Senator Unveils New Obamacare Attack, Immediately Becomes A Laughingstock

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) probably wishes that he’d thought twice before debuting a new attack on the Affordable Care Act on Twitter.

This month, the Supreme Court is expected to decide King v. Burwell, a case which asks the justices to read one sentence of the law out-of-context in order to render millions of people’s health insurance unaffordable. The lawsuit isfunded by a conservative organization, promoted by conservative think tanks and conservative law professors, and backed by many top Republicans including several of Thune’s Republican colleagues. Though only a minority of lower court judges have sided with the plaintiffs in this lawsuit, all of them are Republicans. Only Republican-appointed justices are expected to vote for the plaintiffs when the decision is handed down, though it is far from clear that all of the Court’s Republican appointees will do so. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs boasted that he does not plan to “lose any Republican-appointed judges’ votes” when his argument was being considered by a lower court.

Nevertheless, Thune offered this assessment of who would be to blame if the Republican-controlled Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs in King:

Almost immediately, Thune became an object of ridicule for this tweet. Huffington Post’s Sam Stein quoted the tweet and responded “this makes no sense.” The Week’s Ryan Cooper mocked it with an historic quote — “Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!” The New York Daily News’s Josh Greenman wrote just one word: “Um.” The National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke described Thune’s tweet in twice as many words: “So dishonest.”

My own contribution to this genre quoted the tweet with the preface “In which a United States Senator reminds you that he thinks you are stupid.” Bloomberg’s David Weigel quipped that “Congress should pass a simple, one-page bill allowing @SenJohnThune to amend that tweet.”

Should the King plaintiffs prevail, it should be noted, the consequences will go far beyond the mockery Thune experienced. An estimated 9,800 Americans will die every year who otherwise would have lived if the Republican-appointed justices do what so many of Thune’s fellow Republicans have asked them to do

The 1% freak-out

Mike Huckabee: Giving Women Birth Control Coverage Assumes They Can’t Control Their Sex Drives

BY AVIVA SHEN/Think Progress

Former Arkansas Governor and Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee (R) asserted Wednesday that Democrats are telling women “they cannot control their libido” by offering no-copay contraception through the Affordable Care Act. He made the comments during a luncheon at the Republican National Convention, which is actively trying to dispel the party’s anti-woman image.

During his speech, Huckabee also likened Obamacare’s expanded contraception coverage to a sugar daddy. Democrats want women to think “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government,” he said. Republicans, by contrast, want to “empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”

Watch it:

While these comments have sparked fresh outrage, the former governor has been blithely offending women for most of his career. In the past, he’s speculated that women have trouble multitasking during their periods and passionately supported former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) after the failed Senate candidate claimed victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant. He has also specifically endorsed the belief that “wives graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership.”

GOP strategists have worked hard since the 2012 election to keep Republicans from alienating female voters by holding training sessions and advising candidates to simply avoid talking about rape. But offensive comments by prominent Republicans keep thwarting these efforts. On Wednesday alone, one GOP congressman running for re-election argued that wives should “voluntarily submit” to their husbands, while another Congressional candidatedropped out in the midst of a firestorm over his justification of marital rape.

Neal Boortz defends ‘white Santa’: ‘Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black!’

By David Edwards/Raw Story

A self-described libertarian radio host on Monday defended Fox News host Megyn Kelly’s assertion that Santa Claus was white, saying he was going to “scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black.”

In a clip obtained by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, Herman Cain radio show guest host Neal Boortz speaks to a caller who called to complain that Kelly had been criticized after she recently said that both Santa and Jesus Christ were white men.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, Santa Claus is white!” Boortz exclaims. “Okay? Deal with it!”

“Everything has got to be black now, it doesn’t matter what it is,” the caller laments.

“You know, I’m going to scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black,” Boortz quips. “It just ain’t right.”

Boortz goes on to predict that he was going to “chase away” about 100,000 of Herman Cain’s listeners before the show was over.

Listen to the audio below from the Herman Cain Show, broadcast Dec. 16, 2013.

Rick Santorum Compares Obamacare To Apartheid

BY ADAM PECK/Think Progress

Rick Santorum, the erstwhile Republican presidential candidate with a penchant for controversy, appeared on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor on Thursday night and memorialized the passing of South African leader and global visionary Nelson Mandela by equating Obamacare with apartheid.

Praising Mandela for standing up to a “great injustice,” the former Pennsylvania senator continued by ascribing his own conservative principles to the civil rights pioneer:

Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that, and that’s the reason he is mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed…and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives, andObamacare is front and center in that.

