John Fleming

Rep. Fleming: UN Treaties May Repeal Second Amendment, Ban Spanking

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins yesterday hosted Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) who immediately started spreading conspiracy theories about the United Nations.

Fleming insisted that the recently approved global UN Arms Trade Treaty, which will restrict the sale of arms to countries and groups that commit war crimes and other atrocities and has been the subject of several discredited right-wing attacks, is an attempt by the left to weaken and ultimately “repeal” the Second Amendment.

The Republican congressman concluded by speculating that the UN may make it illegal for parents to spank their children.

Fleming: In the case of the UN small arms treaty what that means is that if we enter into a treaty with one or more nations that in some way controls firearms, protective arms, handguns, something like that, if it’s ratified by the Senate then that has the same effect as an amendment to the Constitution. So that would be a way that liberals could literally change the Second Amendment. I think as you well know, although it’s not going to have a full effect as part of the ‘votorama’ the other day the Senate had in their vote for their budget, a vote on an up-or-down on the acceptance of, or voting against in effect in their opinion, at least a resolution if you will, on the the acceptance of such a treaty, and Sen. Mary Landrieu from Louisiana actually voted that we should move forward on such a small arms treaty. This is a dangerous thing when it comes to the Second Amendment. People need to understand that there is an end-run around the Second Amendment that is available to the Senate and I do think President Obama and others do support this.

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Perkins: We’re talking here for just a moment about the UN’s Small Arms Treaty and as he pointed out, an end-run around Congress on the Second Amendment through the Congress. This is a very real possibility in my opinion congressman because it looks like the efforts to get legislation through Congress, especially through the House, that would severely restrict gun ownership and attack the Second Amendment is unlikely to happen, so what’s the next best thing for the Obama administration? Pursuing a treaty like this.

Fleming: Well if for instance through the UN and with an agreement with other countries, we all come together and we say, you know what we as a group of countries, both inside and outside of our borders, are going to control the handling the use and access to handguns, for instance, then if we sign onto that treaty and it’s ratified by the Senate—the House doesn’t even have to vote on it—it’s ratified by the Senate and signed onto by the President, it is firm law. A simple passage of a law or a repeal of law by Congress itself can’t undo that is my understanding. So we wouldn’t have to have a repeal of the Second Amendment, we could just simply alter it or put into effect what is essentially a repeal of it. That is not the only thing. There’s another issue just to show you how broad scope this is on how we deal with our children and what control we have of our children as parents and how we may define child abuse and the responsibility of the state. That could potentially be up for a ratification of a treaty with other nations. So that if you for instance spanked your child, you could be in violation of a UN treaty and a law created as such.
Brian Tashman's blog

Rep. John Fleming Suggests Soldier's Same-Sex Commitment Ceremony Undermined National Security

Last week, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer urged the government to stop the use of military facilities for same-sex commitment and marriage ceremonies after a military chaplain at Fort Polk, a training base in Louisiana, performed a commitment ceremony at a chapel between a female service member and her civilian partner. Following Fischer’s tirade, Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on the AFA radio show Today’s Issues with AFA president Tim Wildmon and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins to denounce the ceremony. In a statement, the congressman decried the ceremony as part of a “liberal social experiment” and urged Congress to approve “legislation that prevents military facilities from being used for same-sex marriages or marriage-like ceremonies.”

Fleming told Wildmon and Perkins that the commitment ceremony and the ensuing attention it received, which was primarily coming from conservative detractors, was a distraction that undermined the “oath to protect our nation.” He said that the chaplain and the couple acted in a “rogue state” and tried to “push their own personal agenda using U.S. military facilities.” Later, Fleming said that the occasion was part of a larger attempt to “create a normative acceptance of something that really is not part of our customs or culture”:

Instead of training our young men and women to be ready for battle, they’re having to deal with this stuff, and I think that that is first and foremost the wrong venue to have any type of protest or mock ceremonies. I don’t think that—you know, my responsibility as a member of Congress is first speak to it that we protect our nation with a common defense, that’s a Constitutional requirement for me, and certainly those members who’ve sworn an oath to protect our nation and put their lives on the line. And yet we have this couple and this chaplain who went off on their own, in kind of a rogue state to do something, to push their own personal agenda using U.S. military facilities, so that is my first objection to this.

