John Conyers hasn’t even taken his position as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee yet and he is already under virulent attack by right-wing ‘journalists’. Investor’s Business Daily is accusing him of pandering to his Muslim constituents in Deerbornistan and undermining our national security.
The likely new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says he’s just fighting bigotry in leading a Democrat jihad to deny law enforcement key terror-fighting tools. But he is in the pocket of Islamists.
John Conyers, son of a leftist Detroit union activist, represents the largest Arab population in the country. His district includes Dearborn, Mich., nicknamed “Dearbornistan” by locals fed up with cultural encroachment and terror fears from a steady influx of Mideast immigrants.
Conyers, who runs an Arabic version of his official Web site, does the bidding of these new constituents and the militant Islamist activists who feed off them. They want to kill the Patriot Act and prevent the FBI from profiling Muslim suspects in terror investigations. They also want to end the use of undisclosed evidence against suspected Arab terrorists in deportation proceedings.
And the 77-year-old Conyers has vowed to deliver those changes for them.
“The policies of the Bush administration have sent a wave of fear through our immigrant communities and targeted our Arab and Muslim neighbors,” he growls.
He’ll soon be in a position to act on his promises. And he has the full backing of the expected speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wants to criminalize FBI and Customs Service profiling of Muslim terror suspects.
The rest of the column just gets worse. But there is a bright side. At no point do they accuse Conyers of using the Arkansas state troopers to procure him women, or of showing any government employees his tallywhacker and asking them to ‘kiss it’. This is progress.
In all seriousness, is there a substantive difference between the rhetoric of this column and typical Nazi propaganda of the 1930’s? If there is it can only be grounded in the relative differences in the actual threat that is being discussed. It is true that that there are Muslims in this country that aim to do us harm, while the same could not be said about the Jews of Germany. But even providing that, the rhetoric is identical and seeks to play on the same irrational fears in our reptilian brains. Just look at the summary.
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.
Nice. Welcome to the new bipartisan spirit.
I am certain hate literature like this example given, designed only to incite intolerance, is immoral and as divisive as you can possibly get.
“Investors Business Daily”???
More like:
“Corporatist Hate Daily”
(Corporatist is just a polite word for Fascist)
John Conyers doesn’t scare me.
Detroit Muslims don’t scare me. Heck, Muslims in general don’t scare me. I work with one every day. Nice guy.
People like the editorial writers for Investors’ Business Daily?
Ann Coulter?
Dick Cheney?
If anything scares me, it’s people like them.
I’m trying my best not to be afraid, though, because that’s what they want. They want us to fear Muslims, but just as importantly, they want us to fear them.
I teach in his district. According to this logic, I’ll have to be fully covered, veil and everything.
Imagine what the new Congressperson who is actually is Muslim is getting from the media outside his district.
The fact that he is an American black means little; but what isn’t well-known is he’s a former Black Muslim, i.e., a follower of Farrakhan.
I wish the media and the rest of the enablers would stop dumping on Conyers and earlier this week, on Rangel for some joking comment about Mississippi. Otherwise, I may have something for them.
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We’ve already had several years to contemplate their version of “bipartisan”. Time for a refreshing change, IMHO.
Actually what IBD is pushing is the same old bipartisan spirit, which is basically “my way or the highway, and screw you either way.”
Bush only says “bipartisan” when he’s trapped in a corner and his weasel brain is trying to buy him time. He fired Rummy in a fit of panic. He is a low life who, with his cronies, will spit in our faces soon enough.
You nailed it. Racist, fascist hate speech cloaked as political analysis.
I’m not even sure you can say this is cloaked. This is out-and-out smearing.
I’m eager to read IBD’s profile of Sen Patrick Leahy, (D-VT) the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen Leahy, in an interview VPR (Vermont Public Radio), apologized for his gushing…”I can’t wait to get on a plane back to Washington.” Among the priorities, he’ll be revisiting the detainee bill-habeas corpus, warrantless wire taps.
Yep, up here in VT we have herds of fascist-terrists cows. Btw, horrors of horrors, we do export cows to Cuba.
Makes sense.
He is the most dangerous person in congress right now. Most dangerous to the criminals still in power.
Why?
How?
Read this comment that I wrote earlier today on Boooman’s diary Media Just Doesn’t See the Tsunami.
Mr. Conyers has been RIGHT on point. All the way through this fiasco.
He has little to lose…I mean, what are the DemRats going to DO to him, exactly? Ruin his political career? He’s in his seventies, fer Chrissake!!! Been in Congress for what? Over 30 years?
Wikipedia:
I think not.
And…you do not want to mess with this man.
Bet on it.
I have met him.
He was instrumental in getting the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra started.( A GREAT band of which I have been a member since its inception in 1990.)
He’s a smart, tough guy.
