Grudge report

When it comes to wrongs that go unpunished, we here at News Hits aren’t exactly the forgive-and-forget types. We cultivate and nurture our grudges, using them like so many logs to keep the fires of outrage burning from week to week.

Happily, we can report this week that the Democratic Party feels the same way.

While much of America is content to put last year’s presidential fiasco behind us, the hard-core Dems who showed up at Cobo Center on Friday proved we aren’t alone in refusing to let bygones be bygones — at least until George W. Bush has gone bye-bye for good back to his ranch in Waco.

The Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of Detroit’s NAACP told hundreds of party diehards exactly why: Too many people — especially people of color — have shed too much blood to win the right to exercise that most basic of democratic principles, the vote.

Anthony gave one hell of a speech, full of righteous anger and fiery rhetoric, with the crowd responding like they were at a revival meeting. At one point Anthony stopped in mid-fire-and-brimstone flourish to look to his right at Democratic Party National Chairman Terry McAuliffe and said, “Welcome to Detroit.”

Then he managed to put what appeared to be a few beads of sweat on Terry’s oily brow when he railed that the party must show more gumption and “stand up stronger than it stood up before.”

No one, however, questioned either the heart or spine of Rep. John Conyers, who is struggling to get election reform legislation onto the floor of Congress for a vote.

Calling last year’s election a coup d’etat sans guns and tanks, Conyers said that the Republicans who stole the presidency don’t want to fix the broken system that allowed them to pull off the heist.

“The fix is in,” said the Detroit Democrat. “We’re going to have to walk over their bodies to get this passed before the next election.”