Not Just An Idiot In Congress

A Texas Republican congressman got into a late-night altercation with U.S. Park Police officers, pulling rank in an attempt to get out of a parking ticket near the Lincoln Memorial.

Shortly after 11 p.m. on March 13, officers wrote Rep. Louie Gohmert a citation for parking his black Ford SUV in a spot reserved for National Park Service vehicles.  Gohmert took the ticket off his windshield and placed it on a unoccupied park service vehicle along with his business card with a written message: “Oversight of Park Service is my job! Natural Resources Thus the Congressional Plate in window.”

A park service vehicle pulled up as he was leaving the note under the windshield wiper.  That was when a verbal altercation ensued.    He was “rude and irate,” one officer reported. Another said that Gohmert was “ranting.”

“I was issued a ticket and I am a congressman and parked my vehicle in the NPS parking only because I have a Congress placard, see,” Gohmert told one officer. “I am going to a meeting on the Hill and I am the one who oversees the National Park Services Natural Resources.”  Gohmert added that he “did not have time to deal with the issue,” according to the report.

District law says members of Congress may park their cars “in any available curb space in the District of Columbia” when it is being used “on official business” and displaying the congressional registration tag issued by the member’s home state.

Gohmert first gained noteriety years ago when he said that Washington, DC was the only city in the entire country that every member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly-- but when residents began calling Gohmert's office complaining about issues like trash and parking, he told them to speak to local government officials instead.

Gohmert was also the guy who infamously claimed to have evidence from an ex-FBI agent about "terror baby" plots.  He publicly claimed that pregnant women from the Middle East were traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas, planning to deliver their children here, given them U.S. citizenship.  According to Gohmert, the child would then be returned to the mother's home country and prepared for a life as a  terrorist.  When asked repeatedly by journalists to provide any sources or evidence of this claim, Gohmert responded "If you don't think this is evidence, you have to believe that the terrorists are more stupid than these enterprising people".

Gohmert was one of a number of Republicans who voted against the Budget Control Act of 2011 on grounds it did not do enough to deal with the government's growing debt--  a mere two months later he voted against a balanced budget Constitutional amendment.

In 2012, Gohmert joined Michelle Bachman in a series of letters to the Inspectors General of DOD, State, Homeland Security and DOJ that claimed that the State Deparment Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin was an example of undue influence by the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. government.  Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham and most political observers characterized this allegation as patently false.

Also in 2012, Gohmert announced his support of a trans-Alaskan pipeline, saying that it would be a way for caribou to have more sex. 

Last January, Gohmert nominated Florida Representative Allen West for Speaker of the House, even though West lost his bid for re-election two months prior and was no longer a member of Congress.