[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 693-698]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             RADICAL ISLAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting short week. And 
with all the drills in the world going on, it is important that we deal 
with our Department of Homeland Security. And I am proud the House has 
taken quick action to pass such a budget and passed it handily.
  Homeland Security needs to be funded, and the President needs to sign 
the bill. We have finished that today and are sending it to the Senate. 
Hopefully they will work quickly and deal with this issue because, as 
people in America know, we have crises all around us.

[[Page 694]]

We have threats to our security all around us that require immediate 
attention.
  The world is watching as we play golf while they come together, 
millions at a time, to stand against radical Islam and Islamic 
terrorism.
  So it has been interesting to see the White House as the only 
significant international capital where the ultimate leader of the 
country cannot bring himself and, therefore, his spokespeople cannot 
bring themselves, to say the words ``radical Islamic terrorism,'' 
because that is what we are talking about.
  And for an administration to diminish the seriousness of radical 
Islamic terrorists wanting to destroy Western civilization is worse 
than having our leadership's head in the sand, or wherever their head 
is. It is important to wake up and recognize what the world has 
recognized, what our Muslim friends have recognized--that radical Islam 
is a threat to our very existence and way of life.
  The Weekly Standard has an article, January 13, by Daniel Halper, 
which says: ``The White House won't be calling jihadists adherents to 
`radical Islam.' At least, that's the reasonable takeaway from this 
extraordinary exchange the White House press secretary had today with a 
reporter.''
  And I will jump down to a statement by President Obama's chief 
spokesperson:

       Mr. Earnest: I think the reason is twofold. One is I 
     certainly wouldn't want to be in a position where I'm 
     repeating the justification that they have cited that I think 
     is completely illegitimate, right? That they have invoked 
     Islam to try to justify their attacks.

  And the reporter said:

       But to call it radical Islam you feel would be playing into 
     their hands.
       Mr. Earnest: Well, I think what I'm trying to do is I'm 
     trying to describe to you what happened and what they did. 
     These are individuals who are terrorists. And what they did 
     was they tried to invoke their own distorted deviant view of 
     Islam to try to justify them.

  And I want to stop there. The President's mouthpiece says that he is 
not going to call it ``radical Islam'' or ``Islamic terrorism'' because 
that is a deviant view. Well, if you look at the definition of 
``deviant,'' that is what deviates from what most people do or say or 
think.
  So it would appear, Mr. Speaker, that the deviant thought process is 
not what the reporters had and not what the major countries in the 
world have and not what our Muslim leader friends in the world have. It 
is what this White House has. Theirs is the deviation from what is 
truth, because the truth is--as much as this President doesn't want to 
say it, and he doesn't allow his spokespeople to say it, I will say it, 
Mr. Speaker: this is radical Islamic terrorism, and it is a threat to 
Western civilization.
  And the more our leaders refuse to recognize it for what it is, the 
worse it gets because the radical Islamic terrorists realize they are 
winning. And the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC, 
composed of the Islamic states in the world, all 57--I know it gets 
confusing to some in this country's leadership whether we have 57 
States and they have 50 or they have 57 and we have 50. But they have 
57 because they include one that is not actually a state. But they are 
the ones that started the campaign after 9/11 of calling anyone who 
expresses concern about radical Islamic terrorism ``Islamophobes.''
  I fear God. I don't fear any man. I am not a phobe of anything. But 
it is time to recognize truth, and that is that radical Islamic 
terrorists want to destroy our life and kill us. It is very simple.
  And what is remarkable--and I think it is very important that both 
Democrats and Republicans have the opportunity to travel around and 
speak to world leaders in their own countries because when you are 
there in their country talking to them, as some of us on both sides of 
the aisle have done in those Middle Eastern countries, led by moderate 
Muslims who don't believe they need to have an explosive jihad, they 
recognize that the terrorism that is a threat to them, as moderate 
Muslims, and the terrorism that is a threat to us and Western 
civilization, is radical Islam. They recognize that it is a religion.
  And they recognize that when people in the name of Allah and Islam 
take territory and claim they are their own caliphate, their own 
government, then you had better understand who they are and what they 
are. And in this case, the Islamic State has enough strength and enough 
power to be taken seriously so that they are totally defeated and wiped 
off the map, whether it is in Syria, northern Iraq, wherever they find 
themselves, because they are at war with us.
  And I mentioned it before, Mr. Speaker, but as we have had this 
administration do a cleansing--not necessarily a book-burning but a 
burning, in essence, of parts of the training books that talk about 
radical Islam, that tried to educate our FBI, our State Department, our 
intelligence communities, all of our government workers on what radical 
Islam is, what it believes, the intelligence officer said: We have 
blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy. And that has never 
been more apparent than it has been this week, with the radical Islamic 
jihad terrorist attack in Paris and in Nigeria.
  Even though there weren't reporters killed in Nigeria, those lives 
were every bit as much precious--around 2,000 lives. Somehow, much of 
the mainstream media had trouble reporting that. They were 
concentrating on the horrors of the journalists killed in Paris, and 
rightfully so. But they should not be neglecting the horrors for those 
villagers, so many of them Christian, who have been killed because they 
did not believe in radical Islam.
  And one of the reasons, I would submit, that we should have had a 
President there in Paris--and I know it would have been difficult for 
this President, but he should have been there locked arm-in-arm with 
Prime Minster Netanyahu. Words keep leaking out about things that are 
said, about strained relations that this administration has with the 
Netanyahu administration. There is a leader whose eyes are clear and 
his vision is clear, and he can see exactly who is at war against him, 
who is helping him and the nation of Israel and who is not helping him 
and the nation of Israel.
  And as we know from history, anytime a nation's enemies see that 
nation's strongest ally pulling away, it is provocative. And the more 
the United States distances itself from Israel, from those who 
recognize that radical Islamic terrorism is a threat to Western 
civilization, then the more radical Islamists win.

