How does being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered affect your libertarian outlook or activism and what is it like to be L, G, B, or T in the Shire? Explore with video of the LGBT panel from Keenevention, featuring presenter Dale Everett of “Flaming Freedom” and panelists Elizabeth “Sabbrielle” Edwards, Derrick J Freeman, and Andrew Smith:
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Long Island transplant Joe Mirzoff expresses his appreciation for Robin Hood of Keene in a recent letter-to-the-editor of the Keene Sentinel:
Freedom is sometimes subtle; one might not even know when one has it or is losing it.
It is the issue of the day, but more relevant on the national scene than locally.
I moved from Long Island, N.Y., to Keene in April this year. One of the blessings of this place is the lack of traffic lights and stop signs. But it’s not only the freedom from the state telling you to stop and go all the time; my Honda gets 25 miles per gallon here, and only 18 in New York.
On Long Island, the traffic lights send you tickets in the mail. These tickets are $65, and the machinery make mistakes — politicians, the evidence and analysis will tell you they are about revenue, not safety.
Parking meters are like this (more…)
After Rich Paul’s release from being caged for nearly a year for selling flowers, he drops into the LRN.FM studio and sits in on an hour of Free Talk Live:
A new twenty-nine minute art film to be aired on Cheshire TV has premiered on the AquaKeene youtube channel. Render Unto Obamacoin takes an anthological approach to the hefty subject of Obama Coin. In this new age of competing digital currencies, the old method of physical storage of material value reaches its bottom in the popular wave of Obamacoins that swept the market in some areas of the american united states following the forty-fourth commander-in-chief’s installment. The federal reserve coins painted gold and plastered with stickers of Barack Obama’s profile sold for a significant factor more than their face value after appearing on disturbing television infomercials. Render Unto Obamacoin explores themes of consumerism and youth exploitation in political propaganda over the course of its twenty nine minute runtime. Share your favorite currency, including Obamacoin, with a loved one this December festivals season. All content featured in the film was sourced from YouTube and released to the creative commons of the world.
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Kudos to the Keene Sentinel’s Kaitlin Mulhere for telling some truth about life in the purportedly idyllic New England town of Keene, NH. Guess what? Teenagers use drugs like alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis, ecstasy, heroin, and others. In fact, drug use is common at Keene High School. The drug war is a failure.
Ok, so I added the last sentence to my summary of the Sentinel’s recent detailed piece on a study done regarding drug use at KHS. Mulhere doesn’t come right out and say the drug war is a failure, but her article is just more proof of what anyone who thinks for a short time about the war on drugs knows is true: you can’t stop human beings from altering their consciousness.
The politicians keep passing laws, increase the penalties, add in mandatory minimum sentences, and what do we get? Harder drugs on the streets and no reduction in the number of users. New dealers step in to replace the ones that are taken down by busts. The insanity of the war on drugs has gone on now for generations and destroyed countless lives of drug users, dealers, and even people who don’t use drugs. (For instance, everyone who has ever been stolen from or robbed by a drug addict is an indirect victim of the drug war, since prohibition drives the price of drugs up dramatically past what its normal market price would be.)
One of the ostensible reasons for the war on drugs is to protect the youth. However, the study cited by the Sentinel is proof the drug war has spectacularly failed in this way. What’s the solution from “the state”? Same as always. Cops, courts, jail cells. Oh, wait – now they have “drug court’. All of a sudden “the state” has gotten compassionate? Sorry, don’t buy it. Coercion is not compassion, not matter how much you dress it up. I’ve sat in on drug court in Cheshire county and watched as a single mother was locked up by the robed man because he didn’t believe her answer as to whether she had spoken with a former dealer recently.
A major failure of the Sentinel’s feature story, as well as almost all mainstream coverage of drug use is the failure to differentiate between users and abusers. The Sentinel story uses “abuse” frequently to describe ALL drug users. However, most drug users are responsible users – that’s why despite rampant substance *use*, society doesn’t fall apart. Alcohol, by far the most dangerous and abused drug, is still responsibly used by millions of Americans. (more…)
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If you have been following the blog here at Free Keene for the last 18 months, you may recall the raid on the Keene Activist Center that occurred in the summer of 2012. The Keene-police-backed raid by code enforcement and the fire department ultimately resulted in a court case against me for an alleged smoke alarm violation. (They claimed that all homes must have an interconnected, AC-powered smoke alarm system.)
We went to court and the “City of Keene” ultimately lost because I caught them violating their own rules – fire chiefs aren’t allowed by their own statutes to inspect single and two-family homes. Judge Runyon correctly invalidated all the evidence collected by the fire chief and dismissed the case. “The City” people, desperate to crush the KAC and hating to lose in their own system, then appealed to the NH “supreme” court, spending hundreds of taxpayer dollars on a transcript of the district court hearings.
The supreme court then informed “the City” that their filing was deficient because all criminal cases must have the approval of the attorney general’s office prior to the appeal being filed. They gave “the City” some time to correct the error. Meanwhile, “the City” and the AG’s office filed memorandums of law arguing the case was not criminal, but civil, and therefore they did not need the AG’s permission to move ahead with the appeal.
Ultimately, the court’s “justices” disagreed with “the City’s” arguments and ruled the case is indeed criminal and so “the City” must get the AG’s approval by Nov 7th. The approval was never given. Therefore, the supreme court dismissed the case. I and the KAC win! (Of course, I’ve lost lots of time and effort I could have spent on other things.)
The fact that “the City” couldn’t even win their smoke alarm case at the supreme court against me may not bode well for their eventual performance in the Robin Hood case appeal, where they are actually against a real, experienced free speech attorney!
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