Last updated on February 28th, 2013 at 01:34 pm
Five-Term Texas District 1 Congressional Representative, Louie Gohmert has several things going for him in the radical-right’s race to become the most intellectually inert party in the history of American politics. Of course he’s a Republican. Of course he’s a member of the Tea Party. He’s a Baptist. He’s from Texas and recently nominated newly defeated ex-Florida Representative Allen West, who is arguably even wackier than Louie, for Speaker of the House (and yes, the Speaker need not be a sitting Representative). Gohmert holds views so monumentally stupid and lacking in reason that upon hearing them, you’d think you were sitting in the front row of the Laugh Factory.
His Wiki profile includes an enthusiastic endorsement and co-sponsorship of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a piece of legislation initially introduced in 1995 that conferred legal personhood on a being at conception and shut the courts out of considering any cases related thereto. Ron Paul is a five-time sponsor who is obsessively protective of a speck, yet when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during a Republican Presidential nomination debate, a hypothetical question about what should be done for a young man in a coma without health insurance, Paul said in so many words, “tough shit.” The good news? Paul has retired from Congress. The bad news? His son Rand remains.
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But Gohmert can do even the Paul’s one better on most issues. He spins the fanciful tale that pregnant Muslim terrorists wives come to the U.S. on tourist visas to have babies so their issue will technically be U.S. citizens. The little tots will then return to their home country and undergo intense lifetime terrorist training that presumably will be used in the future against the U.S. No evidence of course, just the ravings of a lunatic (ironically, a noun Gohmert is ever-ready to apply to the progressive opposition).
Gohmert also accused a member of the U.S. State Department, Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of having strong and dangerous ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. Her only crime from a right-wing perspective is having a Muslim surname (meaning Bird of Paradise). In fact, Gohmert’s written to a number of government security agencies requesting that they not only investigate the unfortunate Ms. Abedin but the entire U.S. government as well for possible involvement with the Brotherhood.
When 12 people perished in the Aurora, Colorado Movie Theater shooting, Gohmert’s reaction was that there wasn’t enough “God” in our society. Surely you jest Louie. Every time I turn around I’m being bombarded by the evangelical God squad. He also expressed amazement that audience members were not weighted down with enough hardware to take the bad guy out.
Two days after Sandy Hook, Gohmert told Fox News that every teacher should have been armed and the heroic, murdered Principal, Dawn Hochsprung, should have had an M-4 locked and loaded in her office. Yes, the answer to the destruction of a once-civilized society by guns is more guns.
Of course he supports school vouchers and calls climate change “fraudulent.” That’s Gohmert. Politicus doesn’t have 2,000 pages to devote to refuting this nutbag’s beliefs so I want to limit this post to a response to his latest idiocy, a statement made on a “Freedom 107 radio” talk show that was picked up by the national media. Gohmert told the host that we needed guns to protect us from Sharia law. The unbridled ignorance of his statements is unfathomable. At the very least it demonstrates that a complete paranoid boob has been elected to national office who will have influence in establishing the directions of and constraints on the lives of American citizens.
In his zeal for using threatening gun language and Shiria law in the same sentence, here is a direct Gohmert quote: “It (the Second Amendment) is for our protection – and the founders’ quotes make that very very clear – including against a government that would run amuck. We’ve got some people who think Sharia law oughta be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there, the Second Amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed.”
If I may, Gohmert was merely serving as a political mockingbird with his February 21, 2013 comments. Almost identical Sharia concerns have voiced by extremist right-wingers, Herman Cain, aging Lothario Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum in the last couple of years.
Sharia law is but one of many religious laws that are intertwined with U.S. Common and case law in working with American lawyers and making endless judicial rulings in dozens of different areas such as finance, contracts, commercial agreements, property, probating wills, family law, divorce; the list is long and varied. The courts recognize these diverse laws and often act in concert with them, occasionally ruling in favor of the religious law over its American counterpart. Catholic law is everywhere in our judicial system as is Jewish law (Beth or Bet din).
Our American legal system is based on Common Law. Which relies in the main on court decisions. If you’re living in an English-speaking country or a former English colony, chances are good that Common Law is the basis for your laws. WiseGeek, a Q & A Website pointed out something I’d not heard before. The state of Louisiana combines common, civil, customary and religious law into one cohesive unit.
It should be emphasized for Gohmert’s edification that U.S. law can ultimately override any other law extant. No law from any other country or religion can take sway over American law in the U.S. There is a domestic exception, however that doesn’t seem to concern Gohmert. It’s the sovereignty granted within Native American reservations that pretty much run their own court and legal systems with little outside interference. There are numerous exceptions and federal laws allow the Native American system to do what it does.
Louie, tell your hair-trigger posse of Muslim-hating gun-goobers that there are no masses of people with the power to change our legal system lying in wait, ready to pounce. You should also know that your ludicrous and transparent fear-mongering xenophobia isn’t fooling anybody.
That’s not to say there’s not something that needs changing. And it involves you and your nutty buddies.
Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.
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