Every year the Free State Project puts on the Porcupine Freedom Festival (Porcfest) in Lancaster NH at Rogers Campground in the middle of the majestic White Mountains. It is basically the Burning Man for Libertarians, Voluntaryists, and Anarchists. The walkthrough takes place on Saturday June 27th, 2015. The last day of the week long festival. It begins on the far side of the campground, winds through Agora Valley, and ends at the main field for the group photo of all the attendees.
Liberty activist Chris Rietmann has made major news twice this year for first repealing all gun regulations in Alstead, where he serves as selectman. Then a couple of weeks ago, he made further headlines for leading the effort to provide armed guards outside the Keene military recruiting center – a move which was controversial among the liberty community.
Last year, Keene liberty activists manned a bitcoin outreach booth at the Cheshire Fair. In that five days, we installed a grand total of three bitcoin wallets (though we did hand out hundreds of bitcoin flyers). This year, we did it again and installed eighteen wallets, had dozens of great conversations, and shared bitcoin intro flyers with hundreds more fair attendees! Despite a couple of minor issues, the fair outreach booth went swimmingly! A couple of people used the original Keene bitcoin vending machine at the fair, and many others were directed to the BVM at 101 Deals Thrift Store for future purchases.
Fair attendees had plenty of good questions and our professional staff of bitcoin-enthusiasts had answers, including Derrick J Freeman and Chris Cantwell. Thanks to all the folks who helped with the booth and everyone who stopped by. If you want to meet with other area bitcoiners, drop into the Keene Bitcoin Network group on Facebook.
A church pastor, late to the Sunday service, crashes through the door of a Concord bar, and the congregation inside turns to look. A second pastor, Stu Light, stands on the piste with a foam sword in hand. He calls out to the first pastor: “I look forward to killing you.”
At the Church of the Sword, where belief in a god or gods comes secondary to espousing principles of self-sufficiency and arming oneself, the greeting could be considered their version of “peace be with you.” After all, one of the holy texts of the 5-year-old, nontheistic, New Hampshire-born religion is Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
“We believe in an active struggle against those who would deprive us of life and liberty. We believe in studying and applying the martial path in the judicial and legislative arenas, as well as in self-defense,” says a sampling of the church’s statement of beliefs.
So when the town of Westmoreland said last year, and the Cheshire County Superior Court agreed this year, that the Church of the Sword isn’t a real religion – and therefore doesn’t qualify for a religious tax exemption – they took it as an attack on their freedom and struck back. (more…)
According to a recent press release from the NH ACLU, Alton town selectmen had a local activist arrested for daring to speak out at a meeting. Jeffrey Clay was supposedly given five minutes to address the board, but two minutes in was interrupted by the rude selectmen who voted to close public input when they did not like what Clay had to say to them. He was demanding they resign, accusing them of corruption, so they proved his claim and had him arrested:
The Laconia district court threw out the obviously illegal charge of “disorderly conduct”, and the ACLU has filed suit in civil court. As NH ACLU head attorney Gilles Bissonnette points out in their press release announcing the suit,
Sadly, these types of free speech violations still occur in 2015. In a free society, governmental officials are required to tolerate harsh criticism and even a demeaning attitude towards them—including viewpoints that can feel like “character assassination”—and cannot discriminate based on these critical viewpoints. As the U.S. Supreme Court has held, “[a]s a general matter, … in public debate, our own citizens must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate breathing space to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Thus, speech directed to and about the government is singled out for protection because speech—including opinions about how well or badly officials carry out their duties—lies at the very heart of the First Amendment.
Jury nullification outreach efforts reach new heights in NH
On August 3rd and 4th, New Hampshire activists (organized by Joel Valenzuela of Rights Brigade) reached an incredible six courthouses with jury nullification outreach information supplied by NHJury.com. Activists canvassed much of the state, reaching locations in Dover,Laconia, Brentwood, Concord, Manchester, and Nashua, sharing with jurors the knowledge of their age old right to nullify bad laws. (more…)
At last month’s public tax assessors’ hearing, Shire Free Church minister Mark Edge gave a rousing speech and then the Keene tax assessor board refused to explain their reasons for denying the Shire Free Church a tax exemption in 2015. Next step is an appeal to superior court. We dropped our case from last year so we could bring attorney Brandon Ross on to assist from the beginning in 2015. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest on this attack on religious freedom. Here’s the video:
