On his flight to the ALEC Task Force Summit in Charlotte, state Rep. Andrew Manuse chose to opt out of the backscatter scan while passing through security. It was, he claimed, an act of passive resistance against a violation of his “constitutional rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.”
By choosing … to go for an invasive full body pat down when asked to step through a simple backscatter screening machine, we are asserting our own authority and taking control of a lose-lose situation. … I was born free as an American. And I will die free, too, as an individual sovereign man, under the authority of my Almighty God alone.
Manuse believes that his constitutional rights include the right to board a commercial flight without a security check. In fact, Manuse believes the security check is unnecessary because he believes he, and all of his fellow passengers, have a constitutional right to carry a gun on the plane!
Regardless of whether I chose to go through the backscatter machine or opt-out for the pat down, my rights would be violated: My right to travel freely without interference would be violated. My right to bear arms to protect myself from terrorists on the plane or anyone or anything else would be violated. My right to be free from unreasonable searches without probable cause and a warrant indicating the items that were the subject of the search would be violated. My right to be innocent until proven guilty would be violated. [Emphasis added]
Comparing his actions to acts of passive resistance that “brought about the greatest religion in the world, … freed India from the caste system [and] brought light to the plight of former slaves in the Southern United States,” Manuse urges others to follow his lead “if we are ever to restore our liberties.”
Oh, my.
The state Senate continues to swat away the frivolous, the extreme and the downright wacky legislation sent its way by the House. The latest House bill killed by the Senate is House Bill 628, which would have mandated a state database to track and review alleged abuses by federal airport security.
HB 628 began life as the infamous “Don’t Touch My Junk” bill in which TSA agents could have been charged with sexual assault and placed on the sex offender registry for touching or viewing a person’s breasts or genitals.
Free Stater Rep. Andrew Manuse sponsored the bill and defended it writing, “When a government official can conduct a body cavity search for no other reason than ‘a person bought an airplane ticket,’ it is clear that we do not have liberty.”
HB 628 was championed by House Speaker Bill O’Brien who declared, “Our citizens should not be forced to have their rights trampled just to board an airplane or to work at an airport.”
Republican Sen. Jim Raucsh disagreed but was diplomatic. The bill, he said, “would place local and state law enforcement in an adversarial position to the federal agents. Police do not want to be in that situation.”
New Hampshire’s “stand your ground” gun law, which is based on model legislation from the Amerihcan Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is similar to the Florida law that has come under attack following the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
After Coca-Cola, Pepsi and and Kraft Foods announced they were withdrawing from ALEC, Granite State Progress executive director Zandra Rice Hawkins publicly urged the 14 House members who have been identified with the right-wing corporate-funded organization to do likewise.
“Given what we now know about ALEC and its detrimental effect on New Hampshire’s public policy, there’s no excuse for New Hampshire legislators to continue their involvement in the organization,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, Director of Granite State Progress. “The fact that Coke, Pepsi and Kraft have left ALEC speaks volumes to how toxic the group has become. It’s time for New Hampshire’s ALEC members to follow suit.”
House lawmakers, including several members of the GOP leadership team, were quick to respond — by embracing ALEC and demonizing Rice Hawkins. A few of their replies to the “All Representatives” email list follow below the fold.
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GOP Free Stater Rep. Andrew Manuse has been outspoken in his disdain for speed limits. Earlier this year, he co-sponsored a bill that would have decriminalized speeding — unless it resulted in a crash causing personal injury or property damage.
Fellow Free Stater Rep. Mark Warden described House Bill 1696 as a common sense approach. “Practically speaking,” he wrote, “80-85% of drivers don’t obey speed limits currently. Why criminalize such common behavior if no harm is done?”
The bill was defeated in the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee on a 15-1 vote after the committee heard testimony showing it would result in more and more destructive accidents. The full House agreed in a voice vote.
Perhaps it was an attempt at a preemptive strike by Manuse.
Annmarie Timmins and Matthew Spolar identified Manuse as the lawmaker who was caught speeding last month on the way to a committee hearing in Concord. After failing to stop when a state trooper briefly turned on his blue lights, Manuse reportedly faced charges of driving to endanger and aggravated driving until they were reduced to a simple speeding ticket.
Manuse’s actions prompted a lecture from House Speaker O’Brien. House members must not abuse their constitutional protections, he told them, to run roughshod over motor vehicle laws. Manuse declined comment.
In his 2008 speech at Ave Maria University, Rich Santorum said we are in a “spiritual war” in which Satan has his sights on the United States. Santorum is particularly under fire for his assertion that mainline Protestant churches have been overtaken by Satan and are no longer Christian.
He said the devil had exerted control over academia and then began attacking Christianity. “And of course,” he said, “we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”
Santorum’s comments were virtually unnoticed in 2008, as were similar comments by New Hampshire state Rep. Andrew Manuse last year. Manuse was responding to criticism from the Catholic Church over Republican budget cuts when he accused the Church of having been “taken over by the dark one.”
It is important to note that there are those claiming to speak for the Church right now who are not speaking for the church, but instead are speaking for the devil. Any church that urges government to do the job of the private sector and religious charity has been taken over by the dark one.
