Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter the following into the Congressional Record:

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record:

In an effort to save both U.S. and Iraqi lives by adhering

to International War and common decency, I sent the following

letter to the Captain of the Navy's top hospital ship. Thomas

J. Nagy, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Health, Johns

Hopkins, '77-'79.

November 12, 2006.

To the Captain, USNS Comfort: Would it not be to the

benefit of all if the USS Comfort were to return immediately

to the Persian Gulf to provide life-saving health care to

Iraqi infants and children who are dying in huge numbers for

the lack of medical services and supplies.

Further, does not the Geneva Convention on the

Responsibilities of Occupying Powers require that the U.S.,

as the de facto if not de jure Occupying Power in Iraq

furnish lifesaving health care to Iraqis?

Finally, please forward my note to the U.S. Navy's Judge

Advocate General as well as the captain of the USN HOPE and

the captains of any other USN Hospital Ships.

I request a written reply.

Sincerely,

Thomas J. Nagy.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record.

[From the Black Commentator, Apr. 13, 2006]

The McKinney Affair--Rampaging Racism and a Cowardly Caucus

(By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble)

There are profound lessons to be learned from the ongoing

travails of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), under

siege by white America at large, the leadership of her own

party, and the chairman of her own caucus.

In the aftermath of McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Hill

police officer, we have witnessed an orgy of unadulterated

defamation that is actually directed at Black women in

general. In rejecting and denouncing McKinney's defense, her

tormentors demonstrate that the very concept of racial

profiling was never sincerely accepted among most white

Americans, and that 9/11 is just an excuse for undoing

decades of legal and political struggles against the

abominable practice.

So virulent and shameless have been the attacks on

McKinney--spewing caricatures of the six-term lawmaker that

reflect whites' own hallucinatory visions of Black people--it

leads us to conclude that racists are conducting a kind of

ritual, an exorcism to cast the ``militant Black'' out of the

national polity, once and for all. Disgustingly, a number of

Black voices have joined mob, in order to prove that they are

reasonable and trustworthy Negroes who won't intrude on white

folks' illusions of innocence.

Most distressingly, the McKinney affair dramatically

demonstrates that the Congressional Black Caucus has been

eviscerated as a body. The CBC is revealed as collectively

gutless, devoid of any semblance of Black solidarity, without

which it has no reason for being.

CBC Hits New Low

We at BC had previously believed that April, 2005, when 37

percent of the 42 Black House members voted for Republican

bills, was the lowest point in Congressional Black Caucus

history. A year later, the CBC has found a new nadir. On the

evening of April 5, undoubtedly on orders from House Minority

Leader Nancy Pelosi, CBC chairman Mel Watt gathered twenty or

so members to browbeat McKinney into firing her legal team

and cease appearing before the media. Watt absented himself

from the beat-down, so that it would not appear to be an

``official'' CBC event.

As congressional aides wandered in and out of the room,

some Members dutifully echoed Pelosi's demand that McKinney

not frame the March 28 confrontation with the policeman as a

``racial'' incident, and that she issue an apology on the

House floor the following morning. According to several

sources who spoke with BC on condition of anonymity, and

based on an account given by McKinney staff assistant Faye

Coffield to a weekly Atlanta meeting of the Georgia Coalition

for the People's Agenda, a ``consensus'' was reached that

McKinney would deliver the apology and abandon efforts to

defend herself in the media (although not her legal team).

The next morning, at the appointed hour, McKinney was

prepared to offer her apology to the House. But Mel Watt had

already put the word out that CBC members were to renege on

their part of the deal. The Caucus must not stand with

McKinney when she stepped to the microphone. Mel Watt, Nancy

Pelosi's poodle, attempted to enforce his Mistress's wish

that McKinney appear utterly isolated and alone. Nothing

should distract from the Democrats' non-strategy of doing and

saying nothing until mid-term elections in November. The

Republicans must be allowed to self-destruct without

interference. McKinney's charge of racial profiling was a

distraction from the Democratic non-strategy--so she must be

shunned. Mel Watt was the enforcer--the designated shunner-

in-chief.

