You can download the edition for this week here. Topics covered include the latest on the BEARCAT, Kelly Voluntaryist’s return to the Manchester airport, and the Free State Project reaching 1,000 participants in New Hampshire.

You can add Radio Free Keene News to your podcast client via this RSS feed.

Sign the online petition to keep Keene Bearcat-free!

The public will have an opportunity next week to speak about the Keene Police Department’s acquisition of a new grant-funded armored vehicle.

Last month, the Keene City Council approved the acceptance of a $285,933 federal Homeland Security grant to purchase a LENCO BearCat Special Missions Vehicle. But some residents questioned whether such a vehicle is necessary in a community of Keene’s size, and a petition signed by more than 100 residents asked the council to reconsider accepting the grant.

Councilor Terry M. Clark submitted a letter to the council requesting the issue be sent back to the council’s finance committee to allow the public to speak on it, and the full council approved the request, supported by the committee’s chairman, Mitchell H. Greenwald, Thursday night.

“I think it’s good they decided to do that (open the topic for public discussion), but it’s unfortunate that it took Terry Clark to do that when we had a petition with over 140 signatures,” said Ian Bernard, a member of the Free Keene group who signed the petition and goes by the name Ian Freeman. He and other members of Free Keene attended Thursday’s council meeting, some holding signs that read “No Bearcat,” and “Thanks, But No Tanks.”

The vehicle comes with thermal imaging and off-road capabilities, as well as hazardous gas detection equipment, and police said the vehicle would be valuable when responding to extreme weather events, suspects with weapons and suspicious packages, among other situations.

u The finance, organization and personnel committee meets Thursday, Feb. 9, at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.

Here’s a facebook event for the upcoming meeting.

Photo: Carlos Miller

The police have deleted the footage he had taken in the moments leading up to his arrest. Another journalist is believed to have captured footage of the arrest, which has yet to be released. There is a reason that the United States has recently been downgraded to 47th place on the global Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders.

You can read the first hand account of the arrest at the Photography Is Not A Crime blog. I especially appreciate Carlos’ activism and reporting, as he was the first of many bloggers to feature coverage of my Lemonade Liberation outreach last August.

Carlos Miller will be speaking in Nashua, New Hampshire on Saturday, February 25 at this year’s Liberty Forum.

This article was originally published at freeconcord.org.

Feb 4 2012: Some of the footage that was deleted by police has been recovered, and the slightly choppy video is embedded below. In a blog published today, it is noted that data recovery services will be used to restore more of the footage.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click the pic to the right for a full-size version.

UPDATE: A full photo album is here on Kelly’s website.

Nearly a decade after establishing roots in New Hampshire, members of the Free State Project are welcoming their 1,000th member to the Granite State.

The milestone member relocated this week and has found a home on the Seacoast, according to local members of the pro-liberty activists group.

Founded in 2001, the goal of the Free State Project was to recruit 20,000 libertarian-leaning people to move to a single state to concentrate their efforts. New Hampshire was selected as the target state in 2003.

Since then, 1,000 people from all over the country have moved to the Granite State and officially registered as members of the organization.

Portsmouth resident Michael Finger was the 932nd member to move to New Hampshire.

Finger said the way the Free State Project works is that participants sign a statement of intent, declaring they will move to New Hampshire within five years of the movement getting 20,000 signatories.

More than 11,500 people have signed the statement of intent.

Finger said he ended up moving to New Hampshire over the summer because he got anxious and decided to follow a separate, but related effort, called Free State Now.

Instead of waiting until the movement got 20,000 signatories, Finger said, the Free State Now effort encouraged people to not wait and make the move as soon as possible.

Finger, who moved from Manhattan with his wife, said he chose to move to Portsmouth out of all of the other places in the state.

“We like New Hampshire because we like the way it is,” he said. “People are friendly and it seems a little bit more sane.”

Finger said he considers himself to be a “refugee” from a big-government state.

Like many other members of the Free State Project, Finger said he moved to New Hampshire because of the state’s business-friendly climate.

“It’s got a low unemployment rate and it’s easy to start a business,” he said.

Finger owns a consulting firm called Centinel Consulting, on Middle Street. He said many of his friends in the city also own businesses and have moved from places such as Colorado and California.

Erik Voorhees, a former resident of Colorado, said he moved to New Hampshire with his girlfriend nearly one year ago.

Voorhees said he joined the Free State Project because he liked its principles.

“I like that it is effectively trying to move more libertarian types to one small geographic area to have a much larger impact,” he said. “People of our political persuasion tend to be scattered around. I consider this to be quite a smart thing.”

Voorhees, 27, said the movement is full of diverse and progressive people of all ages and interests.

“I know Free-Staters of all ages, from age 5 to 88 years old, and everywhere in between,” he said.

“This is an important benchmark” said Free State Project President Carla Gericke, who moved from New York City in 2008. “It shows people are willing to vote with their feet for more freedom. We are modern day pioneers.”

The “First Movers” have made vast strides, according to Gericke.

At least 12 are now state representatives, and numerous others serve on school and town boards. Others have founded or worked with organizations that highlight liberty-oriented issues, such as the N.H. Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy; the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, which grades state representatives according to their voting records; and Cop Block, a police accountability organization.

Some have created a strong independent media presence in New Hampshire, such as Free Talk Live, a nationally syndicated radio talk show based in Keene.

Others have also started private charities and mutual aid societies, such as Shire Sharing, which delivers care baskets to the needy, and Fr33 Aid, which provides volunteer first-aid at events such as Liberty Forum and the Porcupine Freedom Festival.

When asked about the reasons for the movement’s growth, Gericke said a combination of factors have been at play. She cited the economic downturn, the popularity of Ron Paul and his message of limited government, the growing national debt, the federal government’s overreach on issues such as education and health care, and the country’s involvement in wars under President Barack Obama.

“With its ‘live and let live’ culture, its livability, its low taxes, its relative prosperity,” Gericke said, “New Hampshire is well-situated to become the beacon of liberty for the rest of the country.”

Additional images and interviews available on request.

The Free State Project (“FSP”) has reached its
milestone of having 1,000 pro-liberty activists living in the Granite State. The ultimate goal is to attract 20,000 liberty-oriented individuals to New Hampshire.

“This is an important benchmark” said Free State Project President, Carla Gericke, who moved from New York City in 2008. “It shows people are willing to vote with their feet for more freedom. We are modern day pioneers.”

The Free State Project was founded in 2001 with the goal to recruit 20,000 libertarian-leaning people to move to a single state to concentrate their efforts. New Hampshire was selected in 2003. FSP participants sign a statement of intent declaring that they will move to New Hampshire within five years of getting 20,000 signers. More than 11,500 people have signed the statement of intent.

The ‘First Movers’ have made vast strides. At least twelve are now State representatives, and numerous others serve on school and town boards. State representatives have worked on pro-liberty legislation like Right to Marry, expanding the Castle doctrine, and cutting the NH state budget.

Others have founded or worked with organizations that highlight liberty-oriented issues, such as the NH Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance which grades state representatives according to their voting records, and Cop
Block, a police accountability organization.

Movers have created a strong independent media presence in New Hampshire. Free Talk Live, based out of Keene, NH, is a nationally syndicated radio talk show. The Liberty Radio Network hosts a number of shows, including ones focusing on LBGT and women’s issues from a
libertarian perspective.

Movers have also started private charities and mutual aid societies, like Shire Sharing which delivers care baskets to the needy, and Fr33 Aid which provides volunteer first aid at events like Liberty Forum and the Porcupine Freedom Festival.

When asked about the reasons for the FSP’s accelerating growth, Gericke said it was a combination of factors, citing the economic downturn, the popularity of Ron Paul and his message of limited government, the growing deficit, the federal government’s overreach on
issues like education and health care, and President Obama’s new wars.

“With its ‘live and let live’ culture, its livability, its low taxes, its relative prosperity,” Gericke said, “New Hampshire is well situated to become the beacon of liberty for the rest of the country.”

Contact: Stephanie Murphy (Free State Project Media Liaison)
Email: StephanieMurphy4 at gmail.com

New Hampshire’s highest court has upheld a woman’s marijuana-growing conviction, ruling she had no reasonable expectation to privacy in a wooded area of her property from which police observed her house and detected the smell of marijuana coming from a vent.

Patricia Smith of Haverhill was charged in 2009 after police raided her house and found a pot-growing operation and 120 plants. During court proceedings, a superior court denied Smith’s motion to suppress evidence.

In appealing to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Smith’s attorney argued that police violated Smith’s constitutional right to privacy and protection from unreasonable searches when they essentially conducted a stakeout in the woods behind her home.

