[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3620-3625]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 CONSTITUTIONALITY OF EXECUTIVE ACTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are interesting times in America. For 
most of us who went to law school, we were taught that for an 
adversarial system of justice of law to work, there has to be active 
participation on both sides of an issue, of a person charged with a 
crime, on defense, or litigation over a law itself. So Chairman 
Goodlatte from just across the river in Virginia called a hearing in 
the Judiciary Committee this week. We had another hearing about the 
constitutionality, or lack thereof, of actions by this administration, 
and it is very alarming.

                              {time}  1200

  Professor Jonathan Turley, with whom I have disagreed on many policy 
issues, has a wonderful grasp of the Constitution; and he recognizes 
the dangers when an administration decides to pick and choose which 
laws will be enforced and goes further and issues executive orders, not 
like prior administrations that simply explain on most occasions or 
illuminate some law as to how they think it is to be interpreted, but 
to actually make law and executive orders. That is just unconscionable 
for somebody that took an oath to defend the Constitution.
  I can't recall times that I have agreed with The LA Times before, but 
they had an editorial that indicates even The LA Times understands the 
danger of what is going on right now in this country with this 
administration.
  We have an Attorney General who has been requested to produce 
documents lawfully, informally, refused to do so, been subpoenaed to 
produce information documents, has refused to do so unlawfully, to the 
point that the committee had a hearing and ultimately found the 
Attorney General of the United States in contempt of Congress, which 
came to this floor and, in a very unusual action found, the Attorney 
General, the highest law enforcement officer in this country, in 
contempt of Congress, basically in contempt of the Constitution.
  This has far wider implications than most in America seem to grasp 
because, when the highest law enforcement officer in America refuses to 
comply with the law, holds himself out as being above any law, creates 
laws that he wants to defend--at least the administration creating laws 
that they want to defend or follow--and actually saying in this room--I 
just had the President of the United States say in this room: I am 
going to go around the Congress--if you don't do what I want, I am 
going to go around the Congress.
  The ramifications for that are so staggering to anyone who has 
contemplated the founding of this country that it is beyond words. The 
Founders set up these checks and balances believing that, surely, there 
would be people in the judiciary--although they saw that as the least 
powerful branch, though it has now become the most powerful--they saw 
Congress as always being willing to defend its own laws, even to the 
point of defunding anything in the administration that did not protect 
and defend the law.
  They saw a President as standing up and refusing to follow things 
that were not the law. They felt like each branch would judiciously 
protect their own powers under the Constitution, and that balance would 
allow this Nation to go forward as the freest Nation in the history of 
the world.
  But today, we are living in a time where all of that is in jeopardy, 
when one branch can act to the total disregard of another branch or 
other branches. We have seen that with executive orders that just 
completely change the law as written and completely intentionally 
disregards the law of the land. It is staggering.
  The LA Times had an editorial on February 27 that talked about the 
Attorney General's posture on just picking and choosing which laws he 
would provide a defense for.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand here as someone--as a prosecutor, as a lawyer, 
as a judge, as a chief justice--who at times absolutely did not like 
laws--particular laws--but knew if this Nation were to remain for years 
to come, we had to either change the law legally; or as lawyers, as 
officers of the court, as judges, as chief justices, we had to follow 
the law.
  Back in the '80s, I was ordered by a State district judge to file an 
appeal--to represent a man on appeal after having been convicted of 
capital murder. I was then, as now, a very conservative person.
  I went to the judge after I got the call that I was going to be 
appointed and begged the judge not to appoint me, that I was doing 
civil trial work, I wasn't doing criminal work, please don't appoint me 
to appeal a criminal conviction because I will have to go back to 
school to do a proper job of representing a man on appeal of the death 
penalty.
  I knew if he appointed me--because I took an oath to support and 
defend the Constitution of the United States, I would spend incredible 
hours to make sure I properly represented the man on appeal, even 
though I didn't know any more about the facts of the case than I had 
read in the papers. From the papers, I got the impression that he had 
probably gotten what he deserved.
  But the judge appointed me to appeal a capital murder conviction in 
which the defendant was sentenced to death. I didn't want the case, 
didn't ask for it, begged not to have it.
  But I knew that if our system was to work, I had to do everything 
ethically and legally I could to present my client's side of the case. 
As I got into it and I read the entire long, long transcript--every 
word of it--I realized the man had not gotten a fair trial, and unknown 
to the district attorney, an assistant district attorney had acted 
inappropriately, and it caused great harm and jeopardy to the case for 
the defense.
  I did the very best I could for my client legally and ethically, and 
the case was reversed at the highest criminal court in Texas.
  Even when, as attornies, we would disagree with the law--and as we 
have heard from this Attorney General and people in this Justice 
Department over and over--even when someone is absolutely convicted, 
clearly is a criminal, they deserve a proper defense.
  So how this administration and this Attorney General and this Justice 
Department can justify picking and choosing which laws they will defend 
and which laws they will let fall without a defense is unimaginable. 
For people who have learned anything about our Constitution, we have to 
zealously represent the clients, the laws that are put before us to 
represent.
  This administration has now repeatedly chosen not to defend some laws 
when the highest law enforcement in the land, we know, actually was 
willing to help convicted absolutely-known criminals to get pardoned, 
to get lighter sentences.

