No, Mr. Conyers, we expect you to read the bills

If it weren’t for the Great Health Care Debate of 2009, would we all know what a sorry excuse for a congressman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan really is?
 
We have that debate thanks to Conyers “fessing up that he doesn’t read congressional bills. Well, not the long ones, anyway. Here’s his quote about why he didn’t bother to read the health care bill:
 
“I love these members that get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s 1,000 pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you’ve read the bill?”
 
For those not in the know, this was vintage, indeed classic, Conyers. I wasn’t at all surprised by his remarks. I had encountered what I call “Conyers-think” before, back in 2002. I was on what I called my “Reparations Wars and Tour of 2002,” which found me visiting Tallahassee, Fla., Dover, Del., Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, N.Y. On all these occasions I participated in panel discussions in which reparations for slavery were the topic for debate. In all these cases, I was on the con side.
 
I quickly found out what folks on the pro side considered fair: Usually the debate pitted about a dozen or more pro-reparations folks against two on the con side. At one debate in Baltimore, I was the lone debater on the con side going up against 10 others.
 
In all these debates, the pro-reparations folks gave praise to Conyers as the representative who, year after year, sponsored the reparations resolution in Congress.
 
“Oh, so we have him to thank for this nonsense,” I said at the time. In late 2002, I got another dose of Conyers-think in a room of the Rayburn House Office Building.
 
Robert Ehrlich had just been elected governor of Maryland and Michael Steele, a black conservative Republican, had just made history by becoming the state’s first black lieutenant governor. Conyers and Steele were both part of a postelection forum sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Conyers used the occasion to take a dig at Steele and all black conservatives.
 
“I’m interested in the psychology of black conservatives,” Conyers said. “I want to know what makes you like this?”
 
Loosely translated, this means a couple of things: the first is that black conservatives are, by definition, crazy. In the world of Conyers-think, there’s something WRONG with us. Our brains aren’t right.
 
The second is more insidious: In Conyers-think, all blacks are supposed to think one way and have one view, preferably that of one Rep. John Conyers of Michigan. Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t that sound like the kind of thinking Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin would have approved of?
 
In early 2003, Conyers-think struck again. By opposing the University of Michigan’s race-based affirmative action admissions plan, President George W. Bush, Conyers told the nation, had given us a “Plessy v. Ferguson moment.”
 
Charming gent, no? Putting all this info together, we know that Conyers is a narrow-minded, race-baiting demagogue who believes whites in the 21st century should pay for the sins of their ancestors in the 19th century, whether those ancestors lived in this country or not. He’s entitled to be that way. But now we realize something else.
 
The man’s been in Congress more than 40 years and, apparently, doesn’t bother to read bills. Well, at least not the long ones. And he revealed this: He not only doesn’t bother to read the long bills, but he would also need lawyers to interpret them once he did read them.
 
How does a man with a mind like this get elected to the House of Representatives, and get elected repeatedly? It’s easy for us to bash Conyers, but let’s put the blame where it really belongs.
 
That would be on Conyers’ constituents back in Michigan. In 2002, I wrote that Conyers was basically an ambulatory argument for term limits. But our Founding Fathers set term limits: Two years for a representative and six years for a senator. They figured the American electorate would have the good judgment to boot nitwit senators and representatives out of office on a regular basis.
 
Conyers should thank his lucky stars the Founders were wrong about that one.

Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.