Watch it:

Comparing apartheid — the systematic, institutionalized segregation of the black population of South Africa — to Obamacare — the signature legislative achievement of the United States’ first black president — is among the worst reactions by conservatives to the news of Mandela’s passing. And implying that Mandela would have opposed legislation like the Affordable Care Act is to ignore the reality of the health care system that Mandela himself fought for.

After bringing an end to apartheid rule, Mandela enshrined in the new South African constitution a fundamental right to health care for all citizens, and introduced a government-funded public health care system to help cover those who could not afford the private system already in place. That was the foundation for a new universal health care system the country unveiled two years ago, which is now expanding to cover the entire country by 2026.

This is not the first time conservatives have attempted to claim a fallen progressive icon as one of their own. Other figures like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. have also been co-opted by the Republican Party in an attempt to re-write history.

O’Reilly, for his part, commemorated Mandela as a “great man” despite being “a communist.”

Conservatives Finally Announce Alternative To Obamacare: Just Go To The Emergency Room

BY IGOR VOLSKY/Think Progress 

Heritage president and former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint continued his campaign to convince Republicans to shut down the government in a ploy to defund the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, telling a town hall in Tampa, Florida that “This might be that last off-ramp to stop Obamacare before it becomes more enmeshed in our culture.” The law “is not about getting better health care,” he continued. Uninsured Americans “will get better health care just going to the emergency room.”

The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.

More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”

Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008.

“That’s something that I think we should do for the whole country,” DeMint told Fox News. “And the governor just looked at the numbers like a good businessman and realized that we could give people private insurance policies cheaper than we could provide free health care.”

The so-called “free” care at emergency rooms is a result of The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay. But EMTALA only applies to medical emergencies like heart attacks or serious injury. It does not offer any treatment for chronic conditions, leaving the millions of Americans with diabetes who need regular access to medication to stay alive, or asthma patients, or women diagnosed with breast cancer without access to care.

Studies also show that not all emergency room patients have equal outcomes. The uninsured who suffer “traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance.”

Don Lemon doubles down: ‘I’m gonna get the Uncle Tom award’

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

CNN anchor Don Lemon backed up his criticisms of the African-American community on Sunday, telling guest LZ Granderson he was reclaiming the label of “Uncle Tom,” classically used to describe a Black man who is subservient to whites.

“I’m taking that word back,” Lemon said to Granderson. “I’m being called an ‘Uncle Tom’ so much, I’m taking that word back. I’m gonna get the ‘Uncle Tom’ award.”

Lemon made the remarks in an allusion to the online criticism he drew for his Saturday commentary saying Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly “doesn’t go far enough” in chiding African-Americans, before suggesting that young Black males should stop wearing sagging pants.

“What is wrong with telling people to dress appropriately?” Lemon asked Granderson and conservative commentator Ana Navarro on Sunday. “These are things that I said [Saturday] that my mom taught me in kindergarten, that parents tell their kids in kindergarten. Dress nicely, speak well, speak appropriately.”

Lemon’s commentary was derided across social media, with the mocking #DonLemonLogicgaining traction. Lemon also addressed the controversy on Twitter, writing that it was not about racism, but “about bettering oneself in spite of. ie, abused woman at some point has to leave abuser.”

Lemon also re-posted an encouraging message from Fox News host Geraldo Rivera, who was himself derided in March 2012 for blaming the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on his choice to wear a hooded sweatshirt the night he was pursued, shot and killed by former neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder charges on July 13, 2013.

“I was amazed when I retweeted it that I got so much Twitter hate,” Navarro told Lemon about the furor surrounding his remarks on Saturday. “There’s people who call you in to schools, Don, and call you in to go speak to youth, and to groups, and tell them how you succeed. We are here on this panel — three minorities, two African-Americans, one Latino — who have succeeded. There’s advice to be given. Success is not going to be reached by not speaking English correctly, though I do have an accent and I do butcher it now and then.”

Lemon also cited his own past coverage of the Zimmerman trial, as well as a stand-alone special program he hosted concerning the use of the “N-word” in American culture, and alluding to his July 20 argument with conservative Ben Ferguson regarding white privilege.

“Did I not have those conversations on the air about privilege and about racism and about profiling and about having been profiled?” Lemon asked his guests.

“You absolutely did,” Navarro affirmed, before misidentifying who the defendant was in that trial. “I think the Trayvon Martin trial is an opportunity for us to have the deep discussions we need to have. Let’s not talk about each other, let’s talk to each other and also within our own groups.”

Granderson told Lemon that, while has taught his son that the use of terms like the “N-word” had to be viewed through different contexts, he did not pretend that there were not ramifications to using it in a social setting.