[[Page 3621]]

  We bring people in who have fought--or at least one individual who 
fought to get a convicted murderer of a police officer--who the 
evidence indicated stood over him after he shot him and shot him 
repeatedly--a police officer--and yet, the Attorney General can justify 
bringing someone in; the President justified bringing someone in by 
saying: Oh, no, but everybody is entitled to a defense, that is how our 
system works.
  Then when he has a constitutional obligation to produce documents to 
Congress and just says: I am going to ignore that requirement of the 
law, I don't care, and not only am I going to ignore that requirement 
of the law, even after the extraordinary event of having the United 
States House of Representatives declare the highest ranking law 
enforcement officer in the country to be in contempt of Congress--which 
is really in contempt of the Constitution--still has the nerve to come 
in here during the State of the Union, which is really thumbing the 
nose at the Constitution--at Congress--that: I will ignore the law, I 
won't follow the laws I don't like, I won't defend the laws I don't 
like; and then this week actually go out and tell State law enforcement 
officers--highest ranking State law enforcement officers that, in 
essence, if they don't like a law, then just don't defend it.
  So this editorial, just in part, from the LA Times, points out that:

       The six State attorneys general who have declined to defend 
     their States' bans on same-sex marriage in court got some 
     encouragement this week from U.S. Attorney General Eric H. 
     Holder, Jr. In a speech to the National Association of 
     Attorneys General, Holder said that it was sometimes 
     appropriate for attorneys general to abandon their usual 
     obligation to defend the constitutionality of State laws.
       This page supports same-sex marriage unreservedly. But even 
     so, we worry that Holder's comments will embolden additional 
     State attorneys general--Republicans and Democrats, liberals 
     and conservatives--to pick and choose which of their States' 
     laws they will defend in court.

  It also says further down:

       Yet when attorneys general are elected, as in 43 States, 
     the temptation will be to transmute a popular political stand 
     into a constitutional objection.
       Even if Holder is right that attorneys general should 
     refuse to defend State laws in ``exceedingly rare'' 
     circumstances, those laws ought to be defended by someone.

  Further down they point out that:

       They probably would react differently, however, if a future 
     Attorney General refused to defend the constitutionality of 
     statutes that treat attacks on gays and lesbians as hate 
     crimes.

  I would imagine this Attorney General would find that unconscionable; 
but once we began to ignore the law and become a Nation of men--and 
that is generic, including men and women, whoever is in authority--
instead of a Nation of laws, then we become like the nations that so 
many people try to flee to come to America because there is graft, 
there is corruption, because the rule of law is not followed.
  It is whatever the dictator, the drug group, whatever the people in 
power think should be the law will be the law, and it becomes an 
unbearable place to live.
  There is a reason that fences end up being built around a country not 
to keep people in, as in the Soviet Union days, but because people want 
to come flooding in, which would overwhelm our country, overwhelm our 
ability to provide government services, and end the ability to be a 
Nation where people want to come.

                              {time}  1215

  There is a reason. It is because we have been a Nation of laws that 
has applied the law fairly across the board.
  Clearly, because the government is composed of human beings, there 
will be mistakes and there will be abuses, but in abuses, even 
Presidents have been held to account. That keeps us being a Nation of 
laws. Yet, when the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the 
country refuses to provide information to Congress that he lawfully is 
required to produce, this country is in grave jeopardy. I am pleased 
that even the LA Times has gotten a glimpse of the potential problems 
here.
  In a couple of different hearings, I have asked the highest-ranking 
law enforcement officer in our country for the production of documents 
provided to the defendants, to the defendants who were convicted of 
supporting terrorism, making them terrorists. I have asked for the 
copies of the documents that were provided in discovery to convicted 
terrorists. I have been told there could be classification problems, 
and as I have pointed out, if you gave them to the terrorists, you can 
give them to Members of Congress.
  After yet another request last June, in writing--months and months 
later--I finally get a response that, in essence, says, Here is a Web 
site where you can go look at some of these documents. We have got 500 
documents that were introduced at trial, and so that should take care 
of it.
  No, it doesn't.
  The Justice Department gave terrorists thousands and thousands of 
pages of documents, and even in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' 
opinion, the Fifth Circuit, they point out that there were 9,600 or so 
transcripts of recorded conversations. Those were given to the people 
convicted of terrorism, and yet this Justice Department refuses to 
allow Members of Congress to see those.
  The Founders had the idea that there would be oversight and that 
Congress would supervise what happened in the executive branch. That 
provided that balance of power to keep us from moving in the direction 
of a monarchy or of a totalitarian government. Yet, when this body 
finally gets around to some oversight, it is dismissed. What do we do? 
We vote to hold the Attorney General in contempt and then allow him to 
remain in contempt without consequences.
  Perhaps the proper remedy, under the thinking of the Founders, is, if 
an Attorney General refuses to enforce the laws that Congress passes 
and other Presidents sign into law, then you defund the particular 
individuals in the Department of Justice until such time as they start 
doing their jobs. You don't defund the people who are out enforcing the 
law, protecting the country, but you defund those people who are 
thumbing their noses at the Constitution and at proper, legal, 
constitutional oversight. We haven't done that.
  So the American public, the laws, and the Constitution remain at risk 
because people who have defended terrorists and who have worked to get 
even terrorists lighter sentences and pardons and things like that 
don't think laws duly passed by Congress, signed into law by the 
President and upheld by the Supreme Court are worth defending. Then 
don't stop there. Not only actually start telling the highest law 
enforcement officers in the country that they should start ignoring 
laws in rare cases but to ignore the laws when you don't think they are 
appropriate.
  We also know we have a Justice Department that, in their efforts to 
avoid making radical Islamist terrorists think that we might not like 
them, started outreach programs under the prior administration. I asked 
the prior FBI Director: Since you say that this Muslim community is 
like every other community in the Nation, how are the other outreach 
programs going with the Baptists? The Catholics? The Jews? The 
Buddhists? There is no other outreach program to any other religious 
group, so that would seem to indicate there is something special here.
  There are violent people in every religion, but as Thomas Jefferson 
was so shocked to find out, there is one religion that has a small 
component of it that believes that a sure way to paradise is to kill 
innocent men, women, and children because they don't believe 
religiously like those radicals do. That is the reason Thomas Jefferson 
got his own copy of the Koran that the Library of Congress still has. 
He wanted to see for himself. He was so well read. He couldn't believe 
there was a religion that had a holy book for a basis that would allow 
anyone to interpret it in such a way as to kill innocent men, women, 
and children.
  There have been, to be sure, purported Christians over the ages who 
thought it was their duty to go about brutalizing people who were not 
Christians, but anyone who studies the

