Thanks to Bradford Randall of the Nashua Telegraph for featuring FK blogger Graham Colson’s picture where he’s smoking a joint outside the hotel at Liberty Forum 2014! The excellent article features activist Ryan Lange calling out the state of NH for their hypocrisy of selling alcohol while prohibiting cannabis.
Last evening in the Mabel Brown room of Keene State College, Cheshire county jail superintendent Richard Van Wickler hosted a presentation representing Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. In the roughly hour-long speech followed by question and answer session, the failures of modern drug prohibition policy were addressed and the call was made to scale back the hostility of the drug war. Van Wickler is one of only two LEAP speakers that is an actively employed member of law enforcement. Filmed from multiple angles, see the embedded videos below for playlists from either angle.
Captured using a Sony HDR-CX190:
Captured using a Nikon Coolpix P520: (more…)
I’m running for Keene school board again as a member of the NH Liberty Party and have been given the usual questionnaire by the Keene Sentinel.
Please see the answers on my candidate’s page here at NHLiberty.info.
Please vote Freeman for school board on March 11th. Here’s information about where to vote:
Wards 1, 2 & 3 vote at the Keene Recreation Center, 312 Washington Street
Wards 4 & 5 vote at the First Baptist Church, 105 Maple Avenue
Thursday’s Keene Sentinel featured an update on the Robin Hood saga penned by Kyle Jarvis. The article overviews how the case is being prepped for presentation to the New Hampshire supreme court, where before being scheduled requires both parties to consider the possibility of mandatory mediation. The mediation process would involve a closed-door meeting between both parties to agree on a legal compromise. Mediation is certainly a fitting alternative to the courts for conflict resolution when a conflict exists, but as is uniquely the case in Keene, city officials can’t cite a single grievance against the Robin Hooders collectively beyond expressing a desire that they do not be in the proximity of or communicate with parking enforcers. For some individual Robin Hooders, no specific issues have been raised at all, and considering that Pete Eyre is still named in the suit when he has at no time been associated with Robin Hood of Keene demonstrates the indiscriminate nature of the city’s straw-grasping lawsuit. Early in the suit, the city requested the ability to add defendants to the case at will, but apparently ceased its hunt for the underground Robin Hooders after at least two individuals officially requested attachment to the suit and were denied, despite one presenting evidence of longtime participation in the activity.
While the ruling from judge John Kissinger was reasonable, a further contemplation of the case may have demonstrated the need for a less traditional ruling, which may have alleviated some of the issues that the legal department of “city of Keene” continues to press today. Though the judge never authorized “harassment and intimidation”, the ruling states only that the facts presented did not constitute any actionable activity. Yet the city’s attorney asserted this about the ruling: “The Order holds that the individual protesters have no duty to be reasonable in their actions and conduct directed toward public employees while doing their jobs … that the individual protesters are allowed to interfere, harass, and intimidate public employees while doing their jobs … (and) that the individual protesters may engage in inappropriate and unreasonable actions and conduct directed at public employees while doing their jobs.” Not only is it unkind to mischaracterize constitutionally protected speech as “harassment and intimidation,” but it is also a distortion of the actual text of the ruling. Perhaps mediation would have been most pertinent prior to the many hours spent in court, where it could have been cleared up ahead of time that Robin Hooders do not engage in harassment and intimidation. Of course, when myself I tried mediate with the city’s attorney prior to court, my camera was stolen for two months under the guise of “illegal wiretapping”. (more…)
Thursday Darryl and I appeared at the state house in Concord for the Criminal Justice committee hearing of a new cannabis decriminalization bill that would reduce the penalty of possession of up to an ounce of cannabis to only a violation punishable with a $100 fine.
The committee is full of people who know this issue and are very educated about decriminalization and legalization. This bill has passed the house several times in the past, by a wide margin. Perhaps that’s why the police actually didn’t show up! Normally they show up in uniform to oppose any decrim proposal, but not this time! However a couple of state attorneys, one for the attorney general’s office and another from the “department of safety”, did show up to support the status quo and they got GRILLED by the committee:
Here’s a full video of the very entertaining hearing, courtesy Biker Bill:
While other states like CT and NY have recently passed more gun control legislation, New Hampshire’s state house today soundly defeated a proposal to ban all personal firearms sales! There really is no place like New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to vote for gay marriage and Democrats tend to vote against gun control measures! (If you love liberty, you should join the Free State Project and move here and get active!) Here’s a rundown from Examiner.com:
Today was the big vote on HB 1589, a gun control bill brought forth by House Democrats. As has been previously discussed, this bill was based on false premises, bogus studies and statistics that did not apply to the Granite State. An amendment was brought forth by Representative Laura Jones which would require a study commission be set up to further study the bill. This amendment passed with 177-175 votes.
HB 1589 was officially amended to a study commission which was then voted on by the House in an overwhelming win of 242-118, essentially killing the bill. There was a further motion to be sure the bill was sufficiently dead and buried that then passed by 244-113. This was a defining victory for the gun rights activists in New Hampshire who have been working non-stop against the out-of-state gun control advocates who wrote this bill and were pushing for its passage. (more…)
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