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You know the second part of this is, this is really propagating an agenda, is to try to normalize or create a normative acceptance of something that really is not part of our customs or culture, for the most part certainly, if you understand that most states do have some sort of ban on same-sex marriage, very few actually accept it, again this is using military facilities to create a normative behavior.
Brian Tashman's blog

Congressman who cited 'The Onion' to Attack Planned Parenthood promoted another Deceptive Planned Parenthood Smear

Following in the footsteps of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) used bogus information to attack Planned Parenthood. On his Facebook page, the congressman cited an article from the satirical newspaper The Onion, ‘Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex,’ to criticize the women’s health group.

While the congressman has since scrubbed the post from his Facebook page, he still is promoting an article from the conspiratorial far-right site WorldNetDaily to claim that Planned Parenthood has abortion quotas. In the story, WND cited Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood staffer turned anti-choice activist who has made similar charges before that Planned Parenthood is trying to “coerce” and “encourage” women to have abortions. However, Johnson isn’t exactly a trustworthy source, as her stated story on why she left Planned Parenthood completely lacks credibility:

Johnson’s departure from Planned Parenthood turned out to be a more complex story than it first appeared. At a court hearing for an injunction sought by Planned Parenthood to prevent Johnson from divulging confidential information to her new allies, two of Johnson’s former co-workers testified that she told them in the days before she resigned that she was afraid she was about to be fired. At one time, Johnson, who was named the regional Planned Parenthood affiliate’s employee of the year in 2008, seemed to have a promising future with the organization. By mid-2009, however, her relationship with her employer had begun to deteriorate. Salon reported that on October 2, Johnson was summoned to Houston to meet with her supervisors to discuss problems with her job performance. She was placed on what Planned Parenthood calls a “performance improvement plan.” It was just three days later, on Monday, that Johnson made her tearful appearance at the Coalition for Life. The following day she faxed Planned Parenthood a resignation letter, which mentioned nothing about a crisis of conscience.

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Other questions about Johnson’s credibility arose during our interview. She told me, for example, that there had never been any threats of violence against the Bryan clinic; however, Johnson herself received a series of threatening letters in 2007. “God will punish you for killing the innocent or we will,” read one. “You are not taking us seriously. You were at the clinic alone. Not very smart,” read another. In fact, the threats were taken so seriously that security cameras were installed at Johnson’s house, as she later acknowledged. Johnson also claimed that while most services at Planned Parenthood were provided by a nonprofit corporation, abortions were done by a for-profit corporation. Both she and Carney seemed to sincerely believe this was true, though all services at Planned Parenthood are, in fact, provided by a pair of separate nonprofit corporations.

As confounding as these inconsistencies are, there may be a much larger problem with Johnson’s story. Johnson has told the story of her journey from pro-choice activist to pro-life celebrity many times in many venues, and the crux of the tale is always the same: her moving description of what she saw on the ultrasound that September day in the Bryan clinic’s operating room ... Johnson’s account is so plausible and rich in detail that even Planned Parenthood seems not to have investigated whether this event ever took place. At my request, the staff at the Bryan clinic examined patient records from September 26, the day Johnson claims to have had her conversion experience, and spoke with the physician who performed abortions on that date. According to Planned Parenthood, there is no record of an ultrasound-guided abortion performed on September 26. The physician on duty told the organization that he did not use an ultrasound that day, nor did Johnson assist on any abortion procedure. “Planned Parenthood can assure you that no abortion patients underwent an ultrasound-guided abortion on September 26,” said a spokesperson. It’s difficult to imagine that Johnson simply got the date wrong; September 12 was the only other day that month that the clinic performed surgical abortions.

Could clinic staff and the physician be mistaken? The Texas Department of State Health Services requires abortion providers to fill out a form documenting basic information about each procedure performed at a clinic. This document is known as the Induced Abortion Report Form. The Bryan clinic reported performing fifteen surgical abortions on September 26. Johnson has consistently said that the patient in question was thirteen weeks pregnant, which is plausible, since thirteen weeks is right at the cusp of when physicians will consider using an ultrasound to assist with the procedure. Yet none of the patients listed on the report for that day were thirteen weeks pregnant; in fact, none were beyond ten weeks.
Brian Tashman's blog
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