“You’re not gonna get hired for a high-power position job, you likely are not gonna be accepted at some prestigious university,” Granderson said. “I severely doubt you’d be able to get a decent date with anyone worth loving if you spend your entire time dropping the ‘N-word’ and you can’t keep your hands up.”

Watch the discussion, posted on YouTube by user “Den Havoc” on Sunday, below.

Nugent Doubles Down: "Enraged Black Man-Child" Trayvon Martin Is A "Skittles Hoodie Boy"

HANNAH GROCH-BEGLEY/Media Matters For America:

National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent is doubling down on his attacks on Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, calling Martin an "enraged black man-child" and a "Skittles hoodie boy."

On July 13 a jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the death of Martin. Zimmerman had said he acted in self-defense when he shot Martin, who was carrying a bag of Skittles and wearing a hoodie, during an altercation in Zimmerman's gated community on February 26, 2012.

In a July 14 column for conservative news website Rare, Nugent called Martin a "dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe" who was "responsible for his bad decisions," claiming that the "only racism on that night was perpetrated by Trayvon Martin, and everybody knows it."

Nugent doubled down in a July 15 World Net Daily column titled "What Would Martin Luther King Jr. Do?" describing Martin as "an enraged black man-child" and a "dope-smoking, dope-peddling, gangsta wannabe, Skittles hoodie boy:

[A]ll thinking people are very relieved that George Zimmerman was found not guilty by the intelligent, justice-driven women of the jury, in spite of the façade presented by the prosecution and forced by the threat of racism by everyone from President Obama, to Eric Holder, the New Black Panther gangstas, NAACP, excuse makers of every stripe and even the governor of Florida, but still this innocent man who simply defended his life from a violent, life-threatening, bloodying, head-and-face slamming attack by an enraged black man-child has so wrongly paid an inexplicable price financially and emotionally.

The parents of Trayvon Martin get a huge million-dollar-plus payoff from the gated community just to shut them up, and so obviously to fend off the ambulance chaser racist lawyers for the simple fact that their son was guilty of a vicious, violent attack on a man for no good reason whatsoever.

What did the gated community have to do with any of it? Where is a judge capable of making a justice call in this travesty? Does anyone care at all anymore?

The entire system is screwed up.

But George Zimmerman and his entire family, innocent of any wrongdoing, have lost everything and will be in debt for a long, long time for having to fight the trumped-up charges that he "profiled" and/or set out to murder the poor, helpless, dope-smoking, dope-peddling, gangsta wannabe, Skittles hoodie boy.

Geraldo Rivera Says All Six Jurors Would Have Also Killed Trayvon Martin

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

On Friday morning, as George Zimmerman’s defense team prepared to deliver its closing statement in the 3-week trial, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera told Fox & Friends that the all-female jury would have also killed Trayvon Martin if they had encountered him on that fateful night:

RIVERA: I see those six ladies in the jury putting themselves on that rainy night, in that housing complex that has just been burglarized by three or four different groups of black youngsters from the adjacent community. So it’s a dark night, a 6-foot-2-inch hoodie-wearing stranger is in the immediate housing complex. How would the ladies of that jury have reacted? I submit that if they were armed, they would have shot and killed Trayvon Martin a lot sooner than George Zimmerman did. This is self-defense.

Watch it:

In March of last year, Rivera proclaimed that “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman (his killer)” and later gloated about the remarks.

His original comment was met with widespread disgust, even from his own son. Public figures, including Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) and the Miami Heat basketball players responded by wearing hoodies in solidarity with the slain teenager.

‘Cliff’ from ‘Cheers’ wants Allen West to spread his ‘gene pool’ across America

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative actor John Ratzenberger, who is best known as the character “Cliff” from the television sitcom Cheers, on Friday called for former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) to take “something from his gene pool” and “put it everywhere across this great country.”

Ratzenberger was introducing West at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference. He also called West a “real American.”

“We should really take something from his gene pool and put it everywhere across this great country,” Ratzenberger said. “A real American hero, my friend, Allen West.”

It was not immediately clear if Ratzenberger intended for West to personally distribute his DNA or had some other method in mind for sharing the “gene pool.”

Watch this video from Fox News, broadcast June 14, 2013.

GOP Senator Suggests Porn Is To Blame For Military Sexual Assaults

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) detoured from a line of questioning about sexual assault in the military to raise the possible connection between the availability of pornography on military bases and sexual attacks on servicemembers.

Sessions joined the Senate Armed Services Committee in time for its second panel of the day, having missed the first session due to a conflicting meeting of the Budget Committee. Once there, Sessions wasted no time diving into the issue, asking several questions of the assembled military commanders in the panel.