Granite Staters hoping to have the calluses and dead skin on their feet nibbled away by a school of small fish will likely be disappointed.
Yesterday, a House committee voted 11-1 to recommend killing House Bill 1538, which would have legalized “innovative cosmetic or esthetic treatments” in which an animal provides a service — “provided there is no measurable harm to such animal.”
Fish pedicures have been banned by the state since 2008, due to health and sanitation concerns. GOP Free Stater Rep. Andrew Manuse, who sponsored the bill, was not convinced. His bill would have required the state to produce “clear and convincing evidence” of a “substantial threat of irreparable harm” before banning the practice.
Pam New, president of the New Hampshire Cosmetology Association, supported the committee’s action.
Titillating as it may sound, fish pedicures are unsanitary, New said. The water in the tank cannot be sufficiently cleaned between customers, nor can the fish. Cuts or cracks on feet can result in the spread of disease or infection.
“I would hate to see somebody lose a toe because they’re experimenting with an ‘innovative idea,’” New said.
h/t: Matt Kanner
Rep. Andrew Manuse took to Facebook this week to brag about how he is working to protect the Catholic Church from “persecution.”
I’m trying to work out legislative language in New Hampshire to further protect the Catholic Church’s religious liberties from the persecution created by Obamacare.
Less than a year ago, Manuse was the persecutor when he threatened to eliminate the Church’s tax exempt status because Bishop McCormack dared to criticize Republican budget cuts.
“I am now considering a bill to remove the [Catholic] Church’s tax exempt status in New Hampshire, for you have clearly shown that you no longer want it.”
File this one under “political expediency.”
House Bill 1297 would prohibit the state from planning, creating, or participating in a state health insurance exchange. If New Hampshire’s exchange is not up and running by 2014, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will require the state to join a federal exchange.
House Speaker Bill O’Brien, House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt and GOP Rep. Andrew Manuse argue a state exchange “could be the nail in the coffin of the New Hampshire Advantage.”
“Yes, if we have a federal health insurance exchange all decisions would be made in Washington by federal bureaucrats in a central location. However, if we adopted a state exchange, regardless of what type, we still would end up answering to and obeying these same federal bureaucrats.
“Let’s keep up our promises to voters by passing this law and prohibiting the state of New Hampshire from creating a state exchange that could be the nail in the coffin of the New Hampshire Advantage.”
Not so, respond a group of conservative business leaders, chambers of commerce and trade associations:
“Business owners, managers and senior executives believe a state-based exchange is the better option for New Hampshire. … New Hampshire would be able to shape and control, to a greater degree, the structure and function of a state-based exchange than it would a federally-imposed one. Business leaders have a real and vested stake in what a health insurance exchange would look like in New Hampshire since they may consider shopping in an exchange or sending their employees to an exchange to buy health insurance.”
— Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire, Business and Industry Association (BIA), CGI Employee Benefits Group, City Fuel Co. Inc., Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care of New England, MVP Health Care, New Hampshire Association of Insurance Agents, New Hampshire Automobile Dealers Association, Northeast Delta Dental and Ski NH
If Free Stater Rep. Andrew Manuse and his partner-in-crime Rep. George Lambert have their way, you will be able to legally drive as fast as you want to in New Hampshire — as long as you don’t crash!
That’s right, under House Bill 1696, you could only be charged with speeding if the offense resulted in property damage or personal injury.
One wonders where they will apply this logic next. How about driving while intoxicated? After all, drunk drivers don’t hurt anyone if they manage to drive without actually hitting something or someone.
Oh wait, they’ve already thought of that. House Bill 1452, also sponsored by Lambert, would prohibit sobriety checkpoints.
But why stop there? House Bill 1531, sponsored by Manuse and Lambert, limits the definition of a crime to an act with a victim. The victim being a “person who suffers direct or threatened physical, emotional, psychological, or financial harm” from the act.
Testifying in favor of House Bill 1645, which would prohibit public employees from participating in collective bargaining, state Rep. Andrew Manuse (R-Derry) argued that allowing public sector employees to bargain collectively gives them an unfair negotiating position that has lead to higher compensation than they would receive in the private sector.
[P]ublic sector unions are contrary to the public good because they give state workers an unfair seat at the table of government, leaving taxpayers out in the cold. This has led to regular salary and benefit increases in the public sector, even when the economy is tanking. This has also led to a public sector employee base that earns more than their private sector counterparts. [emphasis added]
This is simply not true.
In 2010, researchers for The Center for State and Local Government Excellence collected data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and categorized workers based on the characteristics that help determine earnings: education, training, experience, job location and occupation. They compared similar employees and isolated the effect of public or private sector employment.
The resulting report, “Out of Balance? Comparing Public and Private Sector Compensation Over 20 Years,” found:
- State employees earn 11 percent less, and local workers earn 12 percent less, than comparable private sector workers.
- Over the last 20 years, the earnings for state and local employees have generally declined relative to comparable private sector employees.
- Benefits comprise a greater share of compensation in the public sector, but even after accounting for benefits, state and local employees have lower total compensation than their private sector counterparts.
- Total compensation, including benefits, is 6.8 percent lