New Keene District Court Judge Erin B McIntyre Smacks Down Prosecutor
Keene, NH business owner Christopher Waid received a parking ticket when he was downtown in late 2017 and immediately went to the parking department in the city building to demand his right to a trial. While inside the building, he received a second ticket on his car! He also immediately filed for his trial on that one. The double ticket trial was slated for early April and would involve two of the three Keene parking enforcers, meaning they couldn’t be on the streets victimizing other peaceful motorists if they are sitting in a courtroom! Even if Chris had lost the trials, just keeping the enforcers off the streets for a couple hours is a win on its own.
Chris entered the Keene District Court to face down the charges on April 9th and emerged victorious, with both tickets dismissed by new Keene judge Erin B McIntyre. (Longtime district court judge Edward J Burke is recently semi-retired and is only doing fill-in work.) Chris brilliantly challenged both parking tickets on technicalities. The first ticket was thrown out by McIntyre because the location of the alleged offense was not correct and the second ticket was tossed because parking enforcer Linda Desruisseaux lazily cited the wrong section of city code. Many judges would have simply allowed the prosecutor to amend the tickets upon request but McIntyre wasn’t letting the prosecutor have any slack! The exasperated Keene police prosecutor, Eleanor Moran, upon the second dismissal vowed she’d be filing a motion to reconsider, however she never did, according to court records. Here’s the full trial video:
There are a couple of important lessons here. (more…)
Now, the gigolo-turned-television star-turned voluntaryist talk show host and now published author has made the move to New Hampshire!
When I asked him to comment on what pushed him over the edge to deciding to move over 2,700 miles for more freedom, he said, “Your talk at Anarchapulco 2017 first sparked my interest. I ended up meeting [then Free State Project president] Matt Philips the next day and he invited me to speak at PorcFest. That got me intrigued. Then I was invited to speak at FreeCoast Fest and Liberty Forum. With my involvement in crypto and the ability to really ‘live it’, along with people I liked asking me to make the move. I just decided to go for it. I’m glad I did.”
Here’s the first episode of Vin’s show that he’s released since making the move where he and his co-host cover moving to NH, cryptocurrency, psychedelics, and liberty as a spiritual evolution. Great show! Welcome home, Vin.
P.S. You’ll be hearing more from Vin this week as he’ll be guest co-hosting Free Talk Live with me and Mark Edge this Tuesday evening from 7-10pm Eastern. You can listen live at Free Talk Live’s site, or watch our video feed via the LRN.FM Twitch.
I’m excited to announce that decentralized blockchain-based media protocol called LBRY.io is now hosting the over 900 videos from the Free Keene YouTube channel!
Yes, that’s more than a decade’s worth of video! Thanks to LBRY, we’re no longer subject to YouTube removing our videos, since they’ll be ingested into the censorship-free LBRY system as well.
Based in New Hampshire, LBRY has contributors from around the globe and has welcomed Free Keene, even sending an email announcement to their followers letting them know about the Free Keene LBRY channel. Before you click on that, you’ll need to install the LBRY app (available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS).
While LBRY does allow its content creators to monetize their videos via their cryptocurrency the “LBRY credit (LBC)“, Free Keene’s videos are free to download and watch and you don’t have to watch ads! In fact, every video you download with LBRY, you also host (like file-sharing networks), so you’re contributing to the LBRY just by watching. It’s a pretty cool system and I’m really pleased that Free Keene is in early as a featured content provider.
I look forward to the day when decentralized media storage and service is helping protect more content globally from corporate and government censorship. Please check out LBRY.io, download and run their app, and please subscribe to the @FreeKeene channel for the latest, censorship-free NH-liberty activist video content!
Lily Tang Williams tells her story of growing up in and eventually leaving China to seek individual freedom, which ultimately led her to Colorado, the Libertarian Party and now to her new home in New Hampshire! This was recorded at the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire‘s 2018 Convention last weekend. Full video from the convention business session will be available on the Free Keene YouTube.
Here’s the final video from the series of videos from this year’s 4/20 Rally in Concord, NH at the state house steps where a lone state trooper walks up and attempts to intimidate the peaceful cannabis users into leaving a place where they have a right to be by bellowing, “If you’re smoking marijuana here you need to leave… move out now!”
A few inexperienced attendees begin to make an exit but most of the crowd stays in defiance. After being greeted by state representatives who were attending the event including Dan Hynes, the lone trooper tries again with a much more timid, “If you’re smoking marijuana, please move off the property.”
No one leaves. While he could have written tickets for anyone smoking the now-slightly-decriminalized cannabis, he instead exits the scene, never to return.
For those keeping track, this is the first time in nearly a decade of 4/20 rallies at the state house steps where any such intimidation was tried. At previous rallies, all participants were risking misdemeanor possession charges, yet no one was ever arrested. This year was the first where decrim for under 3/4 oz has been in effect.
Thanks to Garret Ean of Free Concord for capturing this on video.
Boy did the gun control advocates make a mistake! Since 2010, liberty activists and cannabis users have gathered every year on April 20th at 4:20pm to take part in mass cannabis civil disobedience at the state house steps. Of course, given that the state house is public property, you never know who else might show up and this year the gun grabbers held a rally very nearby the 4/20. Theirs was right out by the street while the 4/20 was up by the state house steps.
As Shire Liberty Media blogger Carla Gericke points out in her blog covering both events, the contrast between the two events was stark – one group wanting to just be left alone (the cannabis users) and the other wanting to be controlled and to control others (the anti-gunners).
After blazing up some primo herb, guns-and-weed-loving libertarians targeted the authoritarian gun controllers for a little trolling. Some came prepared, open carrying guns or armed with pro-freedom, pro-gun signs like “Scared of Guns in NH? Move to: Massachusetts ‘the Nanny State'”. The reaction of the freedom-hating gun-grabbers was hilarious. They made a desperate effort to try to cover up the libertarians’ signs with their own, which made for some hilarious video, captured by Vincent Freeman at Shire Free Media on YouTube:
