John D. Conyers Jr.: Story offered ridicule instead of fact

[question everything]

Conyers' letter to the WP was published in the strib today http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5475084.html

Apologies if posted here before

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Editor's note: Rep. John D. Conyers Jr. sent this letter to the Washington Post in response to Dana Milbank's article on hearings held by House Democrats on the Downing Street memo. The Star Tribune ran Milbank's piece on June 17.

I write to express my profound disappointment with Dana Milbank's June 17 report ... which purports to describe a Democratic hearing I chaired in the Capitol. In sum, the piece cherry-picks some facts, manufactures others out of whole cloth, and does a disservice to some 30 members of Congress who persevered under difficult circumstances, not of our own making, to examine a very serious subject: whether the American people were deliberately misled in the leadup to war. The fact that this was the Post's only coverage of this event makes the journalistic shortcomings in this piece even more egregious.

(snip)

By the way, the "Downing Street Memo" is actually the minutes of a British cabinet meeting. In the meeting, British officials -- having just met with their American counterparts -- describe their discussions with such counterparts. I mention this because that basic piece of context, a simple description of the memo, is found nowhere in Milbank's article.

(snip)

The article begins with an especially mean and nasty tone, claiming that House Democrats "pretended" a small conference was the Judiciary Committee hearing room and deriding the decor of the room. Milbank fails to share with his readers one essential fact: The reason the hearing was held in that room, an important piece of context. Despite the fact that a number of other suitable rooms were available in the Capitol and House office buildings, Republicans declined my request for each and every one of them. Milbank could have written about the perseverance of many of my colleagues in the face of such adverse circumstances, but declined to do so. Milbank also ignores the critical fact picked up by the AP, CNN and other newsletters that at the very moment the hearing was scheduled to begin, the Republican Leadership scheduled an almost unprecedented number of 11 consecutive floor votes, making it next to impossible for most members to participate in the first hour and one half of the hearing.

(snip)

In a typically derisive and uninformed passage, Milbank makes much of other lawmakers calling me "Mr. Chairman" and says I liked it so much that I used "chairmanly phrases." Milbank may not know that I was the chairman of the House Government Operations Committee from 1988 to 1994. By protocol and tradition in the House, once you have been a chairman you are always referred to as such. Thus, there was nothing unusual about my being referred to as Mr. Chairman.

To administer his coup de grace, Milbank literally makes up another cheap shot that I "was having so much fun that ignored aides' entreaties to end the session." This did not occur. None of my aides offered entreaties to end the session, and I have no idea where Milbank gets that information. The hearing certainly ran longer than expected, but that was because so many members of Congress persevered under very difficult circumstances to attend, and I thought -- given that -- the least I could do was allow them to say their piece. That is called courtesy, not "fun."

[rodeodance]

1. yeeah for the star-tribute and Mpls area--

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. What a great letter. Conyers... along with a handful of others...

is what's keeping me in the party ( although I've dropped my membership in DNC because of the party's failure to explicitly oppose the war.)