By Joel Thurtell
Before a Detroit City Council staffer and a security guard restrained her from physically going after fellow council member Kwame Kenyatta, Monica Conyers ran down a list of God-given gifts that, in the Mon’s opinion, Kenyatta lacks.
They include ability to hear, basic intelligence, failure to finish college and for good measure that claim, apparently false, that Kenyatta has cancer.
In other words, she called him deaf, stupid, uneducated and, well, sick.
Kenyatta said the Mon lacks sensitivity.
That’s an understatement.
She lacks other things as well.
But nobody can accuse the Mon of not getting her college degrees.
Fat lot of good her law degree got her, though.
I would not follow Monica down the path of personal insults by suggesting that she might lack some of the native gifts she accused Kenyatta of not having.
Why, hey, it could be that the Mon was stressed out when she took the Michigan bar exam on four separate occasions, failing it cold each time.
Monica’s resume on the city of Detroit website notes that she earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of District of Columbia School of Law.
She went to law school in DC, I guess, because hubby is John Conyers Jr., a member of Congress from Detroit. Maybe it was more convenient, somehow, to commute to DC for law classes than to attend one of Michigan’s law schools, such as the ones at Wayne State University and University of Detroit-Mercy.
I understand she got some free tutoring at taxpayer expense, too, which happened in the congressman’s Detroit office. Sydney Rooks, a lawyer and former member of U.S. Representative Conyers’ staff, told me she was ordered by the congressman to tutor the Mon in hubby’s Detroit congressional office, on government time.
Guess it didn’t help with the bar exam, though. Too bad for the Mon: If you’re not a member of your state’s bar, you can’t practice law. Can’t give legal advice, can’t appear in court, can’t prepare legal documents that require a licensed lawyer’s signature and state bar number.
Back when I was a Detroit Free Press reporter, I was curious about this. I wrote on Feb. 7, 2006 to the Board of Law Examiners, an office in the Michigan Supreme Court.
“Esteemed members of the Board of Law Examiners,” I said. “This is a request under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. I am requesting the results (pass/fail) of any and all state bar examinations taken by Monica Conyers.”
A few days later, I found a letter dated Feb. 13, 2006 from the Board of Law Examiners. “In regards to your correspondence of February 7, 2006, I would like to inform you that the Board of Law Examiners is not controlled by the Freedom of Information Act.”
Uh-oh, I thought. My bad. I’m out of luck.
But the letter continued: “Ms. Monica Conyers sat for the February 2003, February 2004 and February 2005 Michigan bar examinations and failed those exams.”
Had she taken the bar exam since February 2005? I mailed off another letter to the Board of Law Examiners on June 6, 2008 and the response from the Board was was dated June 10, 2008.
According to the Board of Law Examiners, “Ms. Conyers subsequently sat for the July 2007 Michigan bar examination and failed that exam.”
Four times Monica Conyers flunked the bar exam.
A practicing lawyer she cannot be.
Kwame Kenyatta might wonder: What good is that law school diploma if the Mon can’t muster the moxie to pass the bar exam?
A law school alumna she is.
A lawyer she ain’t.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
That is the funniest and most true article at the same time that I have ever read….Joel, you are too much!
Let’s just be glad that Monica Conyers has been exposed for the crook that she is. Soon, Monica will be spending 37 months in a jail cell. I am not surprised to learn that she has failed the bar exam four times. Her demeanor and the contempt with which she treated the city council members is to me an indication of low intelligence.
Many people graduate from college and receive degrees without actually learning the things that they are supposed to know. I am an engineer with bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering. In addition, I am licensed in not one but several professions.
It is not unusual for me to receive abhorrent e-mail from colleagues who are native born Americans with graduate degrees in engineering. Many times, the e-mails are not the least bit legible, chock full of grammatical and spelling errors and lacking a coherent message.
Monica is but one example of a person who has received one or more college degrees while failing to be educated. Unfortunately, this occurs too often in America.