Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) gave a speech earlier this month to a Horowitz Freedom Center Texas Weekend in Dallas.
Gohmert is one of the strongest defenders of freedom in Congress. His sometimes-relaxed style can belie his toughness, knowledge and courage (last fall speaking about Obama’s legacy in building a second Ottoman Empire). He has gone after members of the administration for their comfy relationship with hostile Islam, as he did last week when he questioned AG Eric Holder during a hearing [Watch]. The Representative’s request was for Congress to be allowed to see the documents about the 2007 Holy Land Foundation trial which were given to the accused contributors to Hamas terrorists but have been kept from the public.
The Congressman is also a defender of American sovereignty who stood with a handful of House conservatives on May 14 to speak against amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. He understands that immigration enforcement is integral to national security, remarking near the end of his Texas talk, “There are consequences to giving citizenship and to letting anybody in.”
Bad consequences, as we saw in the Boston bombing.
Frank Gaffney: I’m very pleased to present to you all tonight a great American, a great Texan, one of my personal heroes and a man I’m very proud to call a great friend, Congressman Louie Gohmert.
(Applause)
Louie Gohmert: Oh, gosh. Thank you. Well, I’m so glad you did that before I talked. That’s really good. Now, I don’t know what you’ll do when I finish.
You’ve heard from three of our best experts earlier today, and then the ultimate expert did the introduction of me tonight. Boy, what a juxtaposition that was. But thank you, Frank, and I appreciate your kind comments. You know, I’m not a household name other than with people that work at the Huffington Post –
(Laughter)
– and I tell my family, “Just don’t Google my name. You won’t recognize what you see.”
Back in East Texas, all three networks have stations in my hometown of Tyler, and for a town that small, 85,000, to have all three networks, they all have their own news programs, six and 10, and they’re always looking for news. Back when I was a judge, they were constantly coming to the courthouse and asking for comments. Yeah, Andy is an ultimate expert, having prosecuted the blind sheik that we really need to let go …
(Laughter)
… or at least that’s what the people visiting the White House on a regular basis have been saying.
But anyway, so in East Texas, I’m better known. You spend a couple million dollars running for Congress, people get tired of seeing your face. And I was coming home back to Tyler one night, stopped at a — it was about two-thirty in the morning. I stopped at one of the fast fuel places. I like to travel in jeans because I don’t want to wallow around in my suit, you know? They cost too much. Jeans are comfortable. So I had on my jeans. I had my shirttail out. I prefer boots except I’ve got some Brookstone moccasins that are so great to drive in.
And so it’s two-thirty. I shuffle into this place, and I go get my Dr. Pepper and some chocolate, and I see a girl like in her 20s go over to an elderly man who was back stocking something, and she kind of pointed in my direction. Obviously seen the commercials. And I put my stuff on the counter, and she says, “Can I ask you something?” I said, “Sure.” And she said, “Are you James Taylor?”
(Laughter)
And so I started to try to sing “Sweet Baby James,” but it wasn’t any use. I couldn’t pull it off, not talking like that, but I thanked her. But anyway, so you never know.
You know, I’m so envious of Frank’s beard. He looks so distinguished. I grew a beard one time for about six weeks before I was a judge or chief justice, and I got ready to try a case in federal court, and I was going to pick the jury that Monday.
My daughter was five. Heard me tell my wife that in East Texas, there’s some people that don’t like beards. So I was going to shave my beard before I went to pick the jury, and anyway, I was tucking our five-year-old daughter in, and she said, “Daddy, are you really going to shave your beard?” And I said, “Yeah, you like it?” And she said, “Yeah, it helps you not look like a clown.”
(Laughter)
So, Frank, you don’t look like a clown, buddy. You look really distinguished, and I appreciate that so much.
But anyway, all of those lessons are still muddled around in my mind. I talked to Andy earlier about the things that had been discussed because you’ve had ultimate experts before you. But you hear all the talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, and sometimes — well, I’ve run into so many people that say, “When did it get started? What was it about?” And some of you may have heard me challenged in some of the small networks, you know, those that you add up all of their ratings and they don’t quite add up to Fox News viewers. But when you don’t have as many viewers as C-SPAN, it’s time to check it in. But CNN, MSNBC, they’re still hanging in there.
But anyway, they raised some cane back when I said, “This president has really jumpstarted a new Ottoman Empire.” Now, I don’t know why they had never heard about the Ottoman Empire before. Continue reading this article
Thursday was Day #3 of the Senate mark-up of S.744 in the Judiciary Committee. Unsurprisingly the Gang of Eight Republicans on the committee (Senators McCain and Flake) continued to hang tough with Democrats to prevent any meaningful amendments. It looked like a committee markup on the surface, but it was a dog-and-pony show with foregone conclusions because the pro-amnesty members meet in advance to decide what tiny increments of change they will allow. Genuine friends of sovereignty Jeff Sessions and Chuck Grassley deserve our respect for plugging away in such a corrupt environment.
The interests of the nation surely cannot be safe when amnesty hack Frank Sharry is pleased, as indicated by his remark upon the proceedings: “The Gang of Eight has . . . accepted a number of Republican amendments, but none of them undermine the core elements of the bill.”
You can watch the three-hour hearing on C-span, which allows the viewer to use the search function which will go to that place in the video when clicked. So if you search for grassley in the Timeline search function on the left of the page, then click, that part of the video will begin to run. It saves time and unnecessary brain pain.
The committee started off with an amendment from Hawaii Senator Hirono which would extend visa waivers to Hong Kong, even though it is not a country but is a part of Red China. As Senator Sessions pointed out, China is a notably bad actor in respecting the rule of law, one important example being its refusal to receive its criminal citizens back when the US tries to deport them. The result has been thousands of foreign criminals being set loose in American communities to commit more crimes. (Congressman Ted Poe has tried to legislate action in the House against irresponsible nations to no avail.) The Hirono amendment passed 14-4.
After a Senate committee finished poring through the enforcement sections of a sweeping immigration bill on Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, didn’t want to dwell on the three amendments he proposed that were voted down by his colleagues.
He has already been thinking of other ways to change the bill.
The core of the immigration bill, which was produced by a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight, remained largely intact after the third hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee that is considering more than 300 amendments. Grassley said little had been accomplished to satisfy him and other Republicans who feel the bill doesn’t do enough to secure the border and ensure that unauthorized immigrants can’t find work in the U.S.
Grassley said he will try to bolster those provisions on the Senate floor and lobby House members working on their own version of an immigration bill.
“I had my day in court (today), and I’m going to have a lot of other days in court,” said Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s a long process. It’ll be going on for the next six months, so you shouldn’t be drawing any conclusions right now.”
Grassley’s disappointment was met by tempered enthusiasm from members of the Gang of Eight, and other pushing to pass the bill, which would allow the nation’s unauthorized immigrants the chance to become U.S. citizens.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a group that supports the bill, said having four members of the Gang of Eight on the Senate Judiciary Committee — Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and Democrats Charles Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois — allowed them to fight off any amendments that would critically damage the bill.
“The Gang of Eight has held strong,” Sharry said. “They’ve accepted a number of Republican amendments, but none of them undermine the core elements of the bill. The early threats — the poison pills, the delaying tactics, things that we thought might actually hurt the process — they’ve been overcome.” Continue reading this article
On Tuesday, Congressman Steve King organized a presser with several House colleagues who strongly oppose the Senate amnesty bill.
The other speakers included Republican Congressmen Louie Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Steve Stockman, John Fleming and Paul Gosar.
Rep. King noted that he has been a fierce foe of Obamacare, but sees the Senate amnesty as “far, far worse.” Like the other assembled representatives, a primary focus of King is to maintain the rule of law, which amnesty shreds by the act of rewarding lawbreakers. His other concerns are cultural assimilation, border control and national security.
Rep Gohmert of Texas (a drought-troubled state) observed that it’s likely a billion or more people abroad would like to move here. He was not reassured that authorities are able to keep out dangerous persons among the millions to be amnestied when the FBI couldn’t sort out the Boston bomber Tsarnaev brother when warned about Tamerlan by Russian police.
John Fleming of Louisiana reminded listeners that the 1986 amnesty was a failure and the government should not go down that path again.
Dr. Paul Gosar of Arizona warned against a huge bill which puts too much enforcement authority in the hands of Janet Napolitano.
Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks alerted about the enormous numbers of foreigners who would like to relocate here, e.g. 20 percent of Mexicans who would come illegally. He doesn’t want millions of lawbreakers to be future Americans, who will also cost taxpayers trillions of dollars according to the recent Heritage study. An open-borders society promotes anarchy, he stated.
Steve Stockman (R-TX) emphasized fairness for legal immigrants, whose care in doing immigration the lawful way is undermined by rewarding lawbreakers.
Congressman King emphasized how the bill is really really bad. He fears a doomsday scenario in which House leadership allows a conference between the House and Senate versions that might pass legislation unfavorable to the rule of law.
