Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I can reveal today that the U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.
You can have the best technology, but you if have a corrupted, radicalized, bribed official that has access to the plane to put the bomb in the cargo, as what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh, that's a real problem.
Now we're dealing with a younger generation of terrorists that are very, very savvy with computer skills, very savvy over the Internet, and very savvy with social media of the likes that we have never seen before.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the victims and heroes of September 11th. As we commemorate the anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that the threat is still very real today.
Any Human Rights Council reform that allows countries that sponsor terrorism to remain as members, such as Cuba, is not real reform. And in the past, countries such as Libya, Iran and Syria have participated on this council.
I was in Cairo, Egypt, where Sinai - ISIS conducted the Russian airliner downing. We're concerned about safety and security at these last point-of-departure airports flying directly into the United States - in that case, JFK.
The President of Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and the West and has even denied the holocaust took place. Iran and its terrorist arm Hezbollah are responsible for the current conflicts between Israel and Lebanon.
In my home State of Texas, the Port of Houston operates as the United States' top port for foreign tonnage and our second largest for total tonnage, so I know how important this bill is for the protection of the American people.
Texas has been hit especially hard this year by a continuing drought, threatening high winds and increasingly destructive range fires. Simply, these conditions have lead to extremely adverse conditions in the agriculture industry.
My number one objective continues to be to defund or delay the implementation of Obamacare. But as long as any piece of this law is standing, it needs to apply to all Americans equally, and that includes members of Congress and our staff.
I am extremely concerned that Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States with thousands of followers in the United States and then activate them to do whatever they want to do.
Texas' and America's farmers are suffering. As the Member of Congress representing the 10th Congressional District of Texas, I have traveled throughout our area and have seen first-hand how the drought has affected our agricultural communities.
What is our capability when someone posts a public social media posting that says that they're going to conduct attacks on the United States on behalf of the Islamic State. Why can't we pick up that information and then stop that act of terror?
I don't think we can afford to wait when it comes to cybersecurity. I think that every day we wait, if an attack occurs - and we're getting hit every day - but if a greater attack occurs, it's going to be on the head of Congress for not acting.
We worry a lot about ISIS traveling overseas from Syria to the United States, but I think one of the greatest fears are those already within the U.S. who are being radicalized and inspired by the ISIS propaganda that's out there on the Internet.
We didn't take the words of Vladimir Lenin seriously until Communism spread across the globe. And unfortunately, the president didn't take the words of groups like ISIS seriously until they established a sweeping self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate.
On this National Agriculture Day, when we all should be taking time to thank and pay tribute to America's farmers, ranchers and their families who produce the food for our tables, we are finding those same people in dire need of our help and support.
We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.
In order to have greater visibility of the larger cyber threat landscape, we must remove the government bureaucratic stovepipes that inhibit our abilities to effectively defend America while ensuring citizens' privacy and civil liberties are also protected.
We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.
We can't really have a serious debate about reform on immigration if we don't have operational control of the border. ... With the executive order out there, with the urgency of the threat, I think it's very likely that we'll get something passed, later this year.
Over the past year, several cases of human rights abuses, specifically sexual exploitation and abuse, by individuals involved in U.N. peacekeeping operations have raised the suspicions of many Members of Congress and members of the International Relations Committee.
One of the chapters outlined in my book talks about the Iranian influence with Venezuela, these terror flights that go back and forth that we don't manifests on, and then nuclear material smuggled across our unsecure southwest border from Mexico into the United States.
Traditionally, you support your nominee for president, and so when I went to Cleveland, I gave a strong speech about Hillary Clinton and her devastating foreign policy, but also in the support of the nominee. I think that's an obligation that we have to support the nominee.
I think the effective thing is, I passed this bill to combat violent extremism in the United States as effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities.
This is what democracy is all about. People have every right to protest whoever's in the White House, without fear of persecution. If this happened in Iran, people would be shot on the streets. This is the United States of America, and we have a First Amendment that protects this kind of speech.
Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain.
In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.
I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.
I know there's a lot of discussion about building a 2000-mile wall. I think we need to complete the Secure Fencing Act, but we need greater technology and aviation aspects down on the Southwest border so we can see the threat from the sky. Until you can see it, you don't know where it's coming from and how to correctly stop it.
The dark space is one of the biggest concerns on the part of counterterrorism officials right now. Comey did a good job of explaining how they jump into a direct messaging box and then go into platforms designed specifically to be secure. There's no way, even if we have a lawful court order, to be able to access those communications.
People just didn't write songs that were so directly emotional in those days. They still don't. Part of Hank's [Williams] thing was that he was opening up about relationships between men and women in ways that nobody else did, and I think that's something that made him stand out so much. His songs are just so straightforward about these really deep feelings that are universal, but they're so hard to write about without sounding sappy or over the top. You think of men in that era - they didn't express themselves that way.