Pelosi appears to harbor a deep hatred for McKinney, whom

she cannot control. Most recently, the 51-year-old Georgia

lawmaker defied the Leader's orders, voting in favor of a

Republican bill, cynically modeled on Democrat John Murtha's

measure for a quick exit from Iraq. She was among only three

Democrats, and the only CBC member, to do so. McKinney also

ignored Pelosi's order that Democrats boycott hearings on

Katrina and leave the field to Republicans.

However, Pelosi has been the aggressor all along, bent on

bringing the CBC and other progressives to heel as she

pursues her spineless non-strategy for victory by default

over the GOP--a scenario that by definition requires African

Americans to mute their own demands, to be quiet and

compliant. When McKinney returned to congress in January 2005

after a two-year hiatus, Pelosi denied her seniority, bumping

her down to freshman status despite her previous ten years on

The Hill. Not a peep from the CBC, cowed by their Leader and,

recent events have shown, packed with members who are

themselves fearful that McKinney's militancy will raise the

bar of constituent expectations for their own performances on

Black people's behalf.

On the House floor, the morning of April 6, Pelosi/Watt had

set McKinney up for further humiliation. Not only would she

be required to deliver an apology that would be seen as an

admission of guilt (by those who had already condemned and

defamed her), but the absence of CBC members at her side

would mark her as a lone ``extremist,'' a ``loon'' whose

politics could be dismissed out of hand. Why, even McKinney's

own colleagues won't stand with her. She's crazy (like the

rest of those darkies who cry racism).

According to several congressional sources, McKinney

confronted a gaggle of CBC members, reminding them of the

consensus agreement of the night before, in which they had

promised a display of physical solidarity at the microphone

in return for her concessions. White Congresswoman Marcy

Kaptur (D-OH), seeing the commotion, hurried over to the

Black circle: ``I'll stand with you, Cynthia.'' Others

stepped forward to fulfill their pledge, despite CBC chairman

Mel Watt's treacherous machinations.

Here is a partial list of those who were videotaped

standing with McKinney when she read the words of apology

that had been demanded of her:

*Elijah Cummings (MD), *Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI),

*Barbara Lee (CA), *Alcee Hastings (FL), *Maxine Waters (CA),

*Bobby Rush (IL), *Corrine Brown (FL), *Major Owens (NY),

*Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX), Marcy Kaptur (OH), Dennis Kucinich

(OH), Jose Serrano (NY), Bob Filner (CA), (*CBC members).

Only nine of the 20-plus CBC members who had reached

``consensus'' on standing with their sister the night before,

bucked Pelosi's petty dictatorial edict--and straw-boss Mel

Watt's attempt to enforce it.

Once upon a time, the CBC could collectively call itself

``the conscience of the congress.'' No more.

Multi-Profiling and Sheer Malevolence

By bowing to Pelosi, Black congresspersons reinforce her

and other white's belief that they can pick and choose the

African American leaders and representatives they deal with,

and isolate the rest, while still retaining mass Black

support for the Democratic Party. Such Blacks are enablers of

racism, and must eventually pay the price at the hands of

their constituents, who are no different than the Black

Georgia voters who sent McKinney to Washington six times.

Worse, in urging McKinney to drop the ``racial'' aspect of

her defense--to pretend that she was not racially profiled,

when they know that police profiling is near-universal--they

do grave injury to fundamental Black interests.

Days after his attempt to pound McKinney into dust, the

duplicitous Mel Watt related to the Charlotte Observer his

own scary run-in with Capitol police ``a year or so ago'':

``I was running to the floor to vote and an officer said,

`Can I see your ID?' and I said, 'No' and kept running. I

looked back and he had his hand on his gun. Then another

(Capitol) police officer said, `Member.' He recognized me (as

a House member). It just so happened that the first (officer)

was white and the other one was black . . . I was probably

very rash. In retrospect, I thought to myself, `You had to be

out of your mind.' I was trying to get to a vote and he had a

job to do.''