                              {time}  1300

  I really, honest to goodness, didn't think we would be 6 years in to 
President Obama's administration with him still not willing to 
acknowledge that radical Islam is a threat, is at war with us.
  It is a religion. This administration may not like it, but it is a 
religion. It is a radical form of Islam. I hope one day that our top 
leaders in this country will have the courage of President al-Sisi in 
Egypt and that will reflect, as General al-Sisi has, the will of the 
people of their country.
  If the story is properly written about Egypt--and one day it will be. 
It won't be by people at The New York Times. It will be by people who 
are not trying to twist and turn and create history the way they want 
it. It will be by historians that are really looking at what has 
happened.
  They will see that in the last 6 years that, besides Israel, the 
country that has been most fearless--and by ``country,'' I mean the 
people of the country--most fearless in standing up for freedom and 
against radical Islamic terrorism, unfortunately, has not been the 
United States because of our leadership. It has been the nation of 
Egypt.
  Certainly, Israel has stood strong and fearless. Their nation has 
been under attack nonstop. God bless them and protect them. Egypt was 
not under attack other than by the radical form of Islam, the religion 
of radical Islam, and this administration helped oust one of this 
country's allies.
  Like him or not, there were plenty of agreements signed by this 
country

[[Page 695]]

with President Mubarak, and this administration disregarded them. That 
is a problem for other countries and other leaders who want to sign 
agreements with this administration, but they don't know that our 
country can be trusted anymore.
  As people see the decline of respect for America around the world, 
they should understand that it is being credited to the lack of 
reliability of the United States to keep its word, to support its 
friends, not to turn its back on its friends. This Nation's leaders 
have begun repeatedly appearing more helpful to our enemies than to our 
own friends. They don't know who to trust.
  I mentioned to Secretary Kerry that I have talked to people in the 
Middle East, Muslim leaders, who say: We talk among ourselves, we are 
all worried we may be the next ally to be thrown under the bus.
  He wanted to know who said that. Well, obviously, I couldn't tell him 
because he would throw them under the bus.
  For many of us that have traveled around the Middle East and talked 
to leaders in the Middle East, we understand what they feel. Maybe they 
are not able to be as open and candid with this administration for fear 
of it turning on them the way it does anybody within the administration 
here in America or outside the administration.
  God help the whistleblowers. If you want to stand up for truth, 
justice, and the American way in this administration and point out 
massive problems that could subject our country to attacks, to 
terrorism, God help you because this administration is coming after 
you. They will use the Justice Department, they will use the EPA, they 
will use the IRS.
  This administration has been weaponized to go after anybody that 
dares to stand up, especially within the administration. People that 
want to stand up and tell the truth, they are attacked, they are 
threatened with prosecution.
  If someone like General Petraeus, who has defended the 
administration--but this administration knows that General Petraeus has 
information that would virtually destroy any credibility that the 
administration might still have nationally and internationally--so what 
else would this administration do but leave over his head, for over a 
year-and-a-half, the threat: We are going to prosecute you, so you 
better keep your mouth shut.
  They actually know just the threat of prosecution helps diminish 
potential credibility. So if you wonder why General Petraeus has not 
come out in the last year and a half and said, ``No, those weren't our 
talking points, somebody that created them needs to be prosecuted, it 
was a fraud on the American people,'' he is not going to say that.
  He has got this administration hanging a prosecution over his head. 
What do you expect? I doubt he will ever be able to say it without 
worrying about something over his shoulder coming after him.
  Here he is. He has been defensive of the administration. He has been 
a good soldier. He has said what they wanted him to say. He hasn't told 
all he could say, and they are going to make sure he doesn't--or if he 
does, he pays a heavy criminal price. That is where we are now in 
America.
  It may have been the kind of administration Richard Nixon dreamed of, 
but he knew he could never get there. He couldn't weaponize the IRS. He 
apparently dreamed of it. This administration has done it.
  For the President, for his spokespeople not to be able to call the 
terrorism a result of radical Islamic terrorism, it weakens our 
country, it emboldens our enemies, and as we have seen, you may take 
out Osama bin Laden, but when you withdraw our troops prematurely 
before Iraq soldiers are ready to stand on their own and you have 
blinded ourselves of the ability to recognize that any believers like 
Khamenei or Ahmadinejad, the former President of Iran, if you have 
blinded yourself of the ability to learn and educate our administration 
on what they believe, then you are going to fall prey to everything 
they decide to do toward you and about you because you don't understand 
where they are coming from.
  I repeatedly reflect on that scene in the movie ``Patton,'' and 
although he didn't know Rommel was not there with his tank division, he 
yells out in the movie after his tanks have defeated Rommel's: Rommel, 
you magnificent fatherless--I am paraphrasing--fatherless man, I read 
your book.
  If you read and learn and educate yourself about your enemies, you 
have got a better chance of defeating them, but this administration 
continues to make it more and more difficult to understand who our 
enemies are. All of this backing up and crawfishing, well, you know, 
this isn't all Islam.
  Of course, it is not all Islam. That is how I can go to Afghanistan 
and hug dear Muslim friends, we have the same enemies--and a big old 
bear of a man who led the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban by 
February of 2002 in the initial defeat is now the Vice President, and 
thank God he is.
  Some of us that just met with the new leadership recently--and I have 
known General Dostum for a while and met with my good friend the 
Honorable Massoud.
  President Ghani basically has gathered around him people a bit like 
what Lincoln did. He took people who opposed him, ran against him, but 
because he clearly cares deeply about Afghanistan, he gathered around 
him a team of rivals, and the good thing is, unlike the current 
administration here, he is not afraid of having people with opposing 
viewpoints around him.
  He is just like Lincoln. Lincoln had rivals all around him, and he 
listened to their input. He got their opinions, and it helped him make 
better decisions. This administration here needs to do what President 
Ghani in Afghanistan is trying to do, and it is not easy because our 
U.S. administration here has been reaching out for the Taliban.
  Initially, the Taliban are defeated, and then this administration 
comes in--and I know the prior administration started the massive 
occupation of Afghanistan with tens of thousands of troops.
  This President comes in, and in his campaign, he said that was the 
real war. Well, yeah, but once you defeat your enemy in that part of 
the world, you don't help yourself by becoming an occupier--you add 
over 100,000 troops to the country that is so thrilled that you 
relieved them of radical Islamic leadership, then you become an enemy 
because, now, you are an occupier. We didn't do ourselves any favors.
  There are people, unlike the Iraqis who threw down weapons and ran, 
turned them over to the Islamic State, in Afghanistan, the Northern 
Alliance was willing to fight the Taliban initially, and they are still 
willing to fight.
  In fact, before President Ghani was elected--that was so much 
uncertainty: Is President Karzai going to try to have another term, 
even though it is against the constitution? Are they in for a civil 
war?
  There was a great deal of trepidation on the part of the Northern 
Alliance that fought against the Taliban on our behalf with less than 
500 American special ops and intelligence people embedded.
  They knew we withdrew, and the Taliban were able to take over the 
national government. Then they were in for a war, and one of them told 
me: Look, since you have taken back the weapons, you don't support us 
anymore, and you are doing everything you can to help the Taliban--that 
is this administration--we realize the odds are that we will lose our 
lives, but we are not going down without a fight.
  Well, fortunately, they have got a team of rivals leading the 
country. Prayers are with them. They are moderate Muslims that I trust, 
and they want the best for Afghanistan.
  According to the military leaders I have talked to repeatedly in 
Afghanistan and others, the country of Pakistan has been the biggest 
supplier and supporter of the Taliban. The Taliban didn't do themselves 
any favors when they just, in such evil fashion, attacked a school and 
killed 140 or so precious people, including children.
  There are many more in Pakistan that are saying: You know what, it is