Rep. King said, “That conference committee could produce from it some version of the amnesty bill and send it to the floor, unamendable, an up-or-down vote, in which case, every Democrat would vote for it, it would only take a couple of dozen Republicans, and we could be stuck with a very bad bill on the way to the president. So I’m most concerned about that and I’ll continue to talk about that.”
Attorney General Eric Holder recently voiced a belief that many liberals hold — that entering this country illegally is a human right — but mostly refrain from saying. These days, the extreme anti-borders ideology of the anarchist left is becoming mainstream, at least under the Obama administration.
Still, the idea of national sovereignty has many defenders among the little citizens who continue to revere the Constitution despite the globalist future pushed by elites in government and in the press.
Nevertheless, the top law enforcement officer in the nation spoke openly in support of the anti-borders, anti-law agenda:
Holder was addressing a friendly crowd (“committed partners”), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) on the occasion of their annual awards banquet last Wednesday. You can WATCH the entire 18-minute speech on C-SPAN. He discussed a medley of topics close to raza hearts, like the voting rights act, but the major theme was the redefinition of immigration from a lawful procedure controlled by the government to a lifestyle choice appropriately made by the billions of poor people on earth to relocate at will to any country they want.
HOLDER: Creating a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country is absolutely essential. The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are undocumented by creating a mechanism for them to earn citizenship and to move out of the shadows transcends the issue of immigration status. This is a matter of civil and human rights. It’s about who we are as a nation, and it goes to the core of our treasured American principle of equal opportunity.
I happened to click over to C-SPAN on Tuesday, and was fascinated by what Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM) had to say about a problem currently making many Republicans insane — how to appeal to the treasured hispanic voter.
He is a Republican representative for a district that is 52 percent hispanic and 34 percent Republican. He credits his electoral success with regular personal contact with as many of his constituents as can be reached, whatever their cultural or political leanings.
But the important thing is that he does the work that members of Congress are supposed to do — meet with constituents to talk about their concerns.
Pearce drives around 100,000 miles a year to visit his physically large district, which is around 70,000 square miles, larger than the state of Florida. He goes to around 20 events a weekend and more during recesses. It’s not a magic formula, just hard work.
Last year, he encouraged Mitt Romney to visit more with hispanics to show interest in their concerns, but the Presidential candidate couldn’t be persuaded.
Pearce says that an amnesty won’t win any hispanic votes for Republicans. But his method of taking the conservative message in person to sometimes challenging audiences has proved to be a winner. Too bad Reince Preibus isn’t listening to such good advice.
Washington Journal invited Pearce to appear on the program because of a WSJ article from a few days ago discussing his work habits among the voters.
LAS CRUCES, N.M.—Rep. Steve Pearce is the rarest of Republican Party officeholders, a very conservative Anglo who keeps winning elections from a predominantly Latino electorate.
As the national GOP seeks to improve its dismal standing with Hispanic voters, the 65-year-old former oil man has some advice.
“You just have to show up, all the time, everywhere,” he said, during a recent barnstorm tour of his district, which sprawls across the southern half of this border state. “Most Republicans don’t bother. I do. I bother.”
Mr. Pearce has watched the national GOP struggle to understand why its low-tax, pro-business, family-values message hasn’t resonated with Latinos: Mitt Romney got the lowest share of the Hispanic vote of any GOP presidential candidate since 1996.
Many conservatives have since concluded that if the party can get immigration off the table, Hispanics will give the GOP a new look.
Mr. Pearce agrees, but he contends that changes in policy platforms aren’t enough to reverse the party’s decline among voters like those in his district. Republicans must spend time in Latino neighborhoods with the respectful attentiveness of a small-town mayor.
“We have to sell ourselves,” he said. It will take hard work, he added, because the majority of Hispanics are “spring-loaded” to favor the Democrats and their more expansive view of government. Continue reading this article
The House Judiciary Committee has posted information about Tuesday’s immigration hearing, and the line-up of speakers is somewhat concerning. Usually the majority party gets to choose 3 out of 4 witnesses per panel, but the upcoming group appears unduly friendly to Obama’s amnesty and general immigration permissiveness, although I admit not every name is familiar to me. But there are hints, like job titles.
I phoned C-SPAN a little while ago and the fellow with whom I spoke said hearing coverage decisions are made late in the day before the event, but he thought they might cover it given the current interest about immigration in the news.
But I hear on good authority that the hearing “should” be webcast on the House Judiciary site.