If ANYBODY can reach these fucks, it’s him.
Gonna be interesting.
John Conyers as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee?
Peter Rodino occupied that post when Nixon went down.
Remember him?
And Conyers has a whole WOODSHED of axes to grind.
It’s gonna be VERY interesting.
Stay tuned.
Any day now.
AAAaaany day….
(My bet? January/February. Watch. The gloves ARE going to come off eventually. Watch.)
Have fun…
Yup.
It’s ALREADY interesting.
And it is going to get more so.
Any day now.
AAAaaany day….
Later…
AG
Conyers is one of those rare Democrats whom I actually respect. He earns it by kicking it old school – telling it like it is, giving no quarter, and backing words with deeds.
John Conyers office has an excellent reputation re: constituent services. When I was doing case management, I got a call from his office about a case that was really screwed up BAD. (This was on my second day on the job–I hadn’t even reviewed that case!) I must have sounded like a complete idiot over the phone as the aide hung up and called one of the higher-ups. Per my supervisor, that case took priority over EVERYTHING. (Fact that I was new was the only reason I didn’t get fired.) Took me the rest of the week to straighten it out. Whew!
Was meant as anti-social work. Hell, I’ve done the same thing–called congresscritters when things are screwed up and I am again a client.
I sat across a table in a Detroit diner from John Conyers during the 2004 election. I was a very small part of the Dean group in SE Michigan. Conyers came by, alone, to check us out. We were doing political work in his district and he wanted to know us. The man is not a tool of anyone. He was given Dearborn by the state GOP in an effort to gerrymander him out of Congress. He responds to his Muslim constituents because that is his job. That is why he has an Arabic website.
The Investment crowd is furious because BushCo has been their dream administration since FDR beat Hoover in 1932 and put some limits on corporate power. They want the Corporate GOP to stay in power in 2008. They will try to use the Religious Right, racist appeals, and scare tactics to do so. Their interest is in making money and keeping power in the hands of the wealthy. Yup, Conyers is a threat to their world and I’m damn glad he is.
Conyers is a perfect example of why term limits are a terrible idea and why right wing stink tanks support term limits.
In the twisted and bizarre world of Christofascists, Arabs have become the new Jews. This is the same shit that the Nazi sympathists were putting out back in the 1930s – not only in Germany but in the US.
It is true that that there are Muslims in this country that aim to do us harm
Sounds like hate speech to me
the criminal hate machine never rests.
Plus, the disseminators of these talking points are about to get busted. We shouldn’t be surprised, we should however take comfort that the majority of the country does not find these pundits credible — hence our mandate last Tuesday.
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>>It is true that that there are Muslims in this country that aim to do us harm…<<
The Muslims in this country are “US”! So much for anti-racism on your part Booman.
I reread the diary after seeing your post and think you got it wrong. If someone is in the country to attack “us”, they are not part of us. In context, “us” means Americans. He was not saying that being American somehow excludes Muslim citizens. Booman was not saying that all Muslims are terrorists. He was not attributing characteristics to all Muslims. You may disagree with his assertion that “there are Muslims in this country that aim to do us harm.” But calling him a racist based on the quote you selected is unwarranted and unsupported.
It would not surprise me a bit if there are Muslims in this country who are out to harm “us,” just as there are Republicans, beer drinkers, tennis players and short-order cooks who are out to harm “us,” whatever the definition of “us” might be.
The statement is unfortunate and uses a subgroup guaranteed to spark a reaction, but I don’t think it’s racist. Now, implying that all Muslims in this country are out to do us harm — which is what the IBJ would have you believe — is a racist statement.
LOL. Brilliant.
For that matter there are white boys in this country that aim to do us harm. Timothy McVeigh was not and is not unique. There are many more like him, still out there. And I have not doubt there are a few Hispanics and blacks out there who really, really would like to blow up something given the chance. To tell the truth, given the cumulative daily indignities and humiliations heaped on black men every day in this country, I am astonished that some of them don’t go postal as it is.
John Conyers is an unusual person. A few years ago I was at one of his “It Takes a Village” conferences about the state of children in his district. Some of the media types present were surprised that he had included people from many parts of the SE Michigan region, including the local Arabic and Chaldean communities, business communities, black, white, latino, asian, what have you. Particularly noteworthy was that Conyers spent most of the time listening, while quietly caring for his preschool age son, who he had with him those days – without other assistance. Although one of the local papers reported on the conferences as an example of Conyers self-puffery, he had actually said very little. And at least half of the speakers did not live or work in his immediate congressional district.
He was gerrymandered into a whiter, much less Christian district very soon after those sessions. Repubs were sure this would be the secret to taking Conyers out of office. Wrong. His previous work in the region gave him some significant connections far beyond the confines of the African American community, and his re-election has never been in question. The white blinders of Michigan’s business/republican community failed again.