[[Page 696]]

time to stop supporting the Taliban, it is time to worry about 
Pakistan.
  Some have even started saying it is time to quit persecuting the 
Baloch people.

                              {time}  1315

  The arbitrary lines that were drawn many decades ago put probably the 
bulk of the Baloch people in southern Pakistan where most of their 
minerals are. It put the Baloch people within the arbitrary lines drawn 
for a country called Iran. In fact, the Baloch area actually is where 
the Straits of Hormuz are. It is where much of the oil and gas is.
  I have grown to admire and love many of the Baloch people. I wouldn't 
mind seeing them having an independent Balochistan. I wouldn't mind 
seeing an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq, because unlike what 
is portrayed in much of the mainstream media, the Kurds never threw 
down their weapons and ran away or turned them over to the Islamic 
State. They are people we can trust.
  Mr. Speaker, a solution to our problem there would be to announce 
that we are going to provide weapons directly to the Kurds. We don't 
have to go through Baghdad, because Baghdad doesn't want them to have 
the equipment they need. They are afraid of them. Let them have the 
equipment they need to defeat the Islamic State. Yes, I know, that 
would not make Turkey happy, but Turkey has said: Not only are we not 
fighting the Islamic State--even though we have pledged in our NATO 
alliance that we will help fight any enemy of our fellow NATO 
signatories--we are not going to help, and we are not going to let you 
use any of the NATO bases or U.S. bases here in Turkey. You are on your 
own.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, if Turkey is not going to fight them and they are 
a threat to all Western civilization, then we are just going to have to 
supply the Kurds and let them take them out.
  It has been an honor to be over there numerous times and spend time 
there even when the State Department said it was too dangerous to go. 
Dana Rohrabacher and I went and spent 3 days when the State Department 
was telling us it was too dangerous to be there. But I knew that there 
was no way their leaders were going to let anything happen to us. And 
they didn't. They were trustworthy.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the problems this administration has is figuring 
out whom we can trust and whom we can't. I know that this 
administration continues to talk about these moderate, vetted Syrian 
Army soldiers that we can really help. Well, if they were there 3 or 4 
years ago, most of them are ready to throw in with the Islamic State or 
with al Qaeda subsidiaries. In fact, they have done that very thing. 
They have fought together.
  I don't know if ``naivete'' is the proper word, but when this 
administration started supplying their so-called free, vetted moderate 
Syrian Army personnel and the equipment, they kept ending up in the 
Islamic State's possession. They even suspended sending them more 
weapons and equipment for a while, but then some months later they 
picked it back up. I don't know why, what made them feel they were more 
believable than they were before, but amazingly, they started sending 
it, and it started ending up in Islamic State hands.
  It is heartbreaking to be, as a few of us have, in northern Iraq in 
the Kurdistan area with real, patriotic Kurds who love their people and 
who have fought not just for themselves, but they have fought for other 
groups, Shi'a and Sunni, without throwing down their weapons. They have 
fought and died. But to look in their eyes and see the hurt as they 
say: Couldn't you give us some Humvees, some up-armored vehicles? 
Because we are fighting against the Islamic State, and they are using 
American Humvees. They are using American armored personnel carriers. 
They are using American tanks. We don't have anything that can 
penetrate your American tanks or your personnel carriers. Those are 
invulnerable almost completely to IEDs because you up-armored them and 