During his questioning, however, Sessions brought up his concern that access to pornography on and around military bases was creating “problems” among the soldiers, sailors, and pilots:

SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, I’d just add a letter, a document here that was given to me from Morality in the Media. Pat Truman used to be in the Department of Justice. I knew him when he was there. He points out that, a picture here of a newsstand and an Air Force base exchange with, you know, sexually explicit magazines being sold. So, we live in a culture that’s awash in sexual activity. If it’s not sold on base, it’s right off base. There are videos and so forth that can be obtained, and it creates some problems, I think.

Sessions then immediately segued into asking questions about the panel’s responses to sexual assault situations, asking what they would do if “you had a female soldier who had felt she was assaulted by an NCO, higher rank,” leaving his previous comments hanging in the air. He didn’t return to them during the rest of his questioning, leaving his full meaning unclear. However, while a few studies have found that pornography makes men more sexually aggressive, there’s no real-world evidence bearing out the claim that this translates into sexist attitudes or sexual violence. In fact, many more recent studies have been unable to show causation between viewing pornography and carrying out sexual violence.

Much discussion has been had over how best to change what has been recognized as a problem with the culture within the military, where sexual assault and rape are severely under-reported. An estimated 26,000 instances of sexual assault in 2012, of which only 3,374 were reported and investigated. A slew of high-profile scandals has also contributed to the view that the armed services are not doing enough to prevent sexual assault in its ranks.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) had also raised several concerning points during the first panel, including that hormones could be sufficiently blamed for sexual assaults and questioning whether the first women to serve on an aircraft carrier were investigated for getting pregnantduring their tour. Chambliss’ comments, though, were tempered with a fair amount of blame directed towards Congress and the military leadership alike. “But guys, we are not doing our job. You’re not doing yours, and we are not doing ours with the rates we are seeing on sexual assaults,” Chambliss said. Sessions showed no such circumspection following his comments.

Fox Business host: Cut government because ‘no one’ died of starvation before welfare

By David Edwards/Raw Story
Fox Business host John Stossel on Thursday declared that government programs should be cut based on the false assertion that “no one” died of starvation in the Great Depression before the modern “welfare state.”

Stossel told the hosts of Fox & Friends that he had taken his cameras out on the streets of New York and no one he spoke to had any idea about how to fix the nation’s growing national debt.

“You cut whole departments,” the Fox Business host explained. “Why do we have a Commerce Department? Commerce just happens! Agriculture, farmers do that! You don’t need bureaucrats.”

He added that the Department of Education was also unnecessary.

“Isn’t that part of what the government does in a lot of people minds?” Fox News host Steve Doocy asked. “They need to help people rather than let people help themselves?”

“And when people are needy you want them [to get] help,” Stossel agreed. “But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one.”

“Right, good point,” Doocy agreed.

During the Great Depression in 1933, then-President Herbert Hoover (R) had told reporters that “nobody is actually starving… The hoboes, for example, are better fed than they have ever been. One hobo in New York got ten meals in one day.”

But according to historians Steven Mintz and Sara McNeil, the number of cases of starvation in New York City alone had increased from 20 in 1931 to 110 in 1934.

And malnutrition was a much larger problem. One 1933 study of 514 children in New York found that more than one-third were in “poor” or “very poor” health.

Watch this video Fox News’ Fox & Friends , broadcast May 30, 2013.

Colbert: How dare you cast aspersions on Louie Gohmert’s asparagus!

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Thursday night on “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert replayed one of the stranger moments from Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday. At the end of a heated exchange with holder, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) accused the AG of attempting to “cast aspersions on my asparagus.”

“Folks, I hope you know,” he began, “for Obama watchdogs like me, the last week of scandals has been like Christmas morning.”

President Barack Obama, said Colbert, has been in “full damage-control” mode over Benghazi, the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups and Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to seize months of phone records from AP reporters in a leak probe.

Colbert played video of news anchors describing Holder’s testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday as a “grilling,” as the AG was “peppered with questions.”

“Mmmm,” said the host. “Grilled and peppered. That would explain why Darryl Issa was wearing that ‘Kiss the Cook’ apron.”

Holder appeared to be holding his own, said Colbert, until he sparred with congressman and “magical talking cantaloupe” Rep. Louis Gohmert. Gohmert insisted that the FBI under Holder’s direction had dropped the ball in tracking Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers blamed for the bombing of the Boston marathon.

Holder pushed back against Gohmert’s accusations, saying that, unless someone in the FBI leaked confidential information to the congressman, Gohmert could not possibly know what he was talking about.

