Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, requiring Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine or even go to jail if the fine tax is unpaid is utterly without constitutional authority. Under the Constitution, a citizen has no affirmative duty to purchase a mandated congressional product. Citizens have the right to do nothing.

The bruisers of the Constitution claim people must buy car insurance. That analogy is flawed. First, States, not Congress, have authority under the 10th Amendment that is not given to Congress. Second, driving is a privilege, not a right, and to exercise that privilege, a driver must buy insurance. But no one is forced to drive a car. Third, car insurance is to protect a third party from the driver. No State requires a driver to buy insurance for themselves.

A better analogy would be, in the name of promoting commerce, forcing all people to buy a car whether they wanted to or not, whether they could afford it or not, or be punished. Congress, by force, requiring all people to buy a product, whether it's health insurance or a car or even a box of doughnuts is unconstitutional and abuse of congressional authority.

And that's just the way it is.

I appreciate the gentlewoman for yielding. I totally support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, the First Amendment to our Constitution is first for a reason. The items stated in the First Amendment--the right of freedom of religion, the right of freedom of speech and of a free press and the right to peaceably assemble--are in the First Amendment because they are the most important. Without those four, the rest of the amendments that follow are meaningless, especially the two which deal with freedom of speech and with the freedom of press.

You will notice the amendment to our Constitution guarantees a free press. It does not guarantee a fair press, as ``fair'' is always in the eyes of the beholder; but it guarantees the right that a press may exist and communicate, first, through the written word about what is taking place in a free society, in a democracy, in a republic. Iran is a perfect example of a nation that does not believe in a free press or in a press of any kind. It does not want to have its illegitimate regime exposed to the world in order to let the world know what is taking place in that country.

We have all seen the students who protested last summer and, more recently, in the last week and a half. We have all seen how the regime in Iran blocked Internet access and blocked cell phone usage so that photographs of what took place could not be transmitted somewhere else. We have seen that journalists were hauled off to jail and were tried before the star chamber in secret and that some of them were sentenced to the penitentiary. Speech is silenced in Iran, both that of the oral word and the written word. A free press is the enemy of a dictator.

President Ahmadinejad is in defiance of world peace. He is determined to build nuclear weapons, and he is determined to build missiles that are capable of delivering those nuclear weapons. Of course, he has made those plans of his clear to destroy Israel and to be a constant threat to the West, especially to Europe and to the United States. He oppresses his own people. That is why those people, those young people, including journalists and reform clergy members, are opposing his legitimacy to be ruler over them.

My own opinion is that, in that nation, the more the world hears about what takes place there, the more the world will support the people of Iran and a regime change. I hope that we stand by the people of Iran, who desire to have self-determination and to rule their country in spite of their rogue dictator.

Of course, now before us today is another bill regarding sanctions of Iran. I, personally, am not a big fan of sanctions. Historically, they haven't worked. Some countries have always figured out a way to get around it. To me, sanctions usually mean that we kick the problem on down the road with the intention of maybe dealing with it later. However, preventing refined gasoline from getting to Iran is a good idea, and that is what this sanction that we will talk about later and vote on is all about. It may have the result of helping the people of Iran change their illegitimate government.

Mr. Speaker, dictators hate a free press, but a free press is essential to a free people whether those free people are in the United States or whether those free people are in the nation of Iran.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, we debate throughout the world the concept of global warming, but we don't call it that any more; we call it climate change. All the big leaders of the world are in Denmark talking about how they can figure out a way to control man, to make sure that man, the evildoer, the polluter of the world, does not continue to pollute our wonderful climate.

The consensus has been for some time that global warming, climate change, continues because man is the perpetrator. Now we are beginning to learn that may not be true, that there is not a consensus that there is global warming or climate change. We now have heard about Climategate, where the expert scientists hid emails in England that disagreed with the so-called consensus that there is global warming and global climate change. We have heard now new evidence that even NASA is involved in not revealing evidence that contradicts climate change.

I think a history lesson is in order, Madam Speaker, and I would like to read from a couple of well thought of, in the science community, a couple of magazine articles. One of them is under the Science section of Time magazine. It's dated June 24, but the year is 1974. The article begins with this comment, ``Another Ice Age?'' So much for global warming.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather patterns of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory events are occurring in global climate upheaval. The weather widely varies from place to place and time to time.

When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler the last three decades and the trend shows no indication of reversing. Let me repeat that. According to scientists in 1974, the trend shows no indication of reversing the cooling trend.

Scientists are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another Ice Age.

If we were to live in 1974, and, you know, I actually lived in 1974, I read this article then, I believed it. I believe we were all going to freeze in the dark. It goes on to say that a part of the problem is man polluting the atmosphere with farming. Because man farms and the dust gets up into the air, that blocks the sun rays from coming to Earth, and that actually cools the Earth. Maybe that's another new idea of carbon emission cooling that was in 1974.

The following year that notable news magazine, Newsweek, April 28, 1975, under its Science section in the back, talks about the cooling world. There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may be bringing a drastic decline in food production throughout the world.

To scientists these dramatic incidents represent the advanced signs of a fundamental change in the world's whether. The central fact, you got that word, fact, is that after three-quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down. And that's from Newsweek.

Here is a chart they put in their expert scientific article, and it's entitled--I think it's nice they put it in the ice-blue color-- Newsweek, ``The Cooling World,'' and it shows that average temperatures are getting colder. Of course, it goes off the chart, colder and colder, April 28, 1978.

Like I said, Madam Speaker, I believed we were all going to freeze in the dark. The scientists told us that we were going to freeze in the dark because of the weather patterns. Climates do change, Madam Speaker. In the 1970s it was getting cooler. Now they say it's getting warmer. Now they just say it's climate change.

Climates do change. That's what seasons are. Most of the world up here in the north has seasons. Now, we don't have seasons in Houston. We have two seasons--we have summer, and we have August. Other than that, the seasons change. In most parts of the world they get warm, they get cold.

We are going to try to trust the world's climate predictions to a group of people from the 1970s and now, 2000, to a group of people who can't even predict correctly tomorrow's weather. You know, people in the weather industry are the only people I know who consistently can be wrong and keep their jobs. But yet, these same people who can't predict tomorrow's weather are trying to predict the weather from now on, that climate change is occurring because man is the culprit.

And that's just the way it is.

[From Newsweek, Apr. 28, 1975]

(By Peter Gwynne)

The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns

have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may

have

drastic decline in food production--with serious political

implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop

in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years

from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the

great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the

north, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient

tropical areas--parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,

Indochina and Indonesia--where the growing season is

dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun

to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-

pressed to keep up with it.

In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline

by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss

in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.

During the same time, the average temperature around the

equator has risen by a fraction of a degree--a fraction that

in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in

the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148

twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a

billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.

Trend: To scientists, these incidents represent the advance

signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The

central fact is that after three quarters of a century of

extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to

be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and

extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific

impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost

unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural

productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic

change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the

resulting famines could be catastrophic. ``A major

climatic change would force economic and social

adjustments on a worldwide scale,'' warns a recent report

by the National Academy of Sciences, ``because the global

patterns of food production and population that have

evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the

present century.''

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a

drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the

Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to

George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos

indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere

snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released

last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of

sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S.

diminished by 1.3 percent between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature

and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the

University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average

temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7

degrees lower than during its warmest eras--and that the

present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way

toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a

reversion to the ``little ice age'' conditions that brought

bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between

1600 and 1900--years when the Thames used to freeze so

solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when

iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New

York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages

remains a mystery. ``Our knowledge of the mechanisms of

climat- ic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,''

concedes the National Academy of Sciences report ``Not

only are the basic scientific questions largely

unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to

pose the key questions.''

Extremes: Meteorologists think that they can forecast the

short-term results of the return to the norm of the last

century. They begin by noting the slight drop in over-all

temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers

in the atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of

westerly, winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air

produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local

weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long

freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature

increases--all of which have a direct impact on food

supplies.

``The world's food-producing system,'' warns Dr. James D.

McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental

Assessment, ``is much more sensitive to the weather variable

than it was even five years ago.'' Furthermore, the growth of

world population and creation of new national boundaries make

it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their

devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will

take any positive action to compensate for the climatic

change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some

of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting

the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or

diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater

than those they solve. But the scientist see few signs that

government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the

simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the

variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections

of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the

more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change

once the results become grim reality.

Madam Speaker, on Friday October 30, 2009 Jodi Esquivel passed away after a two-year long battle with kidney cancer.

Jodi, a middle school English teacher in Nederland, Texas touched many lives in her short 27 years of life. Her smile was infectious and her unwavering strength and endless faith touched all those she met.

In 2007, after suffering months of back pain, Jodi was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She was in the early stages of her second pregnancy when results of an MRI showed a cancerous tumor in her kidney that had spread to her spine in three places.

Jodi leaves behind husband Justin and three year old daughter Hallie. Her family and friends celebrate Jodi for the love she shared with them and the lessons she taught them throughout her life.

Madam Speaker, on December 10, 2009 the Iraqi government announced that it is going to forcibly displace thousands of Iranian dissidents living in Camp Ashraf to a remote prison in the Iraqi desert. The Iraqi government knows the world recognizes Camp Ashraf as a refuge for those who stand tall for freedom and democracy, so it is demolishing their homes they have lived in for over 20 years and moving them to southern Iraq, where the Iraqi government thinks it can do whatever it wants to them and the world won't notice.

The families in Camp Ashraf's biggest crime is that they love freedom and oppose the oppressive Iranian regime. Tehran has for months now pressured the Iraqi government to hand over Camp Ashraf residents so it can imprison and torture them just like they do to all

who dare speak out against the regime. This is no secret: Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani explicitly asked Iraqi lawmakers in early November to expel these dissidents from Iraqi soil.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, wanting to better relations with Iran, sent Iraqi government forces to brutally attack Camp Ashraf residents in July. It was a humanitarian catastrophe leaving 11 unarmed residents dead, 500 wounded, and 36 abducted.

We cannot ignore any perpetrator, whether friend or foe, who seeks to violently and brutally oppress innocent people. America cannot forget the people of Camp Ashraf.

Prime Minister Al-Maliki should stand by repeated and written assurances he has given to the United States and the United Nations to respect the fundamental rights of the residents of Ashraf. These are ``protected persons'' under the Fourth Geneva Convention. President Obama should honor the U.S. government's repeated promises to protect these people.

The President and Secretary Clinton should undertake whatever steps necessary to ensure the safety and well-being of the residents of Camp Ashraf. The increasingly vulnerable regime in Tehran must not be allowed to extend its repressive tentacles beyond Iran's border and crack down on its principal opposition. Someone must stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

It's bad enough that Iran brutalizes Iranian dissidents in Iran; the world cannot ignore Iran's intent to brutalize its own people in Camp Ashraf in the foreign country of Iraq as well.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, in a purported letter to the editor, Alicia Church states, ``I don't understand why the White House is so upset about two party crashers . . . Is it appropriate and politically correct to call them party crashers just because they trespassed?

``Does that make them criminals? Isn't that discrimination? Shouldn't they be rewarded for such bold and brave behavior? Maybe they were just trying to feed their family? Isn't it more appropriate to call them undocumented guests? Just because they weren't officially invited guests doesn't mean they should be treated like criminals.

``Maybe they should get free health care, free housing, free legal services, and free White House green cards so next time they can enter legally. And they should be able to bring all of their relatives and family members, too.

``How can anyone be mad at them just because they crossed over some arbitrary man-made border? They were only doing things that regularly invited guests didn't want to do, like hang out with Vice President Biden. How can the White House punish these poor, oppressed, undocumented visitors?''

Madam Speaker, how ironic; the government panics about two White House trespassers while the thousands who illegally trespass across our borders are completely ignored.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, the whole world has been watching what has taken place in Copenhagen, Denmark last week and this week. All the talk is about climate change and how man is affecting the climate, but what we need in this world is a climate change in Iran. That's right. We need to change the atmosphere in Iran with what has taken place with the little man from the desert, Ahmadinejad.

Last week and even this week, thousands of students--and here is a photograph of some of them--have taken to the streets to protest the regime of Ahmadinejad and how oppressive it is. They are complaining in this peaceful protest against the tyranny against the people of Iran. Not only Ahmadinejad, but they are protesting the radical mullahs and the Iranian military.

You see, these young people want what everybody throughout the world wants--freedom. Somewhere down in the way that we are made there is this spark; there is this flame of freedom. The people in Iran don't have that, so the young people have taken to the streets--the sons of Iran, the daughters of democracy--and they are protesting the oppressive government. They are protesting the fraudulent elections that got Ahmadinejad elected last summer. They are protesting the fact that they have no freedom in their own country. They have suffered the consequences for these protests. They have been beaten. They have been teargassed. They have been hauled off to jail.

The press has been oppressed as well. In fact, what has occurred is that the Internet has been closed, and cell phones have been blocked-- all in the name of preventing young people and others from protesting this oppressive regime.

We all remember this past summer how numerous students were murdered in the streets just because they complained to their government about what was taking place. Already 80 of those protesters, political prisoners, have been tried by the star chamber--in secret, away from anybody in a public trial--and 80 of them have received sentences in an Iranian prison of 15 years or more, and 5 of them have received a sentence of the death penalty.

Why? What is their crime?

Their crime is objecting to the oppression of their own government, and for that, they are punished. Of course, others have been shot in the streets just because they have taken to the streets to protest their government.

You know, the students aren't the only ones who have been arrested. Journalists have been arrested. Clerics, who call themselves ``reform clerics,'' and other people--all for the same reason--objecting to their government. They object to what has taken place.

By blocking the cell phones and Internet access, the government had hoped to keep the word from getting out to the rest of the world about this pollution, about this horrible climate in Iran, but the word has gotten out--photographs such as this one here. Here is another one of a young Iranian student having been beaten for taking to the streets to protest his government last week. This one also escaped the controlled press of the Iranian Government.

You know, Iran violates its own constitution by not allowing its people to protest and to lawfully assemble. They are standing for basic human rights. That's right--the right to peaceably assemble and to object to your government and what it's doing to you. It's the right of free speech--a basic human right. It's the right of a free press, which is a right we take for granted in this country.

So we need a regime change in Iran. The way to do that is to help these young people and the people who want to change their regime. We must support them. This country should support them in any way that we can.

Yes, President Ahmadinejad is the pollution of the world, and we need a change of climate in Iran. The students are sending a message to Iran's rogue government that you can beat us, you can arrest us, you can imprison us, but you will not stop us, and you will not intimidate us because we are not going away.

Good for them. We should be proud of those students. We should support them. We should have a climate change in Iran.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, the people of the Second District of Texas are proud to recognize the students, faculty, and staff of Bayshore Elementary School in La Porte, Texas. Bayshore Elementary has earned the prestigious rating of ``Exemplary'' from the Texas Education Agency. This honor is especially meaningful for the students, teachers, and administrators of Bayshore Elementary because of the challenges they faced in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.

Despite being dispersed to five other neighboring campuses, the students of Bayshore still performed at the ``Exemplary'' level on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. In the tradition of the Americans and Texans that have gone before them, the students and staff of Bayshore Elementary were able to rise above a difficult situation and achieve excellence in the face of adversity. This award not only recognizes their resilience but their determination to overcome difficulty and that is extremely honorable.

The Second District of Texas is proud of Bayshore Elementary school and commends them for their ``Exemplary'' award.

Madam Speaker, today the Second District of Texas recognizes attorney David Grove for being awarded the Mickey F. Mehaffy Award from the Jefferson County Bar Association, given each year to honor an attorney for their exceptional pro bono work. He has worked tirelessly to help less fortunate citizens find representation in the court of law.

David was born in Midland and attended the Baylor University School of Law. In 1978, after spending a summer as a law clerk in Beaumont, he returned to Jefferson County as an Assistant District Attorney. He joined a private firm 6 years later and started his solo practice in 1999.

David always donated his time and attention to pro bono work, however, he saw the need for it escalate after the double shot of Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Both of these hurricanes caused immense damage across Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana. This left many residents with damage claims against insurance companies who could not afford representation.

David is a leading advocate for the indigent, making sure they are treated fairly. He also donates a large amount of time to helping families through divorces or child custody cases. He realizes that some people do not have the resources available to defend themselves, their family, or their home, and he makes sure they have equal representation.

Madam Speaker, on behalf of the Second Congressional District and all of Southeast Texas, I want to congratulate David Grove for this wonderful accomplishment. Through his diligent efforts and dedication he has given a voice to many who thought they had none.

Mr. Speaker, in the aftermath of the Climategate scandal, we now learn that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data, blackballed dissenting scientists, and manipulated the peer-review process. The New York Times says that Climategate is no big deal. In a recent article in the Times, an editor, Clark Hoyt, responded to criticism that the newspaper has downplayed the story. Predictably, Hoyt, a ``Warmer'' disagreed, writing that Climategate is not a ``three-alarm story.'' He defended the Times' decision to ignore evidence that doesn't support global warming. He failed to mention that global warming alarmism and fears are largely based on discredited data.

The New York Times and the national media should report the news fairly, rather than downplaying stories that don't conform to their media bias agenda. Otherwise, Americans will continue to doubt the media's credibility. And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, it was 20 years ago November 9, 1989, that the most notorious symbol of the Cold War, The Iron Curtain, came crashing down. When the Berlin Wall was opened for ``private trips abroad'', thousands lined up at check points demanding passage. In the following days and weeks, hundreds celebrated by physically tearing down the concrete division so completely that very little of the actual wall remains.

The Berlin Wall was erected by the German Democratic Republic in 1961 separating Eastern and Western Germany to stop migration of East Germans trying to escape communism. The wall had many deterrents for those looking for escape. Its total border length around West Berlin was ninety-six miles with forty-one miles of wire mesh fencing, sixty- five miles of anti-vehicle trenches, and seventy-nine miles of contact or signal fence. It has been reported that between 136 and 192 people were killed on the Berlin Wall and about 200 persons injured by shooting while attempting to escape between 1961 and 1989.

November 9, 2009, two decades later, thousands cheered as colorfully decorated mammoth dominos set along a mile-long route were toppled; symbolizing the wall coming down and the fall of communist countries in Eastern Europe. On this day, we remember those brave, proud people who stood up to say no more!

Madam Speaker, Navy SEALs were in court yesterday accused of punching a terrorist. The SEALs are Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe, and Julio Huertas. In a nighttime raid last September, they were part of SEAL Team 10 that captured the most wanted terrorist in Iraq.

Ahmed Hashim Abed planned the barbaric ambush of four Blackwater security guards in 2004. Madam Speaker, the Americans were murdered. They were drug through the streets, mutilated, burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. During the public executions, our enemies cheered in front of news cameras. Abed didn't say he was allegedly assaulted until he was turned over to Iraqi authorities, however. The al Qaeda manual tells members when captured to complain of torture and mistreatment; it doesn't matter if it's true or not. And besides killing, these folks lie. Now SEALs are being court-martialed on the word of a braggadocios murderer.

Al Qaeda has learned to play the ``Treat Terrorists Nice Gang'' like useful misfits. One word from a killer and the accusers become the accused. The military should try the terrorist for murder and give the SEALs medals for capturing him.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, it seems the science behind man-made global warming is melting before our eyes. Now there is a chance that even NASA will be pulled into the worldwide Climategate scandal.

For nearly 3 years, NASA has been stonewalling requests under the Freedom of Information Act for information surrounding their own temperature manipulations. Earlier, we learned that the University of Anglia in England where those global warming scientists house themselves had been hiding emails that contradict their theory of global warming.

So now Climategate has a twin sister, NASAgate. Investors' Business Daily reported just yesterday on NASA being forced to change their climate records that the world has been using for years. They said, ``NASA was caught with its thermometers down when James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, announced that 1998 was the country's hottest year on record, with 2006 the third hottest.''

The last speaker, with all due respect, used these false statistics in his speech claiming global warming is a crisis. The fact is: ``NASA and Goddard were forced to correct the record in 2007 to show that 1934, decades before the old SUV, was in fact the warmest. In fact, the new numbers show that four of the country's 10 warmest years were in the 1930s.''

So how did NASA, the premier scientific agency of the United States, get such basic temperature calculations wrong? Did they cook the books too, just like the University of Anglia? We don't know. It turns out NASA has been blocking the Freedom of Information requests about that incident just like the scientists in Britain. What are they trying to hide? If global warming is a well-settled fact, why are these experts hiding the evidence to the contrary? And why isn't NASA following the Freedom of Information law? It's been 3 years since that information was requested. The public has a right to see the temperature data in these NASA emails. But there's more.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency was caught suppressing dissenting views, just like the Climategate warmers in Britain and NASA. One of the EPA's own scientists wrote a report refuting manmade global warming science, using the latest, most current information that says the Earth is actually cooling right now. In fact, the Earth has been cooling for more than a decade. That's really an inconvenient truth for Al Gore and the global warmers.

But the people at the EPA buried the dissenting report, just like the Climategate warmers did and maybe NASA. The EPA bureaucrats said their scientist's own report wasn't helping their agenda, so they hid it and threatened the scientist so he would keep his mouth shut. The question is: Why can't the public see the dissenting view from other scientists? Isn't that what science is all about? The reason: It appears to me that careers are at stake, along with millions upon billions of dollars.

In the 1970s, Time and Newsweek predicted global cooling, that the world was all going to freeze. But when climates began to warm, scientists changed that name to global warming instead of global cooling. And have we noticed that the planet has actually began to cool again? Madam Speaker, it even snowed last week in Houston. It never snows in Houston. A snow in Houston is about as frequent as a hurricane in Iowa.

