IRS' targeting of 
     conservatives and Tea Party groups consumes the news cycle 
     for the moment and Barack Obama, who, so far, has claimed 
     ignorance of the targeting, has thrown a sacrificial lamb out 
     to appease journalists, that IRS agents targeted certain 
     small-government, anti-tax groups should really not come as a 
     surprise.
       Beginning in 2009, Democrats and unions, including 
     government unions, have spent the last several years 
     demonizing Tea Party groups as well as other small government 
     groups.
       On Thursday, despite the escalating scandal, Barack Obama 
     told reporters he did not see the need for a special 
     prosecutor, saying ``probes by Congress and the Justice 
     Department should be able to figure out who was responsible 
     for improperly targeting Tea Party groups when they applied 
     for tax-exempt status.''

                              {time}  1540

       While that may appease reporters from CNN and the 
     mainstream media for the moment, one must wonder why there 
     shouldn't be a special prosecutor to look into the 
     wrongdoings of an agency with such vast powers over the 
     American populace. Unless, of course, there is a smoking gun 
     that people within the administration don't want discovered.
       In December 2009, during the first term of his Presidency, 
     in an effort to make the Federal Government more ``union 
     friendly,'' President Obama issued Executive Order 13522.
       In short, as noted in 2011, Executive Order 13522 
     establishes ``labor-management forums'' between union bosses 
     (who may or may not be Federal employees) and Federal agency 
     management.
       As part of the directives under Executive Order 13522, 
     agency heads are to engage union bosses in ``pre-decisional 
     discussions'' before decisions are made--and those 
     discussions are to be secret and outside the purview of the 
     Freedom of Information Act.
       Pre-decisional discussions, by their nature, should be 
     conducted confidentially among the parties to the 
     discussions. This confidentiality is an essential ingredient 
     in building the environment of mutual trust and respect 
     necessary for the honest exchange of views and collaboration.

  That was the position of the administration.

       Coincidentally, among the agencies covered by Executive 
     Order 13522 is the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of 
     the Department of the Treasury, and whose agency employees 
     are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.
       The fact that, under Executive Order 13522, Federal 
     agencies are being co-managed by union bosses and it appears 
     that the perpetrators of the IRS scandal are likely to be 
     members of the IRS union makes one wonder how coordinated the 
     attacks were--especially as four of the alleged perpetrators 
     are claiming their bosses made them do it.
       More importantly, if their bosses made them engage in 
     potentially illegal activities, why didn't they go to their 
     union to file a grievance?

  Well, apparently, under the President's Executive Order 13522, the 
union bosses and the agency heads are complicit in making these 
decisions, and making them secretly and privately while part of the 
most transparent administration in history--we were told it was going 
to be. The union bosses and the agency heads making decisions secretly 
beyond anything that anybody in America can get with a Freedom of 
Information Act request is just outrageous.
  We need the transparency. And especially now that we know the most 
powerful, the most feared agency in America--the IRS--is being co-
managed by union bosses, it's time to clean house. It's time to get 
back to smaller government, less intrusive government, and government 
that is truly of, by, and for the people.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Yoho).


                           Immigration Reform

  Mr. YOHO. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to thank the gentleman from Texas for 
yielding.
  I'd like to address the floor on why we need immigration reform.
  Washington has failed to lead on this issue for the last 30 years, 
and it has weakened American security and stressed our economy.
  America deserves better. It's our duty and it's our responsibility to 
address this issue for the health, for the strength, and for the 
security of our Nation.
  As the immigration debates come forward, our goals should not focus 
on what is best for this group or what is best for that group, or cater 
to this industry or cater to that industry. If we do that, we lose 
sight and we miss the mark on what really the focus should be on, and 
that is, what's best for America. If we focus on what is best for 
America and do what is best for America, then America wins. And if 
America wins, we all win, regardless of where you come from.
  The real issue is to preserve the opportunity that if we nurture it 
and put forth that effort, it will grow into the American Dream. Isn't 
the American Dream what this is all about? The American Dream defines 
who we are as Americans. It is the very essence of what it means to be 
an American. It says that no matter where you come from or what your 
background is, if you're willing to work within the confines of the law 
and do that four-letter word called ``work,'' you can achieve the 
American Dream.
  The very issue that we're struggling with is the preservation of the 
American Dream and the opportunity in this country. If we lose that, we 
lose what America stands for. And that's what sets America apart from 
all other countries, it's the ability to achieve the American Dream.
  As we move forward, let's keep in mind that if we do what's right for 
America, we will remain that shining city on the hill that Ronald 
Reagan talked so eloquently about, that beacon of hope of what free men 
and women can accomplish in a society that protects our God-given 
rights with a Constitution that protects that. If we do that, we can 
guarantee that America will stay strong.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________