Today is my birthday, and where else would I want to be at 8:30am except in Judge Burke’s courtroom, awaiting another parking ticket arraignment? Last time I tried the “dead fish” strategy: I didn’t speak during arraignment, I barely spoke during trial, and I was predictably railroaded by the prosecution. Judge Burke found me guilty of two parking violations and fined me $10.
The trial and everything leading up to it costs the court (and therefore the taxpayers) far more than the $10 collected in “revenue”. Not only is it costly for the government to prosecute this victimless crime, it’s also time consuming: the prosecutor was kept busy filing paperwork, gathering witnesses, and preparing his arguments. The entire parking enforcement (which only consists of 2 people) was incapacitated for nearly 4 hours while sequestered for trial. How much money can the city government collect in 8 parking enforcement man-hours? Well, that opportunity was lost because I chose to take these tickets to trial.
If you think this is stupid, you might be surprised that I agree with you. What a waste of time and money! But remember — I didn’t set the system up this way — the people calling themselves “the government” did. And they can stop this charade at any time by simply dismissing the parking tickets. What would they have to lose? They’d certainly have a lot to gain.
Anyway, this time, I chose a new strategy: Go to arraignment with a piece of paper already written out, explaining that I want to plead GUILTY, except the paper is *UNSIGNED*. Once Judge Burke accepts this piece of paper, it becomes part of the record. It is now on the record that I want to plead guilty.
You’d think that would be enough, but Judge Burke did something interesting. He entered a plea of NOT GUILTY on my behalf. Why would he do that? The answer can be found in the following short video from court this morning:
In short, my point was: The judge has demonstrated bias against me, the defendant. Judge Burke is presuming (without evidence) that I am subject to the laws of the State of New Hampshire, but that is one of the elements that must be proven by the prosecution! How can I be forced to be at arraignment if the Judge is not presuming jurisdiction?
What do you think about this strategy? My next step is to file a motion to reverse the plea and motion to have Judge Burke recuse himself because of the bias he demonstrated. He is protecting the prosecutor and doing his job for him by assuming one of the essential elements of the crime: jurisdiction. Without jurisdiction, the case must be dismissed, but he’s not going to let that happen, is he?
On June 3rd, 2015 as a board member for the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence, I organized a Brew and Sedition event at Able Ebenezer in Merrimack NH. Able Ebenezer is a popular fairly new micro brewery in Merrimack NH. Able Ebenezer was chosen for the event because of it’s name. Able Ebenezer’s name is branded from the inspirational actions of local New Hampshire citizens who rallied behind Ebenezer Mudgett in 1772 to defy British oppression. History remembers this event as the Pine Tree Riot in which Able resisted the state’s assertion that they owned his trees. The purpose of this event was to promote Independence by getting supporters together for drinks and for networking purposes. Chandler Gabel also gave a speech on the need to network with others in the state that also support Independence. There were over two dozen supporters that came out to this event. This may seem on the light side but where else in the United States are people getting together for the purpose of declaring Independence from the Union? Future meetings and planned events for Independence Day were discussed. For more information on New Hampshire Independence, check out nhindependence.org
Derrick J joins us in studio to celebrate our 50th episode! Topics this week include Derrick ending his THC cleanse, does poly “demean the relationship”? reviews of Shire Dude finale, Karaoke in Manch, taking parking tickets to court, Shire Dude joining as cohost of Flaming Freedom? RLS is to poly anarchists as Flaming Freedom is to gay anarchists, Shire Dude rejects labels, whats the greatest number of porcupines? Gay or Poly? thoughts on Liberland, #dickgate, beef squashing, Shire Dude/Rob drama with the artist formerly known as O girl, when is it appropriate to go public, why mediation is important, plans at porcfest, and cop blocking in Manchester. The Rebel Love Show is live every Tuesday night at 10 pm EST on LRN.FM.
Longtime readers of Free Keene may recall the 2012 campaign season where cornered all the candidates we could with ambush interviews including Santorum, Biden, Huntsman, and Romney. Now that Barack Obama isn’t in the running, we’ll have all kinds of slimeball politicians from both political parties coming to town to campaign.
What happened to the cannabis decriminalization bill that overwhelmingly passed the house with more than 80% of NH state reps voting for it? In an embarrassing display of ignorance, watch as multiple NH senators spout off various prohibitionist lies and nonsense in this hearing that came at the end of a 12-hour day for liberty activists at the state house. Despite initially having enough votes to pass the measure, prohibitionist senator Carson moves to strip some more from the already-crippled bill. This ultimately kills it, for political reasons.(Technically it’s “tabled” until 2016.)
The good news is this is the first time the NH senate has ever had a floor discussion on the issue (the house has passed decrim six times in eight years), as ignorant as much of it was, it’s a step in the right direction. The next step is to target the bad senators for either education or elimination in 2016’s election. More detail on what happened below the video, from someone who was with me witnessing the debacle.
HB618 (Marijuana Decrim) is dead until January, at the earliest. Last night, the Senate voted 15-9 to overturn the committee’s recommendation of ITL (inexpedient to legislate/kill this bill) so that Senator Pierce could introduce a compromise amendment. This was encouraging.
At the point the vote was taken, Senator Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) walked out of the session and began loudly yelling and ranting about how she couldn’t believe this was happening, (more…)