[[Page 3622]]

teachings of Christ about how we are to individually act knows those 
would not have been Christians doing the kind of violence that they 
did. It is not supported by the Bible. What is supported in the Bible 
is that if you do evil, be afraid, because God does not give the 
government the sword in vain. Individually, we are not supposed to 
judge and be vigilantes, but there is in an orderly society a need to 
have a government that will punish evil and encourage good conduct.
  This little experiment in a democracy, in a republic and 
representative form of government, is so fragile. It bothers me when I 
read and hear those words from Ronald Reagan that freedom is never more 
than one generation from being gone and, even more troubling, that a 
generation that loses liberty does not get it back in that same 
generation. I have hoped that I would find a time and place where 
Reagan was wrong about that, but I have not yet.
  So, when we see liberties being lost, privacy rights being violated 
right and left by our Federal Government, all kinds of snooping on 
American citizens without probable cause, not only by the NSA--and 
certainly they have the highest cause for which they are working, which 
is for our protection, but yet, when our privacy is completely eroded, 
is our safety worth losing all of our privacy completely?
  We lost a dramatic amount of our privacy when, without a single vote 
from the Republican side of the aisle, the Democrats in the House and 
Senate passed what they called the Affordable Care Act, which has 
become so unaffordable, because the Federal Government will get 
everyone's medical records.
  I was a bit staggered and maybe too naive. After I had heard people 
speak so emotionally from the heart about the protection of privacy and 
what happens in the bedroom, I was a little staggered over these years 
to see people on the Democratic side of the aisle--my friends over 
here--who were so thrilled to be giving every bit of private 
information about their most private body parts, about their most 
private activities, to the government in whole and bulk, and even said, 
That is not violation enough; let's do a contract with General 
Electric, and let them keep these records for us.
  It is not like the government and private industry can't be hacked. 
Talk about loss of privacy. I don't really have anything to hide in any 
of my medical records, but it is nobody else's business. Yet, 
wholeheartedly, people rushed and applauded the giving of all of that 
most private information to the Federal Government.
  This week, I have been so proud of my friend Jeb Hensarling, as 
chairman of Financial Services, who has been trying to rein in this 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau--wow, what a misnomer--that is 
gathering information about our credit cards, our debit card activity, 
our loans when these were supposed to be private between us and our 
lenders as long as there was proper oversight to make sure they were 
not violating the Constitution. Yet the Federal Government, as they 
are, starts getting all of our debit card and credit card information. 
They now have all of our medical records that they are getting. They 
are now watching and have the ability to check every email, to check 
Web sites you visit. They have the ability to examine every log of 
every call that you make. People who once said I was crazy for giving 
this example some years back may begin to realize I wasn't so crazy. 
The example was this:
  When the Federal Government has the obligation to supervise every 
aspect of your health care--when you force government-run health care 
on the people of this Nation--and when you have that same Federal 
Government that can monitor every credit and debit card purchase you 
make and when they know where you go online and when they can go into 
your emails, is it so hard to believe that at some point some American 
citizen would not get a letter from the Federal Government, saying:
  We noticed that you purchased bacon and butter at the grocery store 
this last weekend, and we also noticed that your cholesterol level is 
over 200. What were you thinking? We can't let you do something like 
that, so we are going to have to punish you. We are going to have to 
start charging you more money. We are going to have to start 
supervising your activity. You are going to have to start going and 
working out. We saw that you let your membership at the gym lapse, and 
you are not going anymore. We can tell by where your car goes, by 
following the GPS on your car, that you are not going to the gym like 
you used to. You need to start going back to the gym. You need to quit 
buying butter and bacon, and then we won't punish you financially like 
we are now.

                              {time}  1230

  Is that so hard to believe that that would start happening, could 
start happening? When you give the government this much private 
information, then liberty is sure to go shortly thereafter.
  In quoting Benjamin Franklin, it has been written different ways over 
the years--some say he didn't say it--but basically, he certainly 
advocated that those who are willing to give up liberty for their 
safety deserve neither.
  How much of our privacy and our liberty are the American people 
willing to give up just so that we can feel a little safer? Because 
when you do that, you will not be safe from your own government. Your 
own government then becomes the biggest threat to your liberty, to your 
freedom.
  Things that brilliant colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle 
have said over the years about our liberty and about our privacy are 
really becoming an issue now, and I am not hearing my friends across 
the aisle that raised those important points now talking about them. 
And I know when you have someone in the White House that is from your 
own party, it is kind of tough to stand up and say, This is a mistake. 
This is wrong.
  But it is time that friends across the aisle--Senators who are 
Democrats--start standing up in numbers and saying: Enough. You have 
usurped too much power that the Constitution gave to Congress.
  Just because you don't like the fact that we take a long time and it 
is not pretty to see laws being made doesn't mean you get to skip the 
whole process. The Founders wanted gridlock. They wanted it tough to 
pass laws. They didn't want us meeting year round like we do. I am sure 
if the Founders were around today, they would be appalled that we meet 
as much as we do. And when some people back in east Texas say: Gee, why 
aren't you in Washington? I'm saying: You're safer when we're here 
because it means we're not passing another law that takes your liberty 
away.
  The Founders wanted some gridlock. They didn't want it too easy to 
pass laws. Because they knew when that happened, every little emotional 
issue that came up would cause Congress to come in and pass something 
even though the moment was fleeting and we should not be doing things 
quickly and emotionally.
  Thomas Jefferson was not part of the Constitutional Convention in 
Philadelphia in 1787. He was amazed at how good the document was. But 
he is reported to have indicated that if he could change one thing, he 
would make it a requirement that before we could pass a law, it had to 
be on file for a year to make sure people have plenty of time to 
discuss it.
  We see how good an idea that would be if we didn't just run in here 
and do things out of emotion, and we would never, ever pass another 
bill so we could find out what was in it. My party has not done 
anything as blatant as ramming through bills. My copy of ObamaCare was 
right around 2,500 pages. But we have had some bills that we have not 
been given time to read and to properly go through.
  We were going to take up a flood insurance bill yesterday, and I am 
grateful that it got moved off because we haven't had enough time to 
know what the bill has actually got in it word for word. Summaries are 
not enough, on many occasions. Sometimes if it is not a big deal, a 
summary may do it, but somebody besides some staffer needs to be 
looking at every word.

[[Page 3623]]

  That is one of the benefits of going through what we call regular 
order. The subcommittee gets to have a markup where they discuss every 
part of the bill, and anyone can offer an amendment to any part of the 
bill. And then it goes to the full committee, and anyone at the markup 
can offer an amendment to any part of the bill, and it gets debate and 
discussion. That is a good process.
  I believe that when we took the majority, we would do even better 
than we have. We have done a lot better than the 4 years from January 
of 2007 to when we got the gavel back in January of 2011. I was 
appalled at the completely closed rules and how it was just staggering. 
We had no input. Nearly half of the country basically had no 
representation at all on all of the important bills because they just 
rammed them through without any input from Republicans--who represented 
Democrats and Republicans. They didn't get represented in those 
districts.
  It is important, no matter who is in charge, that if it is really a 
critical issue that needs immediate laws passed, changes made, that we 
fully vet every law that we pass.
  We had an Over-Criminalization hearing today. One of the huge 
mistakes--and it has been a very bipartisan mistake--is that over all 
these years, when Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle want 
to show how strongly we feel about something and how tough we are, we 
slap a prison sentence on things, and one of the greatest injustices 
that Congress has done is to pass laws that say any violations of the 
regulations under this law will carry a term of imprisonment.
  In our hearing today, there was an estimate that there are probably 
300,000 regulations, the violation of which carries a prison sentence. 
Congress has never seen them, never debated them, and knows nothing 
about them.
  We have heard testimony from people who have been sent to prison who 
did some act and had no idea there was a law against what they did. 
They did time in prison as a result.
  There was a man from Houston who was doing business during retirement 
by raising orchids. He ordered some orchids from South America. They 
were sent to him, but the proper forms were not filled out by the 
people that sent them to him, and under the law, any violation of those 
postal regulations requires time in prison.
  So what happened? He was arrested in his home in Houston. And since 
the law gives choice of venue and it had been mailed through Miami, 
they took him to Miami, where he didn't even know anybody, didn't have 
the money for bail, and ends up doing 18 months in prison, during which 
time he had a stroke. He couldn't testify. His wife had to.
  There was a poor guy from Washington State that was trying to create 
a better battery. He had every chemical properly stored. One day, 
driving home, the EPA SWAT team had black Suburbans come up behind him, 
the side, in front, and forced him off the road, yanked him out of his 
car, threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, threw him in jail, and 
then drug him to Alaska.
  His heinous crime was that when he mailed a chemical to Alaska, 
legally, properly, he didn't know that it was not enough to check the 
box that it had to go by ground. It couldn't go by air. He didn't know 
that you needed a little sticker that had a picture of an airplane with 
a red line through it. That sticker with the plane with the red line 
through it had to be on there. And since he didn't do that, that caused 
him to deserve to be run off the road by the EPA SWAT team, thrown to 
the ground, handcuffed, hauled up to Alaska, and put in prison.
  When he got acquitted of that, the Justice Department wasn't happy 
with it, so they looked around and realized when they ransacked his 
home he had every chemical properly stored, but there was a law that 
says if you ever abandon these certain chemicals for over a certain 
number of days, then you committed a Federal felony. And even though it 
was the Federal Government that forced him to abandon those, and even 
though they were properly stored, he was in jail in Alaska and away 
from the chemicals beyond the time that the law allowed, so he went to 
prison for abandoning chemicals because the government drug him away 
from them.
  These are the kind of laws that are out there. We ought to pass a law 
in this body that says no criminal penalty may attach to a violation of 
any regulation unless this Congress has passed a specific law putting a 
criminal penalty on that specific regulation. We should not be able to 
leave it to bureaucrats to decide what becomes an offense punishable by 
imprisonment.
  So when you take the violations of privacy that have now been passed 
into law--all of our medical records, now our credit card and debit 
card records, our emails, all of our phone logs all being usurped and 
grabbed by the Federal Government--and couple that with abuses that we 
have seen over the years by the Federal Government of people's rights 
under color of law, and understanding that when this Federal Government 
violates your rights, your privacy, your freedoms, you have nowhere 
else to go and there is no appeal to anyone else, it is time this body 
and the Senate took action to make sure the Justice Department follows 
the law and doesn't just pick and choose. And also that we make sure 
the White House doesn't just make up law out of whole cloth and decide 
which laws they liked and which ones they didn't. There are oaths 
involved here, and there should be consequences for not following them.
  Then, we need to investigate further these executive departments who 
think they are above the law. And when Members of Congress duly request 
documents that were provided to people convicted as terrorists and we 
are told that terrorists can have them but you, Members of Congress, 
cannot, then it is time to defund people that will not abide by the law 
and will not participate in proper oversight.
  It is also time we had a select committee that properly investigated 
Benghazi. It is time we had a special prosecutor, not some big donor to 
the President, to investigate this horrendous scandal in the IRS that 
not only has smidgeons of evidence, it has overwhelming evidence of 
people's rights being violated. It is time that we started making sure 
as a Congress that people who enforce the law actually enforce the law.
  We have seen the desire by this administration to embrace Islam as 
closely as possible. And I know the attitude is that if we bring people 
close from Islam into the administration, that will help us get across 
that we mean no ill will. The trouble has been we have brought foxes 
into the henhouse to give advice to the chickens.
  We have a report from the last couple of weeks. The Clarion Project 
had been making Freedom of Information Act requests. They finally got 
some documentation that shows--and this article is from the Clarion 
Project. The Clarion Project investigation has discovered a jihadist 
enclave in Texas where a deadly shooting took place in 2002.

                              {time}  1245

       Declassified FBI documents obtained by Clarion confirmed 
     the find, and show the U.S. Government's concern about its 
     links to terrorism. The investigation was completed with the 
     help of Act for America Houston.
       The enclave belongs to the network of Muslims of the 
     Americas, a radical group linked to a Pakistani militant 
     group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Its members are devoted 
     followers of Sheikh Ali Mubarak Gilani, an extremist cleric 
     in Pakistan.
       The organization says it has a network of 22 villages 
     around the U.S., with Islamberg as its main headquarters in 
     New York. The Clarion Project obtained secret MOA, Muslim of 
     America, footage showing female members receiving 
     paramilitary training at Islamberg. It was featured on the 
     Kelly File of FOX News Channel in October. A second MOA tape 
     released by Clarion shows its spokesman declaring the U.S. to 
     be a Muslim-majority country.
       A 2007 FBI record states that MOA, Muslim of America, 
     members have been involved in at least 10 murders, one 
     disappearance, three firebombings, one attempted firebombing, 
     two explosive bombings, and one attempted bombing.

  It states:

       The documented propensity for violence by this organization 
     supports the belief the

[[Page 3624]]

     leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of 
     jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers 
     enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government. Members 
     of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive 
     religious and military/terrorist training from Sheikh Gilani.
       The document also says that ``The MOA is now an autonomous 
     organization which possesses an infrastructure capable of 
     planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas.''
       Other FBI reports describe the MOA in similar ways with a 
     2003 file stating: ``Investigation of the Muslims of the 
     Americas is based on specific and articulate facts given 
     justification to believe they are engaged in international 
     terrorism.''
       MOA members believe the holiest Islamic site in the country 
     is located at the Islamville commune in South Carolina. Other 
     MOA entities include the International Quranic Open 
     University, United Muslim Christian Forum, Islamic Post, 
     Muslim Veterans of America, and American Muslim Medical 
     Relief Team.

  On further down it says:

       The MOA referred to its Texas commune as Mahmoudberg in on-
     line instructions for a parade in New York in 2010. A posting 
     on an Islamic message board in 2005 advertised a speaking 
     engagement in Houston by someone from Mahmoudberg.
       According to the reports, the commune is 7 to 10 acres 
     large, is in an ``extremely wooded area'' and two or three 
     trailer homes moved there in December of 2001. However, ACT 
     members visited the area as part of Clarion's project or 
     investigation and interviewed one nearby local who 
     confidently said it is closer to 25 acres in size and spoke 
     of a presence dating back to the late 1980s.

  Further down, the FBI reported in 2007 that:

       One commune resident used to be a leader at the MOA commune 
     in Badger, California. That site was called Baladullah.
       In March 2001, one of the Baladullah members was arrested 
     for transporting guns between New York and South Carolina. 
     Another was charged with murdering a police deputy that 
     caught him breaking and entering a home.
       Interviewed residents all agreed that MOA members are 
     private, yet, when the ACT members were spotted in the area, 
     they were immediately and repeatedly approached. At one point 
     a commune resident gave them a final warning to leave, 
     despite the fact they weren't even trespassing or harassing 
     MOA MEMBERS.
       ``It was definitely very threatening and menacing,'' an ACT 
     member told me.
       Multiple sources confirmed that one resident of the commune 
     is a police officer. According to a nearby neighbor, one of 
     the MOA members used to drive trucks for the U.S. Army in 
     Kuwait.

  Further down it says:

       ``Police were denied''--this was after a shooting in 2002 
     out at the site--``police were denied access to the trailer 
     homes and were not allowed to directly interview the women 
     who covered their faces in their presence. Communication with 
     the women had to be done by passing notes through a male 
     intermediary.''

  Anyway, this was the subject of an email from one of my college 
friends, and one of my other college friends sent an email in response 
saying, this could not possibly be true because the mainstream media 
would have been all over this if this were really true.
  Well, the report of these 22 villages is true, and the mainstream 
media has not, does not, probably will not cover it because the 
administration doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable who might be 
radical Islamists.
  Another article from FOX News Insider, February 20, talked about a 
2007 FBI record stated that MOA Members have been involved in at least 
10 murders. Talked about these things.
  Other FBI reports describe MOA in similar ways, with the 2003 file 
stating, based on the facts, this appears to be factual information. It 
was obtained from FBI records. It seems to be consistent with the prior 
administration.
  Though they brought Muslims in to give advice on dealing with radical 
Islam, they pursued terrorists, like in the Holy Land Foundation trial, 
there were around 200 or so named coconspirators in the Holy Land 
Foundation trial.
  The goal, as one of the prosecutors told me, was to get those 
convictions, if they could, and they knew it would be the most 
important biggest terrorist convictions in American judicial history, 
and if they got those, then they would go forward and start prosecuting 
others of the named coconspirators who were not indicted but were 
named.
  We know there is plenty of evidence out there regarding 
coconspirators because there were some coconspirators that filed a 
motion with the Court to have their names struck from the pleadings. 
The Federal District Court that examined the evidence in Dallas said, 
no, there is plenty of evidence here to support that CAIR, Council of 
American Islamic Relations, ISNA, Islamic Society North America, are 
large front groups for Muslim Brotherhood.
  Went up to the Fifth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit confirmed that 
there was plenty of evidence to support their names being part of it.
  Yet, this administration continues to coddle and get information and 
instruction from CAIR, ISNA. The president of ISNA, Imam Magid, 
continues to be a highly praised adviser to this administration.
  So, when people across the country say this couldn't possibly be true 
because the mainstream media would have been all over it, I can't 
believe our Federal Government will allow this kind of thing to go on, 
well, the reason it has is because, even though FBI reports continued 
to say over the years that these appear to be violent and associated 
with violent activities, the State Department, under this 
administration, continues to refuse to list the Muslims of the Americas 
as a terrorist organization, which means they get to continue to build 
villages, to train in paramilitary fashion around the country, from 
Texas, South Carolina, New York, California, across the country, until 
such time as this administration gets serious about what is going on.
  Had the information from an article this week, this article from 
National Review Online, ``Convicted Terrorist Worked As an ObamaCare 
Navigator in Illinois.'' It shouldn't be a surprise this kind of thing 
has happened because we found out that these so-called navigators, 
under ObamaCare, what might be more appropriately entitled the 
Unaffordable Care Act, these navigators are being allowed to gather 
people's most personal and private identification information, but they 
are not being vetted.
  We have known from the beginning, when the law kicked in, that the 
navigators were not vetted for prior criminal activity. So we shouldn't 
be surprised that there was a convicted terrorist that worked as an 
ObamaCare navigator in Illinois.
  Then we have people, enrollees, finding it impossible to cancel their 
plans. More than 6 weeks later, Weekly Standard reports, after spending 
50 to 60 hours on the phone, this man's policy is still not canceled. 
So much for freedom when it comes to health care in this country under 
ObamaCare.
  Another report published by foxnews.com: ``ObamaCare may increase 
premiums for 11 million workers.''
  Anyway, it should be clear that, even though we heard a staggering 
statement by the Democrat Majority Leader in the Senate that people who 
were reporting the horror stories about ObamaCare, pointing out how the 
Affordable Care Act really isn't, it was devastating, that these were 
lies, they were not true.
  Well, proper investigation reveals they are true. There may be some 
that have made stories up. When we get stories, we try to look into, 
are these really legitimate, but what we find is most of them are 
easily documented and easily legitimate.
  ObamaCare is doing massive damage across the country to people's 
employment, to their health insurance, to their ability to see the 
doctor that they want and, in some cases, the doctor that has been 
keeping them alive.
  Another report: ``ObamaCare may increase premiums for 11 million 
workers.'' Well, I know it has increased them a lot. I can't afford the 
new policy that would be required. I liked my old one. I wasn't crazy 
about it. Aetna had some problems we never got worked out. But still, I 
had more freedom of choice before.
  Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, when the Federal Government has 
become so big and so intrusive that it gathers everyone's phone logs in 
the United States, can check into any phone calls made by anyone in the 
country any time, when the Federal Government gathers everyone's most 
personal and private medical information, when the Federal Government 
gathers people's debit and credit card

[[Page 3625]]

purchases to protect them, when the Federal Government can use drones 
to monitor, can monitor email activity, Web sites visited, and then 
that same government can say we are not going to follow these laws if 
we don't like them, don't think they are proper, and we are going to 
change the law over here because Congress didn't, and we prefer to have 
a law that says this so we will follow that, then it is no wonder that 
a constitutional professor like Jonathan Turley, liberal as he is, 
would express dire concerns about how long we can maintain this 
country.
  We owe the American people an obligation to proper oversight, force 
them to follow the law.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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