But the warmers, again, have changed the name of that catastrophe. It's now no longer global warming; it is climate change. That's a safe bet, because the climate does change almost every day. And why would they do this? What's the motivation for these scientists to apparently cook the books on global cooling or warming or climate change? It's money.

According to the leaked Climategate documents, the British university, the CRU at the center of the Climategate scandal, has received millions of dollars. NASA's climate change warmers stand to receive a billion dollars in funding this year alone. Global warming is big business. Fox News reported today that former Vice President Al Gore may be the world's first carbon billionaire. He makes money preaching fear in the name of global warming.

It's a great thing to make money in America. That's what capitalism is all about. But it's not okay to earn money from investing in green technology companies and, at the same time, forcing expensive green laws and EPA regulations on the American people based upon science that is not a fact. In the real world of science, if your calculations are wrong by data and observation, you have to throw out the hypothesis.

Some of the computer models using CRU data as a result are falsified. That includes the global warming claims. And these are the top warmer scientists. These scientists and their dogma of fear is about control and obtaining taxpayer money. Ronald Reagan said it best: Government does not solve problems; it just continues to subsidize them.

And that's just the way it is.

Madam Speaker, for 100 years, scientists at the Research and Extension Center in Beaumont, Texas, have worked to provide economic security to agricultural producers in southeast Texas. The center was created by the Texas legislature in 1909, and was charged with developing rice production and management programs for the Texas upper gulf coast. Today the center occupies ca. 960 acres near Beaumont, 113 acres in Eagle Lake, and 18 acres near Ganado, and is 1 of 13 research and extension centers affiliated with the Texas A&M University System and Texas AgriLife Research, the State's premier research agency in agriculture, natural resources, and the life sciences.

The Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Beaumont is the preeminent center in developing high quality, high yielding rice varieties, economically competitive and environmentally sustainable rice production and management systems, rice water conservation programs, cellulosic bioenergy crop production systems, and cutting- edge internet-based crop, pest, and environmental resource management decision programs and databases, providing economic well being to thousands of families in southeast Texas.

The center scientists work extremely closely with Texas rice producers and rice producers across the U.S., and maintain research programs with scientists from across Texas and from California, Louisiana, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, and Mississippi. Current international research partners include scientists from Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, and Sri Lanka, which has lead to the development of economically competitive and environmentally sound management systems that benefit Texas, the U.S., and the world.

The Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Beaumont is a showcase of agricultural and environmental research in the Upper Gulf Coast and looks forward to serving the needs of Texas, the Nation, and the world into the next century.

Madam Speaker, the American Flag always brings our Nation together in good or bad times. Shortly after the tragic September 11, 2001 attacks on our great Country, Americans all over the world raised up `old glory' in patriotic understanding of the events which had just befallen our country. One of these many flags was the symbol of our nation's perseverance, humbly flown over Ground Zero. This flag continues to fly today all around this great Nation in support of our heroes, because of Texas Patriot Chris Heisler.

In the wake of September 11th, Chris Heisler, felt compelled to take action after witnessing his country come under attack. Chris was instrumental in organizing one of the longest police motorcades in the history of the United States; carrying a flag that was gifted to him by the Texas House of Representatives he set out for Ground Zero. The American flag is a symbol to revere, respect, and honor and Chris' profound respect for America's symbol should be commended.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, patriotism surged in the United States. Many new recruits enlisted to help fight the war on terrorism. Chris Heisler was part of this movement, and at the age of 34 he put his business career on hold to enlist in the U.S. Army. While serving his country, Chris carried his revered flag with him to Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq so it could fly with soldiers in combat zones.

Soon soldiers would refer to this flag as one of honor, and the flag is now named the United States Honor Flag. The United States Honor Flag continues to pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in the line of duty protecting the freedoms we all hold dear. Chris Heisler's patriotism is a lesson for us all.

Madam Speaker, betterment in our country often originates from the efforts of just one person. The establishment of the Honor Flag serves as an important reminder of the daily sacrifices our Nations heroes make, and recognizes the freedoms of Old Glory. In recognition of Chris Heisler's patriotism, in remembrance of the tragic events on September 11, 2001 and for those who continue to fight to preserve our liberty, I am proud to salute Chris Heisler for his loyalty to America, and to the United States Flag.

And that's just the way it is.