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that he knew needed to go by ground only, so he checked the box ‘‘ground only.’’ He didn’t know that he needed a little sticker with an airplane with a line through it. So he didn’t put that on. The result was he was run off the road, thrown to the ground, handcuffed, dragged to jail, then drug off because the Federal Government gets to pick their venue. And since they knew he didn’t really know people in Alaska, and that is where the package was going, they dragged him to Alaska to prosecute there. When he was finally acquitted— maybe it was jury nullification, they just thought it was too unfair—then the prosecutors, the power of the Federal Government and the vindictive people that control things, decided they couldn’t let him get away with only having done months in jail; so, having ransacked his home under a search warrant because he didn’t put the little sticker on the package he mailed, they went back through all of the accounting of items found, the inventory, and found that there were some chemicals that are required not to be abandoned, and a regulation— again, a regulation some bureaucrats put in place, not Congress—that required those substances were never to be left for more than 14 days. Since the prosecutors had had him dragged off to Alaska and put in jail up there, he was involuntarily forced to leave the substances. They were properly stored, but they were successful in prosecuting him for abandoning the substances. Or the retired gentleman down in Houston who wasn’t able to testify before our committee because he had had a stroke while he was incarcerated because of the overaggressive prosecution by the Federal Government. He had a greenhouse and raised orchids. He sold to some local florists. He had gotten a package from South America. Apparently, it wasn’t properly packaged according to some bureaucrat’s regulations, and therefore he had his home raided and ransacked. His wife testified she called home and didn’t recognize the voice of the person answering. She asked who it was. He said: Well, who is this? She said: I called my home to talk to my husband, and I have a right to know who you are. Well, it was a Federal agent. He was handcuffed in his own kitchen because somebody sent him a package from South America that didn’t meet some cubicle jockey’s idea of what was properly sending a package. During the year and a half he was imprisoned, he had a stroke and couldn’t communicate. Or the poor guy that had lobster shipped to him. He was arrested, incarcerated, and charged with violating not American law, but American law that says, if you violate a foreign law, then you can be arrested in America, and they alleged that he violated a Caribbean island’s laws. That country’s attorney general said: No, we don’t be-

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lieve he violated our laws. Nonetheless, he was incarcerated. The stories go on and on of abuse when a government becomes all powerful the way this one has come close to being. When Congress doesn’t adequately rein it in, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope for Americans across the country to be able to stand in the face of such an overwhelming power as our Federal Government. So I appreciate my friend from Oregon talking about the situation with the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service. It seems that there are people within the Interior Department that have an insatiable appetite for acquiring more and more and more land, and more and more and more private property taken away from private individuals. It is getting out of control. If any landowner dares to say, ‘‘I want to keep my own private property,’’ then they can have a right to worry that the Federal Government will come after them, harass them, and make their lives miserable until they finally consent. It is why we should have removed the President’s ability to just name land as a national monument, as President Clinton did, one of the world’s largest deposits of coal in Utah, just put it off limits by calling it a national monument. It was never intended for those purposes. That is why we should have ended—well, actually, it had ended the program that allowed billions of dollars to be accumulated and spent buying more and more land for the government to control. b 2000 It is very difficult in my district. It is not like the Federal Government owns one big swath of land. It can surround private property and make the lives of private property owners miserable, make it unbearable, being a horrible neighbor. Even if the Federal Government doesn’t own the private property, they can make usage of that property very unpleasant. Is it any wonder right now in America that Donald Trump is leading in the Republican primary in so many of the polls? TED CRUZ is viewed as an outsider, though he is in the Senate, because he stood up against the establishment, the status quo. Americans are tired of the Federal Government being unaccountable and becoming so big that it is out of control. Having prosecuted felony cases early in my career, having been a judge handling thousands of felony cases in Texas, I understand crime. I understand how it has to be stopped. But I also see when the Federal Government becomes a part of the problem instead of part of the solution. When we had this horrendous shooting in San Bernardino, so many people killed at a Christmas party—or this administration preferred to call it a ‘‘holiday party’’—where Christians and Jews get singled out, of course this administration won’t prosecute a hate

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crime against a Christian or a Jew and then continue to warn us that they certainly will protect against any hate crime against a Muslim. Nonetheless, we find out there was a straw buyer who broke the gun laws to buy a weapon for the killers. We don’t need a new gun law. The man violated the gun laws. And then we found out that actually this administration has been prosecuting fewer gun violations than the Bush administration, and in recent years continues to prosecute fewer and fewer and fewer gun violations. If one were cynical—especially in view of the Washington adage that no matter how cynical you get in this town, it is never enough to catch up— you might say: Wait a minute. This administration, for example, compared to the Bush administration—in ’04, the Bush administration prosecuted nearly 9,000 gun violation cases brought by the ATF. This administration, in 2013, prosecuted around 5,000, and it has prosecuted fewer each year since. It is almost as if—and I know there wouldn’t be an improper motive. The House rules tell us that. But it is almost as if you had an administration that is not prosecuting gun violations so they can turn around and demand more laws restricting law-abiding gun rights because, if they really wanted to stop gun violence, they would be prosecuting more aggressively. When we think about the losses of lives, all the lives that could be saved if this administration would simply enforce the laws that exist, it is heartbreaking. You think about those families who lost a loved one because this administration didn’t prosecute the gun violations that could have stopped those losses of lives. It is tragic that this administration will continue to clamber for more laws when the solution should lie first in enforcement of the laws we have before it clambers for more laws. There is an article published January 5, 2016, saying: ‘‘Obama Announces Gun Control Actions, Expands Background Checks’’ on FOX News. The article says: ‘‘The President, speaking at the White House, said background checks ‘make a difference’ and will be expanded so that they can cover purchases online, at gun shows and in other venues.’’ It quotes the President saying: ‘‘Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecutions.’’ Mr. Speaker, we have got to get President Obama some good help. The people around him certainly would not be dishonest enough to misrepresent to the President what the law is, but somebody is misrepresenting to the President what is true and what isn’t because we know he would not be dishonest. He would certainly not intentionally misrepresent to the public when he says that you can just go online and buy a gun without a background check when that is not true.

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