“You don’t know what the FBI did,” said Holder. “You don’t know what the FBI’s interaction was with the Russians. You don’t know what questions were put to the Russians, whether those questions were responded to. You simply do not know that. And you have characterized the FBI as being not thorough, or taken exception to my characterization of them as being thorough. I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That is all.”

Gohmert got flustered in the back and forth with Holder and the committee chair and accused the AG of “trying to cast aspersions on my asparagus.”

“How dare you cast aspersion on that man’s asparagus!” bellowed Colbert. “What is next, sir? Libeling his lettuce? Questioning his quinoa? Arguing with his arugula? Repudiating his rutabaga?! Vilifying his vinaigrette before drizzling it on his scandal salad?”

“Clearly, America,” he said, “we are going to need a lot more hearings on Asparagus-gate, because the more I digest this, the worse it smells.”

Watch the clip, embedded below via Comedy Central:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

On Day Stock Market Sets New Record, Conservative Group Floats Impeaching Obama For ‘Wrecking The Stock Market’

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15,056, an all-time record. For one conservative group, this can only mean one thing: it’s time to impeach President Obama.

That was the message Capitol Hill Daily, a conservative publication based out of Baltimore, sent to Citizen United’s listserv today. They accused President Obama of “wreck[ing] the stock market” and asked readers to take a poll about whether he should be impeached as a result.

From the email:

Dear Concerned Reader,

Fearing the very worst, the nation’s super-rich are unloading their stocks at an alarming rate.

Even more troubling, the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who typically know the most, are the ones most anxious to sell.

You see, Obama just allowed 13 new tax increases to further slow the economy, wreck the stock market and make it even harder on the 12 million Americans already looking for work.

The bigger question is this…

Is Obama’s Latest Tax Screw Up Grounds For Impeachment?

See a screenshot below:

When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the Dow Jones was at 7,949. Over the last 4 years, it has gone up approximately 90 percent before reaching a new high today.

It’s important to remember that the health of the stock market is very different from the health of the overall economy. Middle class wages are stagnating and millions are still unemployed orunderemployed.

But when a conservative organization claims ignores reality in such a blatant way, one can’t help but quote former Rep. Barney Frank: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

GOP Congressman: Obama’s ‘Political Correctness’ On Islam Led To Boston Bombings

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested on Friday that the FBI was unable to ask deceased Boston marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev about Islam during its 2011 interview with him due to President Obama’s “political correctness,” thus allowing the bombing to take place.

Gohmert said on the House floor that the Obama administration has prevented intelligence officials from discussing Islam. “It was in that 9/11 commission report, before this administration took over and implemented political correctness,” he said, arguing the FBI’s training manuals were “systematically purged” in 2011 to conform to Obama’s worldview.

Obama’s whitewashing of Islam, Gohmert hinted, allowed the Tsarnaev brothers to slip through the fingers of the FBI and set off bombs in Boston:

GOHMERT: But what kind of interview must that have been of the guy who was going to blow off arms and legs and kill a child and who had dreams of killing so many more. What kind of interview must that have been when you can’t use the word jihad, you can’t talk about his Muslim faith? Did they even bring up Tamerlan’s Muslim faith in that interview? [...] Is it any wonder that the FBI came away from their interviews and said, ‘We don’t find any problems?’ Well, I guess not. [...] What kind of interviews must those have been when you can’t use the terms that let you get to the bottom of what may be a plot to kill people down the road? There’s no problem in the Justice Department, there is a problem with leadership that will not let them do their job. And it needs to change.

The facts don’t line up with Gohmert’s claims, however. In 2011 it was revealed that FBI’s counterterrorism training courses were full of misleading views about Islam, including thatmainstream Muslims are “violent” and “radical.” In response to the revelation, the FBI purged its training documents of all that mischaracterized all Muslims as being especially prone to terrorism.

When it comes to questioning Tsarnaev, the FSB — Russia’s domestic intelligence service —reached out to the United States in 2011 regarding its fears that he — an ethnic Chechen — was a security threat. In response, the FBI launched a three-month investigation into Tsarnaev, including interviews with him, his family, and his communications and internet usage. Following that review, the FBI determined there wasn’t enough evidence to continue to monitor Tsarnaev’s activities. When the FBI reported that to Russia in Oct. 2011, requesting further information about why the FSB believed Tsarnaev was a threat, Russia reportedly never responded.

Gohmert has proved no stranger to promoting wild theories related to Islam during his time in Congress. At various times, the Texan has stated that wide gun-ownership is needed to protect against Sharia law, that Obama intervened in Libya to allow al Qaeda to spread, and that the president is seeking to take credit for starting a new Ottoman Empire. Interfaith groups have called upon Gohmert in the past to drop his Islamophobia, seemingly to no effect.