''Conyers rises to take on Bush''

"WASHINGTON -- At age 76, U.S. Rep. John Conyers -- long a hero to civil rights activists -- has grabbed a new torch: darling of the antiwar, anti-Bush far left. Conyers, arguably President George W. Bush's harshest congressional critic on Iraq policy, openly proclaims that his goal is nothing short of impeaching the president. That kind of rhetoric is fueled by his embrace of the Downing Street memos -- the eight British intelligence reports that activists from Rochester Hills to London believe are the smoking gun that proves Bush misled Congress about the case for war against Iraq.

Conyers, who is expected to speak outside the White House at a Sept. 24 antiwar rally, has had his staff feverishly working to complete a comprehensive report about the memos -- something he knows many of his colleagues won't read. "It was only a few people who dared to first join Martin Luther King," he said in an interview last week of his small but growing support in Congress. "The mood is changing. I don't have any intention of stopping now." In July, Conyers hosted a meeting about the memos at Wayne State University. Many of the 300 people, including Bruce Felt of Rochester Hills, said they came to see Conyers.
"He's my hero," said Felt, 50, who began following Conyers after the congressman investigated voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. "He's the only one speaking truth."

Earlier this summer, he announced plans for a hearing on the memos, but the House Republican leadership turned him down. He was relegated to a tiny basement room on Capitol Hill, and the meeting wasn't granted hearing status. For added measure, Republicans added an unheard-of 33 roll call votes that Conyers missed while conducting his Downing Street discussion. After the forum, Conyers headed to the White House with 500,000 letters petitioning Bush to answer more questions about the memos. The White House sent a low-level aide to meet Conyers, take the petitions and send him on his way.

Conyers didn't care about the slight. He got 128 Democrats to sign his letter to the president.


"I'm the one that's been driving this thing, man," Conyers said. One thing about Conyers that's not debatable: He has a great sense of the moment. Last week, he was front and center days after Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He offered an amendment to exempt hurricane victims from a new law that makes it harder to escape debts by declaring bankruptcy.

Four days after the 1968 death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Conyers sponsored the first bill calling for a holiday for the slain civil rights activist. "This is a guy that has challenged the most powerful people in our country and in our world, for that matter," said Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "He carries an awful lot of water."-from Ruby L. Bailey's story in The Detroit Free Press.