Watt understands very well that the Black officer, who

didn't go for his gun, but instead called his white partner

off, was intervening in a case of racial profiling. Yet

Watt's desire to stay in the good graces of his Leader,

Pelosi, drives him to conspire against a fellow Black

congressperson, Cynthia McKinney, whose recent hair makeover

is said to have made her fair game to be accosted by Capitol

police. Said McKinney:

``Do I have to contact the police every time I change my

hairstyle? How do we account for the fact that when I wore my

braids every day for 11 years, I still faced this problem,

primarily from certain police officers.''

Nobody knows better than Black officers that racism is

rampant in the Capitol Police force. Of the 1,200 officers,

29 percent are Black, and many still have racial bias suits

outstanding. ``You have, basically, a renegade police

department up here, that's been operating under the

protection of Congress,'' said Charles J. Ware, an

attorney representing the Capitol Black Police

Association.

But it's not just race. Police officers, like workers in

any organization, spend much of their time talking shop. For

Capitol police, the subject of their shop-talk is the members

of congress they are hired to protect. Cynthia McKinney is

famous--no less so on Capitol Hill. She is the Black woman

viciously branded as a friend of ``terrorists,'' the most

uppity African American in the federal legislature. The cops

are quite aware of what she looks like, new hair-do or not.

A McKinney lawyer got it right when he told a Howard

University press conference that his client was targeted for

reasons of ``sex, race and Ms. McKinney's progressiveness.''

The cops know who McKinney is--they have profiled her

politically. Michael C. Ruppert, former Los Angeles cop and

current honcho of the popular web site From the Wilderness,

has felt the police hostility directed at his longtime

friend, Cynthia McKinney:

`` I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia

McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out

of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her.

I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office

building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from

one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the

House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one

thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it.

Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from

just about anyone else on the Hill. It's subtle, but so is

the taste of dirt when it's in your mouth.''

Although the Capitol police have failed to produce a

surveillance tape of McKinney's confrontation with their

officer, the congresswoman captured one incident in the

movie, ``American Blackout,'' now being screened at sites

around the country. The film depicts McKinney's investigation

of voting irregularities in the 2000 elections. One segment

shows the congresswoman being accosted by police as she and

her party approach the Longworth building of the Capitol.

McKinney turns to the camera and reports that police subject

her to such treatment ``all the time.''

Does that happen to 535 members of congress ``all the

time''? Not hardly.

California Rep. Tom Lantos, according to the web reference

site Wikipedia, ``ran over a teenager in the Capitol parking

area and refused to stop despite screams from the crowd. He

never apologized for the hit-and-run either.'' The Boston

Globe reported that Lantos was not charged with hit-and-run,

but was only fined $25 for ``failure to pay full time and

attention.'' However, a teacher accompanying the student

was threatened with arrest by Capitol police when she

chased Lantos' car, demanding that he stop.

Apparently Capitol police are quite zealous in protecting

their lawmakers--if they are white.

In an otherwise inane, anti-McKinney article, Black

columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson gave some historical

perspective to recent events:

``In past years, the Caucus raised heck when a white

Republican Congressman punched a black Capitol police officer

and a year later Ohio Democratic Representative Louis Stokes

was hassled by Capitol police. And the Congressional Black

Caucus rushed to their defense.''

Not this time, not for Cynthia McKinney. The Congressional

Black Caucus is broken.

Sex and the Federal City

Around midnight on April 8, Saturday Night Live's Kenan

Thompson performed a grotesque, bewigged skit in which he

conjured up a fat, sloppy, dull-witted, belligerent, loud-

talking, no-listening, from-deep-in-the-ghetto character who

was supposed to be--Cynthia McKinney. Of course, this TV

minstrel's interpretation bore no resemblance to the

congressperson--daughter of one of Atlanta's first Black

policemen, a former faculty member at Clark Atlanta

University, world traveler and sought-after speaker, six-term

legislator. But that did not matter. Although SNL does superb

work caricaturing public personalities, its usual standards

did not apply in McKinney's case. The skit was a dehumanizing

assault on Black women as a group, with ``Cynthia'' standing

in for the female gender of her race.