gave them to the Syrian Army that gave them to ISIS, or you gave them 
to the Iraqi soldiers that left them for ISIS.
  The commander who had lost soldiers said: You don't know what it is 
like to see a big, armored vehicle that is going to be used for a 
suicide bombing coming at your soldiers who have weapons that can't 
possibly penetrate those vehicles. And they are shooting. They are 
doing everything they can to try to stop them, but because they are the 
best America has in the way of fighting vehicles, we can't stop them, 
and we know my guys are going to get blown up as this American vehicle 
gets close, and it has been set up to be a suicide bomb.
  Mr. Speaker, since this administration has not been effective in 
fighting IS for so long, for too long they looked at them as the junior 
varsity, the JVs, shouldn't we at least help those who are fighting to 
help us, along with themselves, by giving them vehicles that could 
match up against the vehicles we provided to the Islamic State? It 
seems like the least we can do. It really does.
  This administration was going to be the most transparent in history. 
There is a story out this week from PJ Media. Josh Earnest doesn't 
think President Obama is upset about missing the solidarity gathering 
of world leaders. The world leaders see that our way of life is at 
risk, and our leadership doesn't see it. He thinks if we give a good 
enough speech, we coddle, we offer to buy offices in Qatar, or we 
release more of their murderers, that surely they will recognize how 
truly wonderful, kind, and generous we are and they will stop their 
evil ways of killing innocent people. It is not going to happen.
  I have Christian friends that say: Yes, but as Christians, we are 
supposed to turn the other cheek. That is as individuals. Individual 
Christians should live out the beatitudes as Christ gave them. But the 
government has a different role. If you do evil, you should be afraid 
because the government, within the bounds of Christianity--Romans 
13:4--is supposed to punish the evil, eliminate the evils, and protect 
your people. I don't try to convert anybody using my position in 
government, but for those who misunderstand Christian teaching, you 
need to read Romans 13.
  We have an Attorney General still holding on, Holder the Holdover. He 
said he is concerned about the so-called lone wolf attacks in the 
United States--one of the things, Mr. Speaker, I don't think, again, 
that this administration understands. They talk about these lone wolf 
attacks, and yet when you get down to the bottom of it, you find out, 
gee, they had talked to al-Awlaki, the man born in the United States so 
he gets an American birth certificate, an American passport, and 
American citizenship because his parents came over and had him while 
they were here, so he is an American citizen. He is radicalizing 
people.
  These weren't lone wolfs. They got information, they got advice, and 
they got radicalization from somebody else. It is tough to find anybody 
self-radicalized because apparently there are plenty of imams in this 
country that are not the general rank-and-file imams. They are imams 
that are ready to radicalize those--and twist and convert into evil--
that would kill innocent children, women, and men.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to recognize the threat that is upon us, and you 
can't do that when an administration will not even call the evil for 
what it is. I know indications are, gee, the economy is getting so much 
better. We still have over 90 million people that are not counted as 
unemployed because they just finally gave up looking for a job. To me, 
that is unemployed. But we don't count them in our statistics. And this 
staggering story came out today, written by Wyton Hall:

       In a stunning Tuesday report, Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim 
     Clifton revealed that ``for the first time in 35 years, 
     American business deaths now outnumber business births.''

