Free Keene

Brad Jardis dared speak out about ending prohibition and was targeted by the good-old-boys in the Epping police department for termination. Tonight at the termination hearing he was kept on as a police officer, pending a “psychological evaluation”. Will they determine that believing in liberty is crazy and fire him later? Time will tell. For now, Jardis is still a NH law enforcement officer. Plus, he’s a regular participant of the Free Keene Forum. Here’s his thread about this situation.

Dave Ridley interviews Brad moments after the well-attended hearing in Epping tonight:

Dave Ridley reports on Jim & Lauren’s yearly open dinner bash:

Liberty activists called “Talkback” on WKBK last week to discuss the war, health care, taxes, incentives, big government, the jail, freedom to travel, apathy, and voluntary funding. If you listen carefully during the first call from Nick of Free Minds TV, you can hear Cynthia whisper, “Free Stater”. Little does she know that Nick is a New Hampshire native. Oops!

Grab the archive.

Please join us for our weekly chat and calling sessions on Saturday mornings from 11a-12p in the Free Keene Chat room. If you’re online, you can listen to Talkback streamed live via the Liberty Radio Network and if you’re in the Keene area you can tune in to WKBK 1290 AM or 104.1 FM. The Talkback discussion thread is here on the Free Keene Forum.

Anyone who spends much time paying attention to the city’s politicians and bureaucrats will hear all kinds of talk about being “green”. Personally, I find it all very silly, but it will serve to point out their hypocrisy. Wallace Nolen used a freedom of information request to attain information on all of the city employees. He specified that he wanted it in electronic format, but the city refused, insisting on giving him pages and pages of documentation. Wallace sued and the judge (of course) found in favor of the city. So, rather than just emailing Wallace the info, they instead will unnecessarily spend money on paper and ink and print out a bunch of papers. Perhaps their motto is, “The City of Keene: We’re ‘green’, but only when it benefits us.”

Here’s the Keene Sentinel story with the details:

A Cheshire County Superior Court judge has dismissed a Vermont man’s right-to-know lawsuit against the city of Keene.

Judge John P. Arnold ruled earlier this week that the city responded appropriately to Wallace S. Nolen’s public records request. Nolen, of Barre, Vt., asked for the names, titles, salaries, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and work locations of every city employee. (Read on …)

A city union upset with an Eagle Scout because he did volunteer work they were going to get paid to do, a California town installs license plate reading cameras that will track each car coming in and leaving town, the Downsizer Dispatch, a BART police officer charges suspect with battery after he got cut shoving suspect’s head through a glass window, and the economy may take longer to recover than thought.

Just yesterday a new activist website for the Upper Valley region of NH, UpperValleyLiberty.com, made a splash by announcing that next year’s 4:20 events up there will include open containers of alcohol! Of course, that has already happened here in Keene at some of the 4:20 celebrations, but it was never announced publicly. It appears that UVL’s blogger Kevin has upped the ante and has announce that he intends to enjoy an alcoholic beverage in public during next year’s events.

Will Keene’s 4:20 events also expand to include alcohol in 2010? As long as people are drinking responsibly, I think it’d be a fine addition, but it’s not up to me…

The Free Keene Forum has hit a new milestone! Not only are there over 725 members and 22,000 posts, but now we’ve surpassed the NHFree.com forum in activity! In the month of October, the Free Keene Forum saw 2972 posts, compared to NHFree.com’s 2211 and the Free State Project forum’s 2253. (We’re also winning solidly this month, too.) Both the NHFree and FSP forums had more new users than we did, but our users are far more active. The other forums in the state (NHLiberty.org and NHTeaParty.org) didn’t even come close.

Thanks to everyone who participates at the Free Keene Forum. If the popularity there is any indicator, we have a lot of new people who will be coming to Keene, as they clearly know where the action is in the liberty movement!

Join the conversations at Forum.FreeKeene.com!

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Angry Josh isn’t afraid to challenge irrational beliefs, even those which comfort small children.

Today’s comic is also available on Christmas cards. Click here to order some.

Free Keene’s Sam called “Talkback” on WKBK last week to discuss the war in Afghanistan and the criminality of the state. Listen as Nat Stout of the Keene city council gets “offended” by Sam calling the government criminal. He literally shows his cognitive dissonance when he says “I don’t want to hear somebody accuse my government of being criminal”.

Grab the archive.

Please join us for our weekly chat and calling sessions on Saturday mornings from 11a-12p in the Free Keene Chat room. If you’re online, you can listen to Talkback streamed live via the Liberty Radio Network and if you’re in the Keene area you can tune in to WKBK 1290 AM or 104.1 FM. The Talkback discussion thread is here on the Free Keene Forum.

For a couple of years now we’ve been offering 1970’s “The Market for Liberty” in audiobook and .PDF forms for download free at Book.FreeKeene.com. Now, we offer a brand new audiobook, published in 2007 by Wes Bertrand, “Complete Liberty: The Demise of the State and the Rise of Voluntary America”. The book is inspired by many other great liberty-minded works in the past (such as The Market for Liberty) and is an excellent modern day look at what liberty is and how we can achieve it in our lifetimes. Complete Liberty is a highly recommended read for those interested in freedom. Wes also does a podcast which you can listen to on his site, CompleteLiberty.com. Visit that page for his introduction. Here are three ways you can download this book:

1. 207 MB self-extracting archive (Windows users only) containing ten .mp3 chapters.
2. 207 MB .ZIP file containing ten .mp3 chapters.
3. 1.2 MB .PDF – the actual book, which can be ordered in print here.