Speaking of Suicide in Lieu of Indefinite Detention

by | Jun 20, 2011 | 75 comments

The United States Supreme Court just ruled that an individual facing civil commitment for failure to pay child support does not have an automatic right to a lawyer.

“The 14th Amendment’s due process clause allows a state to provide fewer procedural protections to civil contempt defendants than in a criminal case, which is governed by the Sixth Amendment,” said Justice Stephen Breyer.

As someone who has arrested and caused the imprisonment of quite a few people for child support warrants, two questions always floated in my mind.

First, it costs a county roughly $30,000 a year to imprison someone.  That’s about $82 a day.  During this time the individual obviously cannot work, find work, or do anything productive.  The children the individual is supposed to be supporting isn’t receiving any money either.  Wouldn’t that $82/day better be spent feeding, clothing, or housing a child?

Second, civil commitment for child support really is a debtor prison.  Didn’t this country allegedly abolished them in the 1800’s?

Keene Sentinel on NHPR

by | Jun 19, 2011 | 0 comments

While listening to NH Public Radio I caught an interview involving the Keene Sentinel justifying its choice to publish Thomas Ball’s suicide note.

I hunted down the archive so I could share it with you.

Find it here.

Rep. Steve Vaillancourt vs. the death penalty

by | Jun 17, 2011 | 3 comments

HB147, which expands the application of the death penalty in New Hampshire, unfortunately passed a few weeks ago— but not without a fight. Representative Steve Vaillancourt, a Republican from Manchester and a self-described “Free Stater before there was a Free State movement,” spoke passionately against the bill. You can see the speech 34 minutes into his latest episode of More Politically Alert:



(Vaillancourt mentions that a bill to abolish the death penalty passed the house during the last session. That bill, HB556, was introduced by Keene representative Steve Lindsey.)

LOT’s Pete Responds to Slate.com’s Piece on Free Keene

by | Jun 17, 2011 | 6 comments

SlateLiberty on Tour‘s Pete Eyre took the time to thoughtfully respond to Dave Weigel’s excellent piece on Free Keene that appeared this week on Slate.com.

David Weigel’s piece Live Free or Move on Slate.com about Kene, NH’s pro-liberty community went live last night – I thought I’d share some related thoughts as Liberty On Tour was specifically mentioned and I was one of those interviewed.

(Full transparency – I first crossed paths with Dave maybe five years back when I worked in DC’s libertarian think tank world.)

I was happy to read Dave’s positive overview of the going-ons here – it never hurts when an outlet with as many readers as Slate.com helps to introduce more people to voluntaryism. Thanks Dave! That said, at times I found myself wishing that different words or examples were used to paint a more-accurate picture.

In the first sentence Dave likened Ademo Freeman, Ian Freeman and me as “antigovernment activists” rather than something like “self-government advocates.” This differentiation may seem trivial but I think it’s important to tease out as our lives aren’t reactionary or led by negativity, but are proactive and led ultimately by love.

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