Watch the following videos produced by myself and Garret Ean of Free Concord. When watching, ask yourself if you want to see Patricia Smith caged for growing her own medicine, in her own home. If you’re a citizen of New Hampshire or the United States this is being done in your name, with your money.

Fr33Agents.TV will be releasing two more videos this week from the same conversation that Bob Constantine and I had with Nurse Patricia. Footage from these conversations can also be found on the January 30th episode of Free Keene TV.

Click on the images in this post to view the three previous videos that Bob and I produced to bring more attention to the plight of a peaceful woman whose had her life destroyed by the State.

- Motion to dismiss PDF
- Notification of criminal defense PDF
- Motion to refrain from authorizing physical force to demand respect PDF

The public will likely get a second chance to weigh in on a new armored vehicle for the Keene Police Department.

Last month, the City Council approved a $285,933 federal Homeland Security grant to buy a LENCO BearCat Special Missions Public Safety Vehicle. But some voiced concerns about whether such a vehicle was necessary for a small community, and a 144-signature petition was brought before councilors asking for an additional public hearing.

Mayor Kendall W. Lane accepted the petition as informational — meaning the council didn’t take action on the request — because “it didn’t ask the council to do anything.

“It asked for a public hearing before the full council, but that’s not an appropriate subject for the council to hold a hearing on,” he said.

Now, two councilors say they plan to ask for a hearing, this time at the committee level, which Lane says is an appropriate request that he plans to grant.

The vehicle would be the first of its kind in this part of the state; the closest such vehicle is at least an hour away, Keene police said.

They said the vehicle, which comes equipped with thermal imaging, hazardous gas detection and off-road capabilities, would help the department in numerous situations, such as extreme weather events, inspecting suspicious packages, and incidents involving suspects with weapons, police said.

At Thursday night’s meeting of the City Council’s finance committee, a handful of members of the group Free Keene attended, one holding a sign reading “NO BEARCAT.”

During a break in the action, finance committee Chairman Mitchell H. Greenwald informed the Free Keene members that Councilor Terry M. Clark, who cast the only vote in opposition to accepting the grant in December, had requested a public hearing on the matter before the committee and Greenwald said he would support that request.

Clark, who was unsure of how many residents supported his opposition to the vehicle, said he received more than a hundred phone calls and emails from people sharing his opinion after his initial opposition.

“We really should have a hearing because people genuinely feel they were left out of the process,” Clark said Friday.

Greenwald, who still supports purchasing the vehicle, said it’s important the public has a chance to be heard.

“I didn’t think this would be so controversial,” he said. “But if the public wants to be heard, let’s do it.”

Lane isn’t sure there’s a need for a public hearing, but doesn’t mind deferring to the committee on the matter.

“I don’t think it warrants it (a public hearing), but everyone can form their own opinion,” Lane said. “There’s nothing special about this particular vehicle; it’s an ordinary pickup truck with oversized tires and armor.”

Clark said he was surprised when Lane accepted the petition as informational, and by the time he had wrapped his head around it, the item had passed for discussion.

“It started to really bother me that I didn’t speak up,” he said, explaining what led to his written request for a hearing.

u The finance, organization and personnel committee will meet Thursday, Feb. 9, at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.

Kyle Jarvis can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or kjarvis@keenesentinel.com.

The video is briefly prefaced with text stating, “If a person walked in to vote in the 2012 New Hampshire Primary, and said the names of multiple DEAD people…Could he receive a ballot to vote without showing any ID?” “© Project Veritas” is watermarked on the screen. If you watch for the entire ten minutes, you’ll see the same scene repeated multiple times. A man walks into a polling location wearing an inconspicuous camera on his person. He says, “Do you have a (name) on your list?” When asked to confirm the address and party registration, he says, “That is the address” and, “That is the registration”. Upon receiving a ballot, the man returns the ballot and insists on retrieving identification before casting a vote. The video ends with a less than climactic interview of poor audio quality with ward moderator Ryk Bullock.

There was much publicized discontent over a plan by some house republicans earlier last year to mandate voters provide photographic identification at the polls. Currently, potential voters are entitled to a ballot so long as they are willing to sign an affidavit affirming their residence within a particular ward. It is clear what the political motivation of the actors in the video are when they insist that poll workers check their IDs.

