Bachmann: "The one who created this lei also created our freedom"

Shortly before health care reform passed the House Saturday night, Rep. Michele Bachmann rose to speak against the bill wearing a Hawaiian lei around her neck.

Bachmann’s comments:

The American people overwhelmingly reject the government takeover of our health care. Last Friday a couple from Hawaii decided the time was so short they needed to get on a plane, come to Washington, to beg their representative to vote no — from Hawaii. What sacrifices freedom-loving Americans are making to get their government’s attention. And how big our government has gotten. They brought me this beautiful, precious lei and I’m reminded that the one who created this lei also created our freedom. Are we so insensible to the high cost our forebearers paid to purchase our freedom? Tonight, would we foolishly bargain those freedoms away? The American people, our forebearers, generations yet unborn are crying out to us tonight, for us to preserve their freedoms. Vote no on the government takeover of health care.

Both of Hawaii’s Members of Congress voted yes on the bill.

Another prop has prompted a demand from one of her colleagues in Congress that Bachmann apologize. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) objects to signs depicting Holocaust victims that protesters brought to Bachmann’s rally against health-care reform last Thursday on Capitol Hill:

I just cannot believe that Congresswoman Bachmann sponsored and brought to the American people, the use of images from the Holocaust, actual photographs of the skeletal remains of people from the cremetoria, in order to make a point about the health insurance bill. I can’t believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood and see those images and not have the common decency to say, “I disagree with the use of those images.”