  I can't help but think that has something to do with the massive 
overregulation by this administration continuing to set records in the 
number of regulations it sets. How in the world can businesses keep up 
with over 70,000 new pages of regulations year after year? They did it 
again in 2014, over

[[Page 697]]

70,000 pages of new regulations, and they are expected to follow them 
and manage to keep a business. You don't have to look very far to find 
CEO after CEO or a person that started a business, no matter how 
massive, who said: In looking at all the regulations now, it is a good 
thing I started my business when I did, because if I were trying to 
start it now, I never could. I couldn't overcome all of the massive 
government overregulation.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, we see ObamaCare continuing to fail and continuing 
to provide less care for more money. But not to worry. A lot of your 
good health care dollars are going to fund navigators who will never 
put a Band-Aid on anybody or never even blow on a cut to make it feel 
better. No. They will never even pat somebody on the back. They are 
bureaucrats. They are not in the health care business, nor are the 
thousands and thousands and thousands of new IRS agents who are not 
looking out for your health. They will probably give you ulcers. But 
they are part of the health care dollars now.
  So people keep asking me: Louie, I don't understand. My deductible is 
higher. I am paying more money than ever. I am getting less care. I am 
getting turned down for things. I don't get to choose my doctor. I sure 
don't have the insurance policy I wanted. I don't understand.
  I have to explain: Well, that is because you are paying for a lot of 
government workers that don't really help in anybody's health problems 
at all. They create health problems, more likely.
  With all of this as a background, all of the failures of the Federal 
Government, the Federal Government, in fact, is intruding in people's 
private lives. As they access email and gather phone logs of every call 
to and from American individuals, we were assured that would not happen 
when the PATRIOT Act was extended. I was not here when it was passed. 
We were told it was only if you were a foreign terrorist, a known 
foreign terrorist, or you had ties to foreign terrorists would you be 
even eligible to have your phone logs gathered, emails checked. 
``Only'' we were told. Well, that turned out not to be true. That was 
just an outright lie. It is time to stop the government intrusion into 
people's private lives unless the government has a warrant.
  As a judge, I had no problem signing a warrant if there was probable 
cause spelled out in the affidavit. There were times I would turn away 
law officers and say: You have plenty of speculation there that sounds 
good, but you don't have facts that get you to probable cause.
  That should be in there, under the Constitution, before the 
government can start invading your privacy.
  Then when the House and Senate were controlled by the Democrats, 
President Obama is in the Oval Office, they passed a bill creating this 
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that apparently is out there 
thinking they need to be able to monitor everybody's debit and credit 
card records so that they can see if anybody is being taken advantage 
of.

