"I'm getting tired of saving Obama's can in the White House. I mean, he only won [on healthcare] by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn't anything to write home about," Conyers said last month. "You know, holding hands out and beer on Friday nights in the White House and bowing down to every nutty right-wing proposal about health care, and saying on occasion that public options aren't all that important is doing a disservice to the Barack Obama that I first met who was an ardent single-payer enthusiast himself."

Now, Conyers says he got a call from Obama, who wanted to discuss the congressman's comments.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Leahy, whose committee has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony in the U.S. attorneys firing scandal, says in his statement that "there is clear evidence that Ms. Taylor was one of several White House officials who played a key role in these firings and the Administrationb

Asking what the administration has to hide, Leahy states, "The White House continues to try to have it both ways -- to block Congress from talking with witnesses and accessing documents and other evidence while saying nothing improper occurred."

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, also issued a statement responding to the White House: "Contrary to what the White House may believe," Conyers wrote, "it is the Congress and the Courts that will decide whether an invocation of Executive Privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally."

Continue Reading...

The issue -- or at least the immediate one -- is the Bush administration's refusal to turn over internal White House documents or make Harriet Miers or Sara Taylor available for testimony in Congress' probes of the firing of U.S. attorneys last year. In their letter, Leahy and Conyers complain that the White House has refused to comply with congressional subpoenas based on a "blanket" invocation of "executive privilege" that isn't even signed by the president himself.

"A serious assertion of privilege would include an effort to demonstrate to the committees which documents, and which parts of those documents, are covered by any privilege that may apply," the chairmen say. They want Fielding to provide them with a privilege log that lists each document that's being withheld and provides a description of the nature of the document, the source, the subject matter, the date of the document, the identity of anyone who received a copy of the document, and the specific legal basis for claiming that the document is protected by executive privilege.

Continue Reading...

While there was a kernel of truth to what Cannon said -- U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the president and the attorney general -- Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers rightly took him to task for overstating the case. "I regret that my good friend Mr. Cannon continues to describe the conduct of the Democrats on this committee as being politically motivated," Conyers said. "I just want to try to correct at least one thing here: that a U.S. attorney can be removed at any time, for any reason."

Continue Reading...

Conyers and Nadler say Cheney's comments about Libby's sentence -- he said this week that he hopes "our system" will "return a final result consistent with what we know of this fine man" -- suggest that he's blurring the line between his professional duties and his personal interests, especially in light of the fact that the investigation Libby obstructed involved the actions of the vice president himself.

Continue Reading...

What the six-hour hearing established most clearly is that most Republicans remain united behind Gonzales despite the clear evidence of his incompetence, dishonesty and contempt for Congress as an institution. Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, none of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee even posed a sharp question to him, let alone urged his resignation. Instead they acted in partisan lockstep, expressing sympathy for the poor attorney general's ordeal, pretending that there is no scandal and no stonewall, and insisting that the investigation should end.

Continue Reading...

"I am sure we agree -- you and I -- that any hint or indication that the department may not be acting fairly and impartially in enforcing the nation's laws, or in choosing the nation's law enforcers, has ramifications far beyond the department itself, and casts doubt upon every action or inaction your office and your employees take.

"So, when we learn that several U.S. attorneys were added to the termination list only after they decided to pursue criminal investigations involving Republican officials, or after complaints that they were not pursuing investigations against Democrats, we must insist that we understand exactly how this came into existence and how the list itself of those discharged came into existence.

"When we learn that most of the U.S. attorneys forced to resign were among the highest rated and most able in the nation, that they were told that they were being displaced to create a bigger Republican farm team while others were retained because they were 'loyal Bushies,' it creates the impression that the department has placed partisan interests above the public interest.

Continue Reading...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will appear in front of the same committee on Thursday; he'll have to be especially careful to mind his P's and Q's now that he knows an immune Goodling may be following not long behind.

A committee staffer tells Salon that Goodling's testimony may come as early as before Memorial Day.

Continue Reading...

Back in December, Conyers introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a select committee to determine whether George W. Bush should be impeached for encouraging the torture of detainees; misusing and misrepresenting intelligence on Iraq; misleading Americans about the reasons for war; and retaliating against critics like former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Continue Reading...

