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Conyers: Forget Impeachment “basement hearings-Constitution in Crisis Report Watershed Achievements"

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 16 November 2006
6 comments

Parties Elections-Elected Governments USA

Dear Disillusioned Misled Email List,

We did it! We won at least 29 House seats and took the majority. We won 6 Senate seats and took back the Senate too, not to mention 28 Governors and several more statehouses. We had incredible turnout of Democratic voters across the country. Thanks to you, we had a vigorous election protection program in place to fight those who would restrict our right to vote. We ran a positive campaign on the issues that really matter to American voters.

The past two years we have worked very hard to bring a new majority to Congress and to restore accountability in Washington. We have fought together on issues such as the unanswered irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, the scandal of the Downing Street Minutes, the shame of outing a CIA agent, and much more. Together we proved that a number of dedicated online activists, working in conjunction with a single congressman, could become a force to be reckoned with.

Although we won back control of Congress, none of us should delude ourselves into thinking that running the legislative branch in a nation wracked by years of one party rule will be easy. We need to put aside any thought of anger or payback. Instead we need to focus on identifying and correcting abuses and pass legislation which serves the interests of the American people.

We also need to recapture the White House in 2008 and maintain and expand our majorities in the Congress. In order to achieve these goals we need to be totally united as a Party. It is fine to debate and argue behind closed doors and among ourselves, but at the end of the day, we owe it to the American people to unite and lead.

Thus, in my opinion it serve’s no one’s interests but the Republicans for anyone, including my friend James Carville, to suggest dumping DNC Chairman Dean less than three days after the most sweeping Democratic Congressional victory in more than thirty years. As many of you also know, I have agreed with Speaker-to-be Pelosi that impeachment is off the table. Instead, we agree that oversight, accountability and checks and balances - which have been sorely lacking for the last six years - must occur. I have nothing but respect for those who might disagree, but that is where I come out.

Having devoted a considerable amount of time and attention to detailing the many abuses of the Bush Administration, I firmly believe that we have brought these matters to the attention of the American people and the mainstream media, and that their verdict was reflected in the elections on November 7. I consider the now famous “basement hearings” and the issuance of my “Constitution in Crisis” Report to be among the watershed achievements of my more than forty years in Congress.

I also remain committed to the seminal issue of election reform. As one who held several hearings in the immediate aftermath of the Ohio debacle and went on to author “What Went Wrong in Ohio,” I believe more than ever that we need a paper trail on voting machines. We also need to strengthen our laws to put an end to intimidation schemes, like the stealth robo-calls voters received before the election. I intend to introduce legislation next Congress concerning these matters.

Additionally, none of us should underestimate the continued anger and vitriol of our political opponents, even after the election they are engaged in a permanent campaign to discredit Democrats and thwart our agenda of change. You need to go no further than the November 9 editorial in the supposedly mainstream Investors Business Daily, which smeared not only me but my constituents, writing, " Conyers led the defense of Bill Clinton in last decade’s impeachment hearings and is clearly out for blood. So are many of the constituents he serves." Pejorative and prejudiced statements like this should have no place in our political discourse.

I am hopeful that I will be selected as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary Committee is one of the most important committees in the House, and has jurisdiction over the Justice Department, the civil rights laws, criminal laws, the civil justice system, the courts, immigration laws, antitrust laws, patent and copyright laws, bankruptcy laws, administrative law, and Constitutional amendments. If I am selected as Chair, I believe it will place us in a position to make real and meaningful changes for the good of the American people.

We remain in this together, and I continue to look forward to receiving your ideas, your support, and your advice in the coming months and years.

Your Friend,

John Conyers, Jr.

johnconyers.com
Conyers for Congress
PO Box 17204
Alexandria, VA 22314

Forum posts

  • Mr. Conners said "Instead we need to focus on identifying and correcting abuses and pass legislation which serves the interest of the American People".

    OK, well first I would suggest "we" need to identify who was really behind 9-11 and the real reasons why it happened. Without Americans understanding the race by the neo-CONS to sieze mid-east resources, pump up corporate profits, and rally the dollar and flag through the old *problem, reaction, solution paradigm* it will be hard to correct those kinds of abuses, and may very well allow them to happen again. This next time it may be hundreds of thousands or more "sacrificed" for "The Empire". You don’t really want that on your conscience do you?

    MC said" It is fine to debate and argue behind closed doors".

    Well really IMO I feel Democracy works better out in the "disinfectant" of the sunlight of Free Speech. In fact I would hope perhaps you will be the Champion of The People that will pass some type of legislation to render the abuses you spoke of non-effective. How about passing legislation that settles the issue ONCE AND FOR ALL the BIll of Rights will stand as THE HIGHEST LAW of the land, Habeus Corpus is STILL guaranteed for U.S. citizens, and that EVERY law will abide by INNOCENT until PROVEN GUILTY by a JURY OF YOUR PEERS. Can you start with that. Something concrete. Perhaps if we can FREE AMERICA then we will be a little more worthy of try to bring "freedom and democracy" to someone else.

  • Impeachment is NOT done to satisjy "anger or payback" -it is done so we take power of ruling us( the supposed most powerful nation in the world, with all the influence this connotes) out of the hands of a common criminal, and get our integrity back!!!

    We must impeach to regain our respect in the world, and to heal our psyche as a nation.

  • If we don’t impeach we agree that future ’elected’ officials can get away with the same BS.

    • At least we should encourage people to think about World Court Trials for the war crimes instituted by the Bush regime. For the torture, kidnapping, renditions, secret jails and for all the lies that led to taking the U.S. into a completely unnecessary war and for the arrogance of Bush all of his violations of wire tapping, spying on his own citizens and trying to immunize himself in advance from any kind of trial for his misconduct.

  • I have to go back to his blog with this post but, it may have been the busiest of all. You’ll find many Americans of conscience there.

    I would so love to ship these people to the hague for trials. Hmmm, GWB is not in America today...

    • What John Conyers is really saying between the lines is the same thing any Republican would say if the shoe were on the other foot, and that is in America elected officials are ABOVE THE LAW and in America we really do have an order of social superiors, an aristocracy of ’elected’ officials who know that the rules don’t apply to them but to the idiot peasantry, which is the rest of the American people who aren’t lawyers or can’t afford one to have one. Therefore this country’s moral authority amongst its own people is based on not the RULE OF LAW, but on FEAR OF AUTHORITY, the same rationale of any feudal society, absolute monarchy or totalitarian regime.

      Since the ’loyal opposition’ finds it so ’very hard’ to do the right thing, which is to proceed with impeachment against these criminals who have nearly ruined our nation, the only conclusion one can rationally draw from their lack of resolve, their lack of courage & their failure to pursue justice is that the Democrats and the Republicans are at heart one single, monolithic party, in the sense that their upper management work in collusion, and have been for decades, while their brainwashed rank and file persist in believing that it ’ain’t so’.

      This has been the great strength of the two-faced party system, in that the rank and file’s loyalty to the system persists despite overwhelming evidence that the system does nothing but exploit their ignorance. In essence what the leaders of the two-faced party system call ’freedom’ is actually maintaining the ignorance of the general public, for without it their hold on power would be untenable. The events of the last five years, especially this past year, proves my point.
      Q-E-Fuckin’ D, maestro.

      Our nation is a false republic, a heavily controlled ’democracy’ where the people are pacified with 21st Century bread and circuses all dressed up with the latest high tech wizadry by a mainstream media that through favoritism and barely disguised subsidies have become another arm of an ever expanding and out of control Federal Government.