Home > Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers ’forums’

Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers ’forums’

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 15 June 2005
9 comments

Wars and conflicts Parties USA

Judiciary GOP pulls the plug on Conyers ’forums’
By Albert Eisele and Jeff Dufour

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/expo...

If the Financial Services Committee is the best in the House when it comes to bipartisan comity, then the Judiciary Committee may well be the worst.

In December, ranking Democrat John Conyers (Mich.) began holding “forums” - gatherings with all the trappings of official hearings - after Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) refused to hold hearings on topics Conyers requested. The forums have been held in smaller committee rooms, often with C-SPAN coverage and formal witness lists.

In a sign of how far relationships on the committee have soured, majority staff recently announced a new policy to deny any request from a committee Democrat for the use of a committee hearing room.

Majority spokesman Jeff Lungren said the Republicans have given Democrats three opportunities to make clear that the forums are not official committee business. Nevertheless, Lungren said, in at least one case, members were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren said. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”

Sean McLaughlin, deputy chief of staff for Sensenbrenner, recently wrote to a minority staffer in more pointed language.

“I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN,” McLaughlin wrote. “Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”

A committee source said committee Democrats are still planning to hold the forums when they find other available space.

Ford: Iraq could use an NAACP chapter

After spending the Memorial Day weekend in Iraq, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) thinks he may have a strategy to end the war in that country: Send in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Ford, who is running for the Senate seat of retiring Majority Leader Bill Frist (R), told an NAACP dinner in Knoxville on Friday night that “Iraq could use an NAACP chapter.”

Ford explained that the NAACP’s ability to work together for a common goal could be the missing link in bringing the two-year-old conflict to an end, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

“Even with our military sacrificing their lives over there, they cannot solve this problem alone,” he said.

Forum posts

  • Calling All People of The WORLD - HELP the REAL Americans — WE are Being HELD Hostage by MULTIANTIONAL CORPORATIONS that LIED, TRICKED, and TOOK us into a WAR on false pretext — And this means that those people are commiting HIGH treason against the people of the United States... Rise up to defeat the Regime of World Destruction and Help America be the a Land of Liberty Once Again — We call on Europe, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, all nations and people of the earth — BAND TOGETHER AS a WORLDWIDE Coallition of PEACE and Brotherhood. Live free and be not beholden to the FEAR of the CORPORATIONS. You own the world NOT the CORPORATIONS! Believe this and Live it and You will taste freedom!

    Perhaps the DEMOCRATIC Patriotic Members of Congress that are not Beholden to the Corporations and their lobbist should consider moving to the Original Capital in WilliamsBurg Virgina, or the building where the Constitution and Declaration where penned. It seems that the Republicans are having a hard time with the freedom of speech and the truth. Maybe they should rename the congressional building the MULTINATIONAL Republican CORPORATION BUILDING of Investors Representatives. And we can relocate members of congress that wish to UPHOLD their OATH of OFFICE and CSPAN to another building where actual American democracy can practiced. You know if they are having trouble with a member of congress using an empty room payed for by American taxpayers, perhaps the tax payers should STOP paying their salaries and reorganize the government by the people and for the people, because as far as I can see ---
    The republicans are a little afraid of the truth when it concerns their personal profit agendas. Seems thats the bases of why the United States was formed in the first place --- you know TAXATION withOUT representation —

    I think its time for American Patriots to invoke the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE — specifically the lines that read

    But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

    Time to Roll American Patriots — Time to throw the TYRANIST and DESPOTS OUT! Democracy NOW!

    Patriots for Peace. Patriots for Democracy. Patriots against War. Patriots for the PEOPLE. ALL OF THEM.

    PEACE OUT. 93x

    • This is absolutely the most outrageous abuse yet. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who chairs the Judiciary Committee needs to be lynched, tarred and feathered and stripped of his office. He’s nothing but a lackey for the oppressive Busheviks and he reporesents the worst interests of his party, not the best interests of the people who voted him in.

      Republicans are leading the United States towards oblivion. It is time to take up arms against our oppressors.

      IMPEACH NOW! Write your congressperson.

  • SUPPORT CONYERS, AND THE "Gold Star Families for Peace"

    Agree totally with above posts!! It’s way beyond the point of voting them out! Can’t be done now that we have e-voting w/o a paper trail. I haven’t seen a congresscritter in years. They no longer come out in public because they know what they will get! We have to go after them, so please, please make an effort to attend the DSM protests around the country. I hate going into DC but I am making a special trip (its such a small thing to do for our boys stuck in AN unjust war in a country that hates them!) just because I have failed to do anything but hide behind my PC and type out meaningless blog msgs - I will go...

    MAKE THE EFFORT - ATTEND THE DC PROTEST ON THURSDAY!!!

    IT WILL BE GOOD PRACTICE FOR THAT DAY WHEN THE GUILTY ARE PUNISHED PUBLICALLY!!!!

  • Soon our military and the American people must make a decision. Continue to follow a lawless President and his flunkies or follow the Constitution. The military is sworn to uphold the Constitution- not to obey unlawful orders and to defend the United States of America from enemies-both foreign and DOMESTIC.

    I cannot bring myself to fly our American flag with 50 stars-coming from a military family, it now makes me think of young people’s funerals. Funerals that should have not yet been... I bought the Betsy Ross orginal-13 stars and will only hang this flag until the Bush Administration is GONE.

    • A coup d’etat by the military would sure be one fuck of a mess! I’ll bet the deliverance states wouldn’t know whether to shit or go blind when the troops black helicopter themselves into the town square! Maybe this would finally wake them up. Any articles or links on this topic of military coup would be appreciated.

    • Obviously Mr. Kotex or "Tex" as he is called, is one of the arrogant Republipukes who think that they can do any thing they damn well please because they stole another election and no one is going to do anything about it. Someone needs to start knocking some heads together and wake these ass holes up, as it is now they think they are invincible, maybe if they started to become targets they might reconsider.

    • This may come to pass, the enlisted learning they are led by a DESERTER...(from National Guard), and have you heard this:
      Downing Street Minutes make Stars & Stripes

      http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=28991&archive=true

      By Leo Shane III, Stars and StripesPacific edition, Friday, June 17, 2005

      Leo Shane III / S&S
      Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., left, speaks to members of Military Families Speak Out about his experience at a soldier’s funeral last month. With him are, from left, Dianne Davis Santorello, Celeste Zappala and Bill Mitchell. All three had a son killed serving in Iraq.
      Leo Shane III / S&S
      Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., listens to members of Military Families Speak Out.

      WASHINGTON — Several parents of soldiers killed in Iraq visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to ask for congressional hearings on the Downing Street memo, which one mother called President Bush’s “Watergate.”

  • Conyers is a hero but he needs to take advantage of this opportunity. He should find a park nearby and hold his hearings there. We need to show the world and these crazy christo-fascists, neo-cons and demons who have usurped power in America, just how bad it is, and how far the remaining free people of the world will go to protect theirr freedoms. What a spectacle we have just witnessed, democracy has been sick for years in Amerika, now it is almost almost dead.

    Where is the "feeding tube" for Democracy?

    Gary_7vn

    • Find a park nearby? Hold the forums right on the Capitol building steps. Wouldn’t that make some great footage, 123 members of Congres arrested for assembling and doing congressional work outside the seat of government. .. because they couldn’t get a conference room inside.

      Desparate times call for desparate measures. . .