Tag Archives: John Fleming

December 5, 2012 · 12:15 AM

GOP Congressman’s Restaurant Accused Of Turning Away Muslim Couple

Yet another GOP faux pas.  Assuming the Muslim couple’s version of events are true, how will they ever win another election again with this sort of behavior?

Think Progress

New Orleans residents Mohammed and Talat Husain claim they were refused service at Rep. John Fleming’s (R-LA) Subway franchise in Shreveport, Louisiana. According to Husain, an employee of the chain told them to leave because they are Muslim and threw them out after an altercation. Though Husain called the police, a report was never filed. He recounted the experience to TPM:

“She asked me point blank ‘Are you Muslim?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’m Muslim,’ She said ‘We can’t serve you’ and locked the door from inside when my wife was still inside the store,” Husain said.

The situation quickly escalated and Husain ended up calling 911. So did a Subway employee. At some point before police arrived, however Husain said the employee unlocked the door and let his wife leave but also made it clear they should take their business elsewhere.

An officer with the Shreveport Police Department arrived after that. Both Husain and a department spokesman said the officer initially patted Husain down to check for weapons. But spokesman Cpl. Marcus Hines said the officer eventually determined the situation was much ado about nothing. Department records show the officer didn’t even file a report.

Fleming’s employees deny Husain’s version of events, and claim that security tapes prove that there was no discrimination against the couple. Still, the Shreveport police are ignoring a request for an investigation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Fleming, a devout Christian, warned in August that the election was a choice between “competing world views” of “a godless society” or “a Christian nation.”

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February 6, 2012 · 5:22 PM

Congressman Posts Satirical Attack On Planned Parenthood From The Onion As News

How dense  DUMB can this “politician” be?

Think Progress

Fool him once, shame on you. Fool him once with a widely circulated and obviously fake story  from satirical newspaper The Onion that was published nine months ago? Yeah, that’s all on him.

Congressman John Fleming (R-LA) is going to have a rough news cycle after his office posted a link  to an outrageous story about Planned Parenthood’s intentions to build an $8 billion “abortionplex,” complete with shopping mall, movie theater and three-story night club. It’s a laughable commentary on the outrageous charges that anti-choice groups use to attack Planned Parenthood, from one of the finest purveyors of satire, but the joke appears to have been lost on Fleming.

“More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale,” wrote Rep. Fleming (or more likely an overzealous staffer) before linking to the post. Just hours after the link was posted, Rep. Fleming’s office deleted the post, but not before the blog Literally Unbelievable  grabbed a screenshot:

Getting duped by false stories in The Onion is a common occurrence, as Literally Unbelievable demonstrates. But rarely does it happen to someone so public. And adding another layer of humor to the incident, the story Fleming posted is nine months old and was already a viral Internet phenomenon: several fake Yelp reviews  of the abortionplex were published, and the story was the basis  for Literally Unbelievable in the first place.

Fleming has been a punch line before. Think Progress reported in September that Fleming complained that he and his family struggled to live on an annual income of $400,000, more than enough to qualify Fleming as a member of the 1 percent.

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August 26, 2010 · 2:19 AM

LA GOPer: November A Choice Between An Atheist Society And A Christian Nation

TPMDC

Appearing before the Republican Women of Bossier with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) cast the November elections as a choice between godlessness and Christianity. He also called bipartisanship impossible.

“We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle — one is going to have to win,” Fleming said.

We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we’re going to have to win that battle, we’re going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things.

Fleming contended that the Republicans might take 60 seats in November, and argued that the road to economic recovery is to rescind new banking regulations and make the Bush tax cuts permanent across the board. “We’ve got to change the way we do things,” he said. “We need to restore the Bush tax cuts, or actually make them permanent. We need to cut the capital gains tax, we need to take regulations off the backs of business and allow banks to once again lend. And I got a strong feeling that our economy will snap back very quickly.”

You can listen to the audio at the end of this recording, courtesy of the Shreveport Times. Fleming will likely face off against Democrat David Melville, a Methodist pastor in Louisiana’s fourth congressional district in November.

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