Angry in the Great White North

From John Conyer's website:

Some of you may remember Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son Casey was killed last year in Sadr City, Iraq. Cindy participated in my hearing in the basement of the Capitol on June 16th and has been a leader for Gold Star Families for Peace.

Cindy has waited a long time for answers from the President. Answers to questions about the Downing Street Minutes, about the realreasons for war in Iraq, and to what end was her son asked to sacrifice his life. Right now Mrs. Sheehan is staging a vigil outside the president’s house on a sun-baked dusty road in Crawford, Texas waiting for Bush to talk to her and offer a real explanation for why we are in Iraq.

Cindy is prepared to wait as long as it takes for the President to meet with her. Help us help Mrs. Sheehan and other grieving mothers get some real answers.

Make use of my Crawford Action Center below to get involved and lend your support. I will be regularly providing updates of the media coverage in Crawford, so be sure to check back and keep informed.

Maybe there would be even more media coverage if John Conyers himself went to Camp Casey and allowed himself to be photographed kneeling at Cindy Sheehan's feet.

I don't see why Congressman Conyers won't go -- he seems to be such a fan of grandstanding:

Dana Milbank, of all people, notes the folly of a handful of Congressional Democrats yesterday in pretending to hold a committee hearing on articles of impeachment for George Bush. Just like little girls having a tea party, the Democrats brought in realistic-looking props and played their parts just as if the meeting was real. It was so cute:

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.

The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.

As Dana Milbank wryly points out, it's easy to be lucky with witnesses and to reach the conclusions you like when you play make-believe. John Conyers almost sounds like he's completely disconnected from reality in his insistence on formalities, but as little girls will tell you, you have to really play the role if you want to enjoy these tea parties.

Maybe he and Cindy Sheehan can set up a tent to be US Senate, and get the folks at Camp Casey to be senators. Problem is, you need to have a hundred senators, plus people to play the President and others, and it doesn't look like they'll have enough:

There are 70 – 80 people on the site at Camp Casey at the moment, Ann [Wright] said. If they are asked to leave or be arrested, many if not all of them will likely opt for arrest.

That was a few days back. Maybe they'll have enough now to play with their new friend Conyers. But it is Monday, and people do have to get to work...