A specific profile of Black women exists in the minds of

vast sections of white America. As Dr. Abdul Karim Bangura

relates in this issue of BC, in ``an analysis of White

students'' stereotypes of Black women by professor of women's

studies and sociology Rose Weitz at Arizona State University

and Wakonse fellow Leonard Gordon at the same university, the

students primarily characterize Black women as loud,

aggressive, argumentative, stubborn, and bitchy.''

White men (and women, and some Black men) on and off

Capitol Hill are eager to vilify and diminish McKinney, to

call her a ``bitch,'' a ``racist,'' ``crazy'' and all manner

of epithets. This abuse is actually directed against the

defamers' twisted idea of who and what Black women are. So

diseased are their minds, they see only their sickness-

induced delusions. White supremacy allows them to translate

their delusions into public policy. September 11 gave them a

free pass to run buck wild, with no apologies, under the

umbrella of ``homeland security.''

Black Voters Will Decide

It can be no consolation to Rep. McKinney, that she is just

a convenient target for what we now recognize as a great

resurgence of racism in the United States. The South rules a

South that is not defined geographically but socio-

politically. White Americans have become much more homogenous

in the electronic and high-mobility age--to the detriment of

sanity. Their never-forsaken dreams of domestic and planetary

racial conquest were given a Frankenstein-like jolt and boost

by the Bush regime, which spoke directly to the predatory

core of American myth and historical practice. Emboldened,

they have snared Cynthia McKinney in one of their IRTs:

Improvised Racist Traps. She awaits the decision of a grand

jury.

The moral and political collapse of the Congressional Black

Caucus could not come at a worse time--but it has occurred.

Corroded by corporate money dependent on corporate media--

with the near extinction of independent Black media--adrift

in the gulf between the needs of the Black masses and the

narrow aspirations of the minuscule hyper-mobile Black

classes and still steeped in rank male chauvinism much of

Black ``leadership'' cannot abide a genuinely progressive,

charismatic female in their midst. Many also look on in

sulking jealousy at the burgeoning unity and militancy of

Latinos, whose grassroots are on the move and whose media

support their cause.

The CBC cannot even support each other.

When CBC members urged Cynthia McKinney to forsake the

truth, to hide the ugly fact of racial (and political, and

sexual) profiling they gave enormous aide and comfort to the

enemy. If there was one victory that African Americans had

achieved in the post-Civil Rights era it was to make racial

profiling legally, politically and socially unacceptable.

This victory was the fruit of countless suitor

demonstrations--all manner of political struggles--and the

legacy of the legions of dead, maimed, jailed and humiliated

victims of profiling who became the focus of sustained Black

action.

September 11 provided the excuse to undo decades of anti-

profiling victories. Profiling is reckoned to be a good

thing. Now the racists seek to reestablish arbitrary and

capricious white supremacy, with legislation that would de

facto deputize every police officer as an agent of ``homeland

security'' who need not respect the constitution in the case

of ``suspected'' undocumented immigrants. At that point, all

persons of color become grist for the suspicion mill. Just as

the Capitol policeman chose not ``recognize'' Cynthia

McKinney as a congressperson, any cop could willfully fail to

recognize his fellow Americans and strip them of their

rights. Such a regime already exists in designated ``drug

zones'' in urban America where everyone is suspect.

Yet the CBC allows Republicans and racist Democrats to jeer

and bully Cynthia McKinney into a legal cul-de-sac because

she dares to cite profiling.

The masses of African Americans know the deal--they are

profiled constantly in stores, when observed outside their

neighborhoods, on the highways, when breathing while Black.

McKinney's version of events does not seem bizarre to them.

Although the laughing racist hyenas convince each other--with

the tacit help of be chair Mel Watt--that McKinney is on the

ropes, it is the Black constituents of Dekalb County who will

decide if she is ``crazy'' for standing up for her (and our)

dignity and rights.

When McKinney arrived back in Atlanta shortly after her

confrontation with the uniformed profiler, State

Representative Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia

Association of Black Elected officials, was among those to

greet and support her: ``It's really not about Cynthia

McKinney,'' said Brooks. ``It's about African-Americans in

America who are victims of racial profiling every day.''

Much of the Congressional Black Caucus seem to have lost

touch with this reality. As a body, they have lost their

moorings, and must be rehabilitated, surgically. A bunch of

them have got to go.

BC Co-Publishers Glen Ford and Peter Gamble are writing a

book to be titled, Barack Obama and the Crisis in Black

Leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I come before this body today as a proud American and as a servant of the American people, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Throughout my tenure, I've always tried to speak the truth. It is that commitment that brings me here today.

We have a President who has misgoverned and a Congress that has refused to hold him accountable. It is a grave situation and I believe the stakes for our country are high.

No American is above the law, and if we allow a President to violate, at the most basic and fundamental level, the trust of the people and then continue to govern, without a process for holding him accountable--what does that say about our commitment to the truth? To the Constitution? To our democracy?

The trust of the American people has been broken. And a process must be undertaken to repair this trust. This process must begin with honesty and accountability.

Leading up to our invasion of Iraq, the American people supported this Administration's actions because they believed in our President. They believed he was acting in good faith. They believed that American laws and American values would be respected. That in the weightiness of everything being considered, two values were rock solid--trust and truth.

From mushroom clouds to African yellow cake to aluminum tubes, the American people and this Congress were not presented the facts, but rather were presented a string of untruths, to justify the invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, along with Vice President Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Rice, portrayed to the Congress and to the American people that Iraq represented an imminent threat, culminating with President Bush's claim that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. Having used false fear to buy consent--the President then took our country to war.

This has grave consequences for the health of our democracy, for our standing with our allies, and most of all, for the lives of our men and women in the military and their families--who have been asked to make sacrifices--including the ultimate sacrifice--to keep us safe.

Just as we expect our leaders to be truthful, we expect them to abide by the law and respect our courts and judges. Here again, the President failed the American people.

When President Bush signed an executive order authorizing unlawful spying on American citizens, he circumvented the courts and the law, and he violated the separation of powers provided by the Constitution. Once the program was revealed, he then tried to hide the scope of his offense from the American people by making contradictory, untrue statements.

President George W. Bush has failed to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States; he has failed to ensure that senior members of his administration do the same; and he has betrayed the trust of the American people.

With a heavy heart and in the deepest spirit of patriotism, I exercise my duty and responsibility to speak truthfully about what is before us. To shy away from this responsibility would be easier. But I have not been one to travel the easy road. I believe in this country, and in the power of our democracy. I feel the steely conviction of one who will not let the country I love descend into shame; for the fabric of our democracy is at stake.

Some will call this a partisan vendetta, others will say this is an unimportant distraction to the plans of the incoming Congress. But this is not about political gamesmanship.

I am not willing to put any political party before my principles.

This, instead, is about beginning the long road back to regaining the high standards of truth and democracy upon which our great country was founded.

Mr. Speaker, under the standards set by the United States Constitution, President Bush--along with Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Rice--should be subject to the

process of impeachment, and I have filed H. Res. 1106 in the House of Representatives.

To my fellow Americans, as I leave this Congress, it is in your hands--to hold your representatives accountable, and to show those with the courage to stand for what is right, that they do not stand alone.

Madam Speaker, I was unavoidably delayed getting to the floor due to Delta Flight #634 being delayed due to bad weather in the area and missed rollcall vote Nos. 394 and 395 on July 24, 2006. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Members of the House and the Senate for passing legislation that included language authorizing the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area in my district.

Mr. Speaker, this is a boon to the environmental community that seeks to preserve pristine areas everywhere. But for such an area to be in the middle of a bustling African American community is especially rare.

We need green space in south DeKalb, and this will go a very long way toward realizing a community dream. Initially, our thought was to have the funding go to the country or the State, and that was reflected in one version of the bill.

However, the House Resources Committee adopted a private-public partnership approach. Good stewardship of taxpayer dollars is extremely important, and I want to work closely with the private entity to make sure that the community and its concerns always come first.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to walking the nature trials in both DeKalb and Rockdale Counties that will be made possible by the Congressional action today.