The committee has already included the witnesses’ written statements:
Witness List
Panel I
Vivek Wadhwa
Director of Research, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University
Michael Teitelbaum
Senior Advisor, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wertheim Fellow, Harvard Law School (Also Commissioner and Vice Chair , U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform 1991-1997)
What’s the tried & true fix when an elected official screws up royally in public? Quick, change the subject, particularly to a timely issue, and act like a serious leader!
In addition, the mayor’s performance at the Democratic convention last summer was less than stellar. Diversity boosters hoped Villaraigosa’s star position as Chair of the event would relaunch his floundering career, where early expectations were dashed because the poor job he’s done as LA mayor. But he failed to be sufficiently adroit under the unforgiving cameras of the national media at the Convention.
So here we are at another episode of Mayor Villaraigosa’s attempted resurrection, which depends on Americans’ famous short attention span.
The following headline is curiously honest about the self-interest aspect of the mayor’s shenanigans.
WASHINGTON—Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who increased his national profile in September when he chaired the Democratic National Convention, is turning his sights to Washington, D.C.
Nearing the end of his final term as mayor of the largest city in the West, Villaraigosa, days before his 60th birthday, is openly talking about a next move—though he won’t say what the move will be.
“With each passing week I take another step toward the transition from ‘Who’s Who’ to ‘Who’s He?’” Villaraigosa joked during a luncheon at the National Press Club on Monday, where he spoke about immigration reform. “The sun may be setting on my administration, but I’m not riding off into the sunset just yet.”
As a charismatic mayor with a growing national presence—and an impressive resume that includes leading the United States Conference of Mayors and working as an adviser and surrogate for President Barack Obama—Villaraigosa has a range of options ahead of him. He has openly expressed interest in becoming the next governor of California and is rumored to be a contender to join Obama’s Cabinet.
When pressed about his future, however, the traditionally eloquent veteran politician melts into a nervous, stuttering mess. Continue reading this article
Information about Abdullatif Aldosary has been accumulating over the intervening days, such as the bomb-making materials found in his home.
Aldosary already had a record as a hostile character, having been arrested at least twice for criminal wrongdoing over several years. He spent eight months in prison for a case of aggravated harassment.
Local Congressman Paul Gosar asked why Aldosary was not deported given his history of crime (Gosar questions why officials allowed Casa Grande suspect to live in Arizona). In 2011, Aldosary contacted Congressman Gosar to inquire why his application for citizenship had not gone through. Gosar learned that Aldosary was denied citizenship “pursuant to terrorism related grounds of inadmissability.”
Gosar recently observed, “Why wasn’t a known terrorist detained and deportation proceedings initiated once DHS concluded he was engaging in terrorism related activity?”
Indeed, why was such a dangerous man allowed to remain in the United States?
And why are there no terrorism charges now?
Interestingly, the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence held a hearing on Dec. 4 titled “Terrorist Exploitation of Refugee Programs.” (Watch on C-SPAN.) In Chairman Patrick Meehan’s opening statement, he noted, “According to press reports this past February, intelligence indicates that the threat posed by refugees with ties to al Qaeda is much broader than was previously believed.” For more background, see Judicial Watch’s report on the hearing.
A federal judge ordered Abdullatif Aldosary — the Coolidge resident accused of detonating an “explosive device” outside the Social Security Administration building in Casa Grande Friday morning — to be held without bond.
In the detention order, the magistrate judge says Aldosary there’s no possible way that Aldosary could be released that would assure public safety.
“The nature of the offense alleged in Count I which involves researching the design of an explosive device, procuring the explosive materials and detonating the device at a public building creates a significant risk of danger for which no release condition could reasonably assure the safety of the community,” the order says.
Aldosary — an Iraqi refugee — does face deportation proceedings, the order says. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer has been lodged against him, so Aldosary will likely deal with all that once this case is over.
Aldosary is facing a minimum prison sentence of five years, and a maximum sentence of 20 years, the order states.
Aldosary’s been arrested at least twice before, with the most recent incident taking place at a gym in Casa Grande in August. Continue reading this article
The book is an investigation of the terrorism case of three Muslims (two immigrants and one citizen convert) who plotted to blow up a shopping center in Columbus to strike a blow for Islam against the hated infidels, aka Americans.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday and delivered nearly an hour of prepared remarks with a detailed analysis of Islamist penetration of the highest levels of Washington. He spoke in support of the five members of Congress who asked for inspectors general of several agencies to investigate the threat, but were attacked for their concerns.
