Swanson: The Conyers Legacy

The staffer was annoyed and complained to his colleague "It's bad enough they shut the office down with phone calls." Another staffer, this one rather pleased about it (the police, too, were on our side and three of them quietly accepted Impeach Bush and Cheney shirts), told me they were getting a pro-impeachment phone call every 30 seconds. They were also flooded with Emails and with thousands of faxes yesterday. But the message was not getting through to the Congressman.

He and several staffers met with Sheehan, McGovern, and Yearwood. It was a heated discussion. Conyers began by proposing to discuss impeachment sometime in August at a town hall meeting. We've been doing those for years. We held a huge one in Detroit in May that Conyers agreed to speak at. He showed up and left before it started. Yearwood, Sheehan, and McGovern told Conyers his time was up.

What was Conyers' objection to moving forward on impeachment now? Well, he said, if he were to do that Fox News would go after him and accuse him of being partisan. I kid you not. The Democratic Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee is basing his decisions on whether a Republican cable TV station would approve. As Cindy Sheehan told me outside the jail last night: "If I based my decisions on Fox, I would never do anything."