I would also like to thank the Georgia Department of Natural Resources that also lent its support to this very important bill.

Mr. Chairman, many of my colleagues have expressed some bit of surprise at the virulence coming from the Republican Members of the Georgia delegation. Well, let me just say that I am not surprised at all, because I was born in Georgia and I live there. I served in the Georgia legislature with a few of them.

But let me also say that just this week the second attempt by the Georgia legislature to impose a voter ID bill on the people of our State was struck down by the courts in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

We also learned in 2002, in my own election, with the crossover vote, that crossover voting can be used as effectively as the all-white primary was in days past.

So we need the Voting Rights Act. We need it because we are looking at the State of Georgia. We see what you are doing. And now the Nation also sees that the State of Georgia desperately needs to be under the Voting Rights Act because some things still have not changed.

Mr. Chairman, during rollcall No. 370, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment No. 2 Offered by Mr. Gohmert

Mr. Speaker, the Voting Rights Act was passed to put an end to intimidation of poor and black voters.

Sadly, acts of intimidation and voter fraud directed at black and Latino voters are not just a thing of the past. In 2000, Florida's blacks were intimidated and illegally removed from the voter rolls. In 2002, in my district in Georgia, we learned that crossover voting can be used as effectively as the all-white primaries once were. In 2004, Ohio's black voters faced intimidation and fabricated long lines by misallocating the voting machines. Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting was ruled by this Supreme Court to violate Latino voting rights. And just last week, the Georgia legislature's second Voter ID bill got smacked down by the courts a second time.

The Voting Rights Act is relevant and necessary to protect our precious right to vote.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 306, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, I know from time to time all of us have to balance our bank books. Now if the discrepancy is $9, we might ignore it figuring we made a small error.

If it were $90, most of us would recalculate and discover the error and call the bank.

If the statement is off $900, we will probably be down at the bank visiting the manager.

If our account is missing $9,000, we would be on the phone to our lawyer.

At $90,000, it would probably mean that we were working at Enron.

If $900,000 were missing from an account, there would probably be a call to the accountant, the IRS and our creditors. Or else we might be a CEO working at a large corporation who lost their bonus.

When $9 million shows up missing, usually that means contract overruns

or fraud and a government audit is inevitable.

A congressional committee might look into unaccounted expenditures of $90 million, and we might read about it in the New York Times.

When $900 million goes missing, corporations collapse, mergers are cancelled, contracts are terminated, inspectors general are appointed, contracts are sometimes banned or fined, and charges are brought to court and people usually begin to take notice.

I point all of this out to ask what should happen when we find out that $9 billion is discovered by an official investigation to be missing in our contracting accounts for the reconstruction of Iraq relating to one corporation, Halliburton, and oil revenues. Apparently, this administration thinks very little should happen because there has been no further investigation, appointment of a special inspector, a charge against a person responsible, or even any penalty or ban on that corporation which continues to make massive profits from contracts with the U.S. military despite evidence of overcharging, minimal accountability for funds, incompetence, and abuses of international and civil rights.

And if that doesn't concern us enough to act, shouldn't we pause over recent revelations of an additional $12 billion in unaccounted funding shipped as currency in $100 bills directly to Iraq from the Federal Reserve? Worse yet is the story we are learning from the funds we can account for and how they have been spent or misspent, stolen or wasted, and how little they have improved the lives of the Iraqi people they are supposed to help.

The expenditures for the Iraq war continue to grow at a rate that is putting our country into levels of spending and debt never seen before. Don't the American people deserve a full accounting of where their tax dollars are going at a time when more money is being spent to allegedly improve the infrastructure and life-style of the people of Iraq than here at home.

Mr. Speaker, on the eve of the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, I come to the floor to say to that the dream of full participation by all Americans has yet to be fulfilled. And, in fact, even at the dawn of a new century, black voters are still confronted with a concerted effort to deny their right to vote when it is politically necessary and expedient to do so.

We can start with the fiasco that brought the current administration to power, the Florida vote of 2000. First of all, in testimony from African American voters in Florida, outright voter intimidation is documented in dozens of cases.