McCarthy took pains to say that just the appearance of a conflict of interest was a disqualifier in background checks a few years ago, but that’s no longer the case, apparently. That fact alone should be a wake-up call.
Of all the important points elucidated in the presentation, McCarthy’s list of ways the State Department has bent to the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood is particularly disturbing:
Still, it is Congress’s responsibility to scrutinize executive branch policy, especially when the policy choices endanger the nation. Let’s consider just some of those policy choices in the last three-and-a-half years. Since 2009, the Obama administration has abandoned the federal government’s prior policy against dealing directly and formally with the Muslim Brotherhood. The State Department has not only been supportive of this dramatic shift; it has embraced a number of Muslim Brotherhood positions that undermine both American constitutional rights and our alliance with Israel. To name just a few manifestations of this policy sea change:
● The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. We’re helping them get elected.
● The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.
● The State Department has collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia prohibitions against examination and negative criticism of Islam. Continue reading this article
C-SPAN’s morning call-in program Washington Journal had Dan Stein (Federation for American Immigration Reform) and Ali Noorani (National Immigration Forum) to debate the merits of the Arizona immigration enforcement law Tuesday, since the Supreme Court is about to hear the case challenging the legislation’s constitutionality.
One item under discussion was the estimate that there are “hundreds” of Hezbollah agents working in the United States. Chairman King questioned the panel about that idea in the video below and there was general agreement:
The DEA has conservatively linked at least half of the FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] with involvement in one or more aspects of the global drug trade, but I believe that number to be far greater, especially when considering that there are so many ways to make hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars in the industry. Generating contraband revenue from involvement in the industry can include the taxing of farmers, taxing finished drugs and the movement of drugs and precursor chemicals across borders, providing security to traditional cartels at clandestine laboratories, cache sites and airstrips, the manufacture of drugs, the transportation of drugs, and the distribution of drugs.
The real threat posed by this activity are the countless opportunities groups like the Quds Force and Hezbollah are presented with to develop and nurture relationships with organized crime and terrorist groups here in the Western Hemisphere, in Africa, Europe and many other countries. They are provided with many opportunities to learn from the most sophisticated organized crime syndicates in the world: the Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking cartels, which include the FARC. And these relationships most likely provide the Quds Force and Hezbollah with opportunities to leverage the transportation, money laundering, arms trafficking, corruption, human trafficking and smuggling infrastructures of the Colombian and Mexican drug trafficking cartels, as well as other organized crime and terrorist groups around the world.
I watched part of the hearing but didn’t hear anyone ask about Tehrangeles, as the Iranian section of Los Angeles is called by the many Persians who live there. It would certainly be an ideal place for Hezbo operatives to live and blend in.
Interestingly, the new reality TV show on Bravo, the Shahs of Sunset which focuses on rich young Iranians in LA, reveals a high level of assimilation to the material values of Beverly Hills.
Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah may have hundreds of operatives based in the United States, and Hezbollah – not al-Qaida – poses the greatest terrorist threat to Americans, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, said today.
Since September 11 2001, America’s counter-terror officials have focussed on al-Qaida and home-grown radicalised American extremists, said the New York representative at a hearing of his committee. But, now, the terrorist threat to the United States is shifting.
‘As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons and there is increasing concern over war between Iran and Israel, we must also focus on Iran’s secret operatives and their number one terrorist proxy force, Hezbollah, which we know is in America. That’s right, we know Hezbollah operatives are here.
‘The question is whether these Hezbollah operatives have the capacity to carry out attacks on the homeland and how quickly they can become fully operational,’ King said.
Opening the hearing, King said, ‘we have a duty to prepare for the worst’, and referred to the 20 Hezbollah-related prosecutions that have taken place in the United States since 9/11.
He also referred to a murder plot allegedly directed by the Iranian government to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. last year as a further warning sign of the potential threat that the country poses to Americans. Continue reading this article
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Thursday was Day #3 of the Senate mark-up of S.744 in the Judiciary Committee. Unsurprisingly the Gang of Eight Republicans on the committee (Senators McCain and Flake) continued to hang tough with Democrats to prevent any meaningful amendments. It looked like a committee markup on the surface, but it was a dog-and-pony show with foregone conclusions because the 
On Tuesday, Congressman Steve King organized a presser with several House colleagues who strongly oppose the Senate amnesty bill.
I happened to click over to C-SPAN on Tuesday, and was fascinated by what 
What’s the tried & true fix when an elected official screws up royally in public? Quick, change the subject, particularly to a timely issue, and act like a serious leader!
In Arizona, the 