At the end of January, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon's impeachment, penned an appeal for Bush's removal in the Nation, citing his illegal wiretaps, his deliberate deceptions over Iraq, his incompetent prosecution of the war, and his authorizing systemic torture and abuse. "Impeachment is a tortuous process, but now that President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy," she wrote. In March, former Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham wrote a cover story in that magazine titled "The Case for Impeachment." The Center for Constitutional Rights -- the legal group representing many of the victims of Bush's torture policies -- has just published a book called "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush," and at least one other book in a similar vein is forthcoming, Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky's "The Case for Impeachment."

Continue Reading...

In addition, Conyers has introduced resolutions calling for the censure of both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for failing to respond to congressional inquiries about the Downing Street memos and other issues related to the Iraq war.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Assuming that Libby is the confidential source for the story Miller never wrote, there's an obvious way to get her testimony -- or at least to put her claims to the test. Libby could simply offer Miller the same sort of personalized waiver that he previously gave Time's Matthew Cooper. Four Democrats in Congress say it's high time for him to do just that. In a letter sent to Libby this afternoon, Reps. John Conyers, Louise Slaughter, Rush Holt and Maurice Hinchey say that Cheney's chief of staff should immediately provide Miller a waiver that would allow her to testify about their conversation.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Three dozen Democratic representatives shuffled in and out of a small room to join Conyers in declaring that the Downing Street memo was the first "primary source" document to report that prewar intelligence was intentionally manipulated in order make a case for invading Iraq. Not only did Republican leaders consign the Democrats to the basement, Democrats claimed that the House scheduled 11 votes concurrent with the forum to maximize the difficulty of attending it. Because the forum wasn't an official hearing, it won't become a part of the Congressional Record, but members worked to make sure that the attending media and activists captured their words for posterity.

Continue Reading...

So let's hear it, once again, for John Conyers. The gentleman from Michigan isn't calling for Bush's impeachment yet, but he's asking the right questions and vowing to go wherever the answers might lead. Last month, Conyers wrote a letter to Bush, asking him to answer the charges raised in the not-so-famous Downing Street memo. So far, more than 160,000 Americans have signed on to the letter. And so far, Bush hasn't responded.

Continue Reading...

On a party-line vote, the House Judiciary Committee rejected Rep. John Conyers' resolution that would have required the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to provide Congress documents regarding "security investigations and background checks relating to granting access to the White House of James D. Guckert (also known as Jeff Gannon)."

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Conyers told his colleagues on the committee that he was seeking the documents through the resolution because the Bush administration had ignored his previous requests. "It simply defies credibility," Conyers said, "that a phony reporter, operating under an alias, who couldn't get privileges in the House or Senate press gallery, could receive scores of consecutive White House day passes without the intervention of someone very high up at the White House." Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Republican committee chairman, said there was no need for a further investigation because the Secret Service -- the agency involved in giving Gannon/Guckert access in the first place -- had already determined that nothing inappropriate had happened.

Continue Reading...

With little attention from the media and little support even from members of his own party, Conyers has launched his own probe of the 2004 election. His early conclusion: There may not have been an active conspiracy to suppress the vote and steal the election, but all those problems in Ohio -- the long lines in Democratic precincts, the voting machines that may have switched votes, the suspicious actions of a voting-machine company representative, the trumped-up concerns about terrorism in Warren County, the Republican-friendly rulings by the state election official who also happened to chair the Bush-Cheney campaign -- well, those things didn't all happen by accident, either.

Continue Reading...

A case in point is its handling of the CIA leak investigation. From the outset it has been obvious that White House political director Karl Rove was central to efforts to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson and perhaps had broken the law by leaking Wilson's wife's name to the press. Yet to date, the president has not seen fit to either ask Rove to step aside or request a special counsel to pursue the case against him and his cohorts in the White House.

The case against Rove and for a special prosecutor is overwhelming.

We know that selective leaking to target political enemies is consistent with Rove's modus operandi. Associates of former President Bush have acknowledged that Rove was fired from Mr. Bush's 1992 campaign over leaking to Robert Novak. One Rove biographer, Wayne Slater, stated, "If [Rove] didn't do this, he certainly has a pattern of activity over the 15 years, 20 years that I've known him where he has done similar things." James Moore, another Rove biographer, tells us, "If Mr. Rove is not involved [in the leak], I'll eat the paperback copy of my own book because this is a guy who controls everything, and he has a history of ... using other operatives to get things done."

Continue Reading...