You know, the passage of time is a wonderful thing. It makes wine taste better; it makes women look better; it makes us long for the days of good music, however we define ``good music.'' The older songs always just seem the best.

So, too, it is with information. But with the passage of time, truth crushed to the Earth, rises. The ashes of the Phoenix rise.

As a result of a town hall meeting that I organized in Georgia, bringing in the vice president of ChoicePoint, the company hired by the Florida Board of Elections under the control of the then Secretary of State Katherine Harris, we now know that ChoicePoint was asked to provide an incorrect list of supposed convicted felons who would be denied the right to vote in Florida. The only thing is that the list compiled by ChoicePoint imported data from several States; Ohio, New Jersey and Texas.

Now, it just so happens that the Governor of Texas is now our President, and the interesting thing about the list that was given from Texas to Katherine Harris in Florida is that it was not a list of convicted felons. The Texas list was a list of those convicted of misdemeanors, thereby enlarging the number of entrants on the ChoicePoint list destined for Florida.

Now, why is this important? Because the method of disenfranchisement in Florida was to deny people the right to vote based on fictitious felony conviction records. And since Katherine Harris had told ChoicePoint that she only wanted an 80 percent match, an example is that John Smythe, who had committed a misdemeanor in Texas, say, for example, became John Smith, a convicted felon in Florida. The list was labeled by race, so that the folks down in Florida knew who would be denied the right to vote before the voting even started.

As a result, ChoicePoint presented a list of about 90,000 so-called convicted felons, whose only crime was being registered to vote in a battleground State whose leaders were willing to commit crimes in order to deny people the right to vote. And I am sorry that the Democrats didn't fight this gross travesty of justice carried out against black voters.

Now, there will be folks who will say that we don't need a Voting Rights Act any more. If you ask George Wallace or George Maddox or, for that matter, even Strom Thurmond back then, I am sure they would have said you didn't need a Voting Rights Act then too. I am sure they would have said no.

But if this gross disenfranchisement scheme could happen in 2000, it means that the right to vote and the right to representation are still precious, so precious that we have to have laws in place to protect those who will not respect the rights of their fellow Americans.

Then in 2002 we learned that crossover voting can be used as effectively as the all-white primaries were to deny African American voters their right to choose their representatives.

I am glad to know that Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, our colleague, has filed a lawsuit against Mississippi's open primary statute. We need to rid the South of open primaries, because, as in my State, they were enacted in the days when the lips of staunch segregationists dripped with the words of nullification and interposition.

The advent of the electronic voting machines offers another peril to the voting rights of all Americans who use them. In my own district, those machines broke down, burned out, froze screens and cast votes for the candidate not intended by the voter.

In Georgia, our machines are also equipped with a wireless capability. That means that somebody who has got a Treo that is properly outfitted can come in and change the outcome of

an election just by entering the signal space of a voting machine. Since no action has been taken by the Federal Government to prevent any of these abuses, we can expect more of the same.

And speaking of voting machines, the allocation of those machines is also done to manipulate the outcome. Who wants to wait 5 hours in line in the rain to vote? Thousands of voters in Ohio had to do that and it just so happened that they were black. Scholars and researchers have done the math. Voting machines were allocated not by the number of registered voters by precinct, but by some other calculation. How could majority black precincts in Columbus, OH have 3, 4, or 5 machines and have over 1,000 voters in their precincts, and mostly Republican precincts in say, Dublin, OH had the same number of machines for one third the number of voters?

This pattern of devaluing and marginalizing the black vote was seen again in the recent Mayoral election in New Orleans. Here it was not Republicans, but a conservative Democratic Governor who blocked efforts to provide electronic polling stations to enable hundreds of thousands of mostly Black Katrina survivors the chance to vote. It was among the largest instance of African-American voter disfranchisement since the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Since no action has been taken by the Federal Government to prevent any of these abuses, we can expect more of the same. In addition, in the coming Fall election we will see the introduction of electronic poll-books, which are untested and non-transparent. Governor Ehrlich of Maryland, a Republican, has deemed this new addition to the voting experience to be unreliable.

So, Mr. Speaker, who cares? We care. And that is why we need a Voting Rights Act. Not to tarry in the days of the past, but to protect us from encroachments on the right to vote that occur today and that might be tried tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, this administration speaks of patriotism, yet cuts health care for wounded soldiers, now numbering over 18,000. It wraps itself in the flag, the same flag draping the coffins of our dead, numbering over 2,500 as of today.

Yet now there are revelations of $12 billion missing from the Treasury, shipped to Iraq in $100 bills and distributed in ways we may never learn, bringing a total of unaccounted funds from the Iraq Rebuilding Fund to $21 billion.

Yet the Bush administration has launched no investigation, has imposed no penalties on the corporations involved. The American people have been defrauded of our money, our morality, and the precious lives of our soldiers.

Mr. Speaker, this week several of my colleagues and I are circulating a chart listing 176 Katrina bills, out of which only a dozen have become law to date. As we sit here today, dozens of survivors are protesting the injustices suffered at the hands of FEMA. Hurricane season is upon us again, and FEMA continues to deny housing assistance to tens of thousands of needy families, many of them now rendered homeless.

New Orleans remains a toxic disaster zone that still looks much like it did the day after the hurricane. Despite the tens of billions of dollars spent on no-bid, sweetheart contracts, much of it wasted.

Will the 163 Katrina bills sitting in committee also go to waste? Or will Congress address the ongoing specific needs of the survivors by moving existing legislation and checking fraud and abuse by providing real oversight of appropriations?

The choice is ours.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my colleague, Mr. Owens, in commending Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey for her consistent and strong voice in opposition to the war in Iraq. It is a voice that is needed in this Congress. She utters words and takes positions that are needed, that we need to hear in this Congress, and those positions reflect the positions of the American people and the people in her district. I have had the opportunity to actually visit her district, and I know that Lynn speaks well with respect to the issues and their position on this war.

I would like to talk about another aspect of President Bush's Middle East policy that I think could be problematic for us if the interpretation is one along the lines of the interpretation of information that was received that led us into the war in Iraq.

What I am talking about is the April 26 national emergency that was declared by President Bush. On that day, he issued an executive order to freeze the assets of those suspected to have been involved in the October 1, 2004, assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. On the face of it, this might look like a straightforward attempt to bring justice to the perpetrators of a heinous act of terrorism. But I decided I would not just rest with the Speaker's announcement, the Clerk's announcement, and that I would actually read the document. I read the document, and then I reread the document, and then I read it for a third time.

When we examine the language of the document, we have to ask ourselves are there some other motives involved in the issuance of this executive order.

The reason I say that is because of the language that is used in the executive order. It says that this executive order applies to persons involved in ``any other bombing that implicates the government of Syria or its officers or agents.''

Now the keyword is ``implicate'' because that means that you are talking about bringing into intimate or incriminating connection. Well, I remember, and I was not in this body in 2003, but the President chose to invade Iraq in 2003 because we were told that Iraq was implicated in possessing weapons of mass destruction. That Iraq was implicated in the tragic events of September 11.

We now know that both of those implications were false, but that is after nearly 2,500 young men and women from these shores have been killed, countless thousands others have either mangled bodies or addled minds as a result of the shock and the shell shock and the presence in the theater of war.

How many tens of thousands of Iraqis are now dead as a result of the implications that the American people were told and then action taken on those implications?

Now once again, the President is implicating an Arab regime and taking action that preempts a conclusive investigation into the facts.

This administration has already made ominous utterances about the need for regime change in both Syria and Iran, and I would just ask this Congress before it relinquishes any more power, please examine the facts before we plunge ourselves into another military disaster in the Middle East.

Mr. Speaker, war is not an acceptable energy policy. This bill is an attempt to dupe the American public into thinking that drilling in ANWR will lower gas prices. It is a disservice to the American people. This bill is really about serving ANWR to the oil industry lobby, something they have coveted for a very long time.

Just by making cars modestly more efficient, Americans could save $25 billion a year and 1 million barrels of oil per day. Republicans should really deal with our energy problems and not this handout to the oil lobby.