I would have said Foxx (R-NC) made an ass of herself, but we won't malign that noble beast here. Watch it:
FOXX: ... and actually the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this, in this country, uh, just as we were the people who passed the Civil Right bills back in the '60's, without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle. They love to engage in revisionist history.
CARDOZA: Thank you Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the seven years that I've been here and in the years that I've watched this congress beforehand, I sometimes watch the floor and I can't believe what I'm hearing. I can't believe my ears.
Today, what I’m hearing on the floor really takes the cake. The gentlelady from North Carolina, in her statement just now, indicated that the Republican GOP had passed the Civil Rights Act legislation with almost no help from the Democrats. I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that civil rights legislation. John Lewis…
FOXX: Would, would the gentleman yield?
CARDOZA: No, I will not yield. John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.
I sometimes cannot believe what I hear on this House floor. And will tell you today, that I will stand by these statements and I am very proud of what my party has done to advance civil rights legislation in the United States of America. I reserve the balance of my time.
FOXX: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd just like to point out to the gentleman from California that Senator Helms was not elected to the United States Senate until 1972 and was not in the Congress when the civil rights legislation was passed in the '60's.
Who is Foxx trying to kid? And leaving aside her apparent ignorance of the events surrounding the passage of civil rights legislation and its aftermath in the south, her only defense was that Jesse Helms wasn't elected to office until 1972?
First of all, Cardoza said people like Jesse Helms ... who said of the fight for civil rights:
The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that has thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic and commerce and interfere with other men's rights.
And if Helms had been in Congress, he would have fought against civil rights legislation tooth and nail:
He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."
Major kudos to Dennis Cardoza (D-CA).