On this point, I don’t concur with the producers of the video, who sign off with, “Reporting for the Project Veritas, James O’Keefe and Spencer Meads”. While they made a noteworthy point about the ability to receive a ballot while impersonating the deceased, they did not prove that photo IDs are an imperative necessity for New Hampshire’s election process.

The first editorial published in the Concord Monitor critical of the actions of Project Veritas was penned by Zandra Rice Hawkins, the director of Granite State Progress. Zandra characterizes the actions of O’Keefe and Meads as breaking the law and obstructing the New Hampshire primary. To justify the claim that they had broken the law, she cites the voter fraud statute. In the statute, the act of impersonating another voter is criminalized, in addition to actually casting the fraudulent ballot. While the impersonation may be technically illegal, clearly the spirit of the law is to prevent illegitimate votes from being cast.

Another law alleged to have been broken by the duo is the infamous wiretapping statute. Many who haven’t dug deeply into the applications of the statute falsely believe the law to require consent to audio record an individual. Despite the word “consent” appearing in the RSA, all that is required in the statute is that someone be aware that they could be recorded. When out in public, there’s no expectation of privacy, and apart from the voting booth itself, the polling location is considered to be a particularly public space. The process is considered so open that campaigns are permitted to host poll watchers, whose job it is to monitor the checklist for who has voted as poll workers check names off. On primary day, I volunteered in this capacity for the presidential candidate I dislike the least. While poll watching, a cameraman, likely from WMUR, set up his equipment near the entrance and got several wide shots of the slow action. He did not survey those in the room for consent to be recorded, nor was this his responsibility.

Zandra does not elaborate on how Project Veritas disrupted the primary. Nobody was prevented from voting, and it is not as though one particular poll worker is singled out in the video or made to look irresponsible. She analogizes, “It’s like saying that a bank could be robbed, then filming yourself robbing it to prove your point.” At this point, one is not even comparing apples and oranges. Robbing a bank and not casting fraudulent ballots go together like honeydew melons and predator drones.

While I strongly disagree with Zandra’s suggestion that making criminals of O’Keefe and company is a good idea, I appreciate that while making such strong statements, she was open enough to attach her name. The following day’s Concord Monitor included a follow-up piece, written under the anonymous moniker of the Monitor Editorial Board. The piece which ran on January 20 corrected the mistaken claim that Project Veritas had violated the wiretapping statute, but it took no shame in endorsing a prison sentence and tens of thousands of dollars in fines for the participants in the video. I suggest the editorial board of the Monitor give a second reading to the New Hampshire constitution, which humbly suggests in article 18 that “No wise legislature will affix the same punishment to the crimes of theft, forgery, and the like, which they do to those of murder and treason.” Amateur journalism ought be affixed the same penalty that every other nonviolent, victimless crime ought have: absolutely nothing. Those who call for noncriminals to be imprisoned are mobs endorsing institutional violence. The anonymous author exposes that (s)he cares less for election security than (s)he does seeing political opponents purged. Opening and closing with similar lines, the piece ends with, “The best way to ensure the sanctity of the vote is to make the penalty for daring to obstruct, defraud or otherwise game the system so onerous that only a fool would risk it.”

This approach is as shortsighted as the assumption that executing people for lesser offenses (such as narcotics as in Singapore and Saudi Arabia) will result in people choosing not to commit those offenses. The failure of this assumption is demonstrated as people continue to be executed in those countries year after year. In openly acknowledging in the middle of the article that nobody knows how much voter fraud goes on in the state, the author underscores the fact that putting up a tough front does nothing to deter actual criminals who are free to continue their clandestine activities.

A cheap and easy solution that doesn’t require the mass of voters to carry ID and would greatly deter the type of potential fraud that Project Veritas exposed would be to list dates of birth alongside name, address, and party registration on the voter rolls. Throwing more people in prison and putting them under tremendous financial distress does nothing but increase the State’s threshold for violence.

This article originally published at freeconcord.org.

Jan 30 2012: Yesterday’s Monitor featured a fair biographical piece on James O’Keefe. He directed the actions seen in the NH primary video from New Jersey, where he is prohibited from leaving. In early 2010, he pled guilty to entering a federal building under a false pretense, in connection to a phone jamming incident regarding a Louisiana senator. His probation is scheduled to expire in May of 2013. It turns out that O’Keefe is technically not an amateur to the extent that he is paid heavily for his exploits. Whether an amateur is defined by quality of work over whether one is paid up front, the videos that O’Keefe has produced speak for themselves.