The Rules Committee discovered yesterday that the Judiciary Committee Report on this very bill, which was authored by the Majority Staff, contained amendment summaries which had been re-written by committee staff for the sole purpose of distorting the original intent of the authors.

This Committee Report took liberty to mischaracterize and even falsify the intent of several amendments offered in Committee by Democratic Members of this body.

At least five amendments to this bill, which were designed to protect the rights of family members and innocent bystanders from prosecution under this bill, were rewritten as amendments designed to protect sexual predators from prosecution and were then included in the committee report as if that was the original intent of the authors. The thing is, sexual predators were not mentioned anywhere in any of these amendments.

These amendments were no more about sexual predators then they were about terrorists or arsonists or any other criminal class in our society.

These amendments were about the rights of grandmothers and siblings and clergy and innocent bystanders.

I asked the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee about this deception yesterday afternoon at the Rules Committee hearing.

And instead of decrying what I certainly expected would be revealed as a mistake by an overzealous staffer…The Chairman stood by those altered amendment descriptions.

He made very clear to the Rules Committee that the alterations to these members’ amendments were deliberate.

When pressed as to why his committee staff took such an unprecedented action, the Chairman immediately offered up his own anger over the manner in which Democrats had chosen to debate and oppose this unfortunate piece of legislation we have before us today.

In fact…He said, and I quote… “You don’t like what we wrote about your amendments, and we don’t like what you said about our bill.”

To falsely rewrite the intent of an amendment submitted by another member, to intentionally distort its description as being designed to protect sexual predators, is no different than accusing a fellow member of Congress as being an apologist for sexual predators themselves.

That is in effect what the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee has done here, with all deliberation.

And he has ensured that these amendment descriptions will be encapsulated in the record for all time by including those unfair and incorrect amendment summaries in the Committee report.

This is a new low for this chamber M. Speaker.

This is a clearly dishonest, unethical attack on the credibility and character of another member. And sadly, it is just the latest in a pattern of unethical and abusive tactics employed by this Majority.

How incredibly arrogant is this majority…that they believe they have the right to tamper with official congressional documents for their own political purposes?

How unbelievably arrogant is the leadership of this Congress…that they would force their own politicized interpretation of another members work upon this body, and upon the American people, in an official committee report?

The Majority’s actions are not only an affront to all members of this house, but they are also an affront to the American people.

There is no question that we can debate and disagree over the impact a bill will have.

We can argue over how well it has been written or what language it should include to be more effective. But regardless of how that debate turns out, the caption on the top of that bill or amendment serves to instruct the American people as to what original intent of that legislation was.

It serves as an unbiased reading on what that amendment aims to accomplish.

To falsify and rewrite that description as a political attack, is not only unprecedented, it is fundamentally dishonest and it is an abuse of the power given to the Majority by the American people.

And I have no doubts Mr. Speaker, no doubts, that unless the congressional record is amended to reflect the true captions of these amendments, then we will surely see these erroneous captions again in the form of campaign attack mail pieces.

In fact, when we pressed last night in the Rules Committee to have the record amended to reflect the honest and accurate captions that belong on those amendments, we were defeated on a party line vote.