Rep John Conyers...openly proclaims that his goal is nothing short of impeaching the president.
That kind of rhetoric is fueled by his embrace of the Downing Street memos -- the eight British intelligence reports that activists from Rochester Hills to London believe are the smoking gun that proves Bush misled Congress about the case for war against Iraq.
Conyers, who is expected to speak outside the White House at a Sept. 24 antiwar rally, has had his staff feverishly working to complete a comprehensive report about the memos -- something he knows many of his colleagues won't read.
"It was only a few people who dared to first join Martin Luther King," he said in an interview last week of his small but growing support in Congress. "The mood is changing. I don't have any intention of stopping now."
In July, Conyers hosted a meeting about the memos at Wayne State University. Many of the 300 people, including Bruce Felt of Rochester Hills, said they came to see Conyers.
"He's my hero," said Felt, 50, who began following Conyers after the congressman investigated voting irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 presidential election. "He's the only one speaking truth."
Conyers is familiar with the political fringe: It's been his comfort zone over four decades in Congress. The second most senior member of the House, however, Conyers is a stark contrast to its most senior, Democrat John Dingell, whose district abuts Conyers' district. Dingell has forged bipartisan compromises and demands respect and gets it.
Republicans regard Conyers as more of a curiosity who has legendary problems with his staff and an awful attendance record, and is the sponsor of odd resolutions -- like National Tap Dance Day. (In 1989, it failed.)
"Some parts of his district don't see the world the way Congressman Conyers does," said Nate Bailey, spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party. "We have real issues to face and he's tracking down some British memo about a conflict that's been going on a couple of years."
Still, Republicans have posed little threat to his congressional career. His district was extended into a handful of Downriver suburbs after the 2000 census but is still overwhelmingly Democratic. He won in 2004 with 84% of the vote in the general election.
Those kinds of numbers -- and he's enjoyed them throughout his career -- allow Conyers to often behave more like the at-large representative of America's poor and dispossessed than the senior Democrat from Detroit. (Though the roles are hardly mutually exclusive.)
"After 40 years, the verdict is still out," Norm Ornstein, political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said of Conyers. Ornstein has followed Conyers' political career since meeting him in 1970.
"Some Democrats said he's been a very effective leader as their ranking Democrat" on the House Judiciary Committee, said Ornstein. "But with the career path that he's chosen, he's hard to assess."
In recent months, Downing Street has been driving Conyers' international persona. When the controversy made headlines in London, Conyers began exchanging ideas with left-wing activists around the world on Internet blogs.
Earlier this summer, he announced plans for a hearing on the memos, but the House Republican leadership turned him down. He was relegated to a tiny basement room on Capitol Hill, and the meeting wasn't granted hearing status.
For added measure, Republicans added an unheard-of 33 roll call votes that Conyers missed while conducting his Downing Street discussion.
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