Conyers Rules

My hero Rep. Conyers is at it again. Perhaps in honor of the Independence Day holiday, the relentless representative from Michigan has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the White House, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State for materials relating to the Downing Street Minutes and the lead up to the Iraq war. With 52 percent of the American public now saying they believe that the president misled us about Iraq and a resounding 42 percent saying they would support impeachment proceedings if this is found to be true (this is without most of them even being aware of the Downing Street Memos' existence), this is just another sign that the tide has turned.

As we move into the holiday weekend--and the 142nd anniversary another of this nation's turning points--let us remember what this country really stands for, and demand that our government, the institution that works for us, uphold the standards laid out in its Constitution. It is our country, and we should expect nothing less.
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863