                              {time}  1330

  Well, how about following the Constitution and not getting anybody's 
bank records or credit card or debit card records unless you have 
probable cause or unless the person gives permission.
  I am hoping that is going to be a bill that we pass because I have 
talked to enough Republicans and know how we feel, and there are 
Democrats who feel the same way. Of course, they are the ones that 
created this monster, but that needs to be reined in. And now with that 
as a backdrop, we have the story: ``Obama backs government-run 
Internet.''
  And I know there was somebody who wrote into the Longview paper that 
they want net neutrality. They love the idea of the government playing 
more of a role in the Internet. Well guess what? When the government 
takes control of the Internet in the name of neutrality, it will 
probably not be neutral, according to most Americans' opinions.
  So I hope Americans are not fooled. I hope Americans don't buy into 
this because when the United States Government takes control of the 
Internet, then we are going to start having the same problems they have 
in China, in Russia, and other parts of the world where their 
government does control their Internet, and they control your freedom 
to search for what you want or to say what you want.
  I know of numerous occasions where people said they were in China 
typing, and they mention anything about the government, even if it is 
not terrible what they said about the government, they start typing 
again, and they have lost their Internet connection. They have learned 
not to say anything about the government, let it go, and they keep 
their Internet connection better.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to also touch on this because we passed the 
funding for the Department of Homeland Security. I hope the President 
doesn't veto the bill. I hope the Senate will pass what we passed. 
There are some things in there I would have liked to have been 
different, but I read the bill totally. There are some parts that 
aren't great, and there are some parts that are great. I am very 
proud--my friend John Carter has some great language in there. I know 
he has worked very hard on language that is very good.
  As I was reading the bill this weekend, I said, that was John 
Carter's specific language from an earlier bill. Overall, it was a good 
bill. The amendments helped it. I voted for the bill. And now hopefully 
the Senate will do the right thing and pass it, and we will send it to 
the President and we will fund the Department of Homeland Security 
without all of the amnesties he has unconstitutionally created.
  But if the President wants another way of doing things, I haven't 
heard anyone else suggest this, but I brought it up with some friends 
this morning. Perhaps we go ahead, if he doesn't think that he likes 
that and we are not able to override a veto, maybe it is time to start 
setting goals for the administration, and when they don't meet them, we 
just take that money from them and block grant it out to State and 
local law enforcement.
  There are some jail cells open. We don't have to provide the hundreds 
of millions of dollars to hold people being detained. The local law 
enforcement is tired of holding people on behalf of the Federal 
Government and not being reimbursed. Let them do the job they are 
supposed to do of enforcing the law.
  I know the Arizona case said, the Supreme Court said Arizona could 
not be enforcing immigration law, that was a Federal job, but we 
certainly have the authority to say, you know what? Let's block grant 
that money out and let State and local government do that, enforce our 
laws for us. I think we will get a whole lot better job done. So that 
may be something else to consider. If the President is not going to 
sign a bill that funds homeland security, maybe we need to fund it, and 
if they can't meet their goals, block grant it out to local 
authorities.
  In the time I have left, I wanted to touch on a significant article 
by Patrick Poole of PJ Media, because, as he says, it is a look back on 
this year's parade of failure, and expect more in 2015.
  His article is titled, ``The National Security `Not Top 10' of 
2014.'' So my paraphrase is the top 10 failures in national security by 
this administration.
  Number one: befriending ``moderate al Qaeda'' in Syria. Patrick Poole 
said:
  ``There are some ideas so at war with reason and reality they can 
only exist in the fetid Potomac fever swamps of D.C. think tank and 
foreign policy community. Such was the case in January when three of 
the best and brightest from those ranks published an article in Foreign 
Affairs (the same publication that in 2007 brought us the `moderate 
Muslim Brotherhood') contending that the U.S. needed to befriend the 
Syrian jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham as some kind of counter to more 
extreme jihadist groups, like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. The precedent 
they cited was the U.S. failure to designate the Taliban after 9/11.
  Mind you, at the time they wrote this, one of Ahrar al-Sham's top 
leaders was a lieutenant for al Qaeda head

[[Page 698]]

Ayman al-Zawahiri, who openly declared himself a member of al Qaeda. 
After most of their leadership was wiped out in a bombing in September, 
they have gravitated closer to the jihadist groups they were supposed 
to counter and their positions have been bombed by the U.S., much to 
the consternation of other vetted moderate rebel groups. So ridiculous 
was their proposition that the original subtitle of their article, `An 
al Qaeda Affiliate Worth Befriending,' was changed online to `An al 
Qaeda-Linked Group Worth Befriending' in hopes of minimizing the 
absurdity of their case.''
  But this administration bought into it.
  And I understand there may be a Republican Senator or two that buys 
into it. It doesn't make it any less preposterous.
  Number two of the top 10 national security failures:
  Obama administration deploys three hashtag divisions in response to 
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  Some folks may remember that the response of this administration to 
help the Ukrainian people that I hold so dear, having lived with them 
for a summer back as a college student, the response of this 
administration was to launch a Twitter war that Russia wasn't terribly 
concerned about.
  The number three failure of national security was Obama calling ISIS 
the ``JV team.''
  I am sure Americans remember, and Patrick Poole discusses it, but to 
call the Islamic state a JV team betrayed his failure to get his 
security briefings as he should have to really understand what is 
happening in the world, because I don't believe for a minute, having 
talked to different intelligence people, I don't believe for a minute 
that our intelligence people did not know how dangerous the Islamic 
state was.
  The number four failure of national security was the State Department 
official denying that Boko Haram targeted Christians.
  Having been over there and having hugged and wept with those parents 
of daughters who were kidnapped and terrorized and made sex slaves, 
unlike the State Department official who says it wasn't about them 
being Christians--if you go hug them and weep with them and talk to 
them and their pastors, as I have, you find out it was precisely 
because they were Christians. Please, somebody in this administration, 
wake up. Radical Islam is at war with the United States and any Western 
civilization, and specifically with Christians.
  When I asked these mothers whose daughters are still held kidnapped, 
probably sold into sex slavery by now--and this administration has not 
done enough because they don't see it as a war against Christianity--I 
asked, just to be sure, I said: Did they attack--Boko Haram, these 
radical Islamist terrorists--did they attack your daughter's school 
because they were girls, because they don't believe girls should be 
educated?
  They said: Oh, no, they don't believe girls should be educated, but 
they attacked it because it is a Christian school.
  That is precisely why they attacked it.
  Number five: Homeland Security adviser's pro-caliphate tweet used by 
ISIS recruiters. I had been warning about this pro-caliphate Homeland 
Security top adviser in Janet Napolitano's regime in Homeland Security, 
a guy that has spoken, was a listed speaker to pay tribute to the 
Ayatollah Khamenei as a man of vision of the 20th century, who blasted 
the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorist 
support prosecution in American history, and he defended the convicted 
defendants, and he tweets out. Finally, it was enough to show the 
administration what most of us who had eyes and ears understood. He 
tweeted out, after ISIS killed more innocent people, that the caliphate 
was inevitable so just, you know, get ready. And then ISIS used that to 
help recruit.
  Number six failure of 2014 of national security in this 
administration: Obama and the State Department give shout-outs to 
Islamic cleric who okayed the fatwa authorizing the killing of 
Americans in Iraq. And Patrick Poole lays out exactly what it involved. 
Not once but twice, as I understand it, he gave a shout-out to this 
Islamic cleric who authorized the killing of Americans in Iraq.
  Number seven: Obama administration gives heavy weapons to ``vetted 
moderate'' Syrian rebel groups; they promptly turn up in hands of ISIS 
and al Qaeda.
  Number eight: The White House defends the Muslim Brotherhood's 
``commitment to nonviolence.'' And that is what some of the moderate 
Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said, different countries 
saying, Why are you helping the Muslim Brotherhood? Do you not 
understand they are at war with you?
  Number nine: The Obama administration defends U.S. Islamic groups 
branded as terrorist groups by the UAE.
  The UAE is run by moderate Muslims. Perhaps this administration could 
learn something by listening to them and who they recognize to be 
terrorist groups.
  And number 10: Having banned discussions of ideology driving Islamic 
terrorism, the Pentagon says it can't understand the ideology of ISIS.
  Well, duh. It is no wonder they can't understand it when you are not 
allowed to be educated about what these people believe. But there are 
people around this town that have been banned from teaching about 
radical Islam who perhaps should be unbanned.
  In conclusion, I just want to reference the vote this week for 
Speaker. The vote is behind us. It is done. The Speaker was reelected. 
But one of the big concerns I had has not gone away, and it still needs 
to be addressed.
  Those 4 years that Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, 
they set a record for the most bills brought to the floor where no 
amendments by anybody were allowed. They wouldn't let us participate in 
the legislative process. And we railed against that. We said, You put 
us in the majority, we won't do that. And it breaks my heart that under 
the current Speaker, a new record broke Nancy Pelosi's record of more 
bills brought to the floor with no amendments allowed, a closed rule. 
That has got to change.
  Some have said our effort had no chance. If all those who said they 
would have voted with us but it had no chance had voted with us, then 
it would have been overwhelming.

                              {time}  1345

  One of the Speaker's supporters came up to me yesterday on the floor 
and handed me this and said, ``This is from an old novel.'' I think it 
is called ``The Lion's Den.'' He said, ``This applies to you,'' and I 
appreciate it more than he would know.
  The quote is this:

       No matter how the espousal of a lost cause might hurt his 
     prestige in the House, Zimmer had never hesitated to identify 
     himself with it if it seemed to him to be right. He knew only 
     two ways; the right one and the wrong, and if he sometimes 
     made a mistake, it was never one of honor: he voted as he 
     believed he should, and although sometimes his voice was 
     raised alone on one side of a question, it was never stilled.

  There were 24 such people that spoke this week, and I hope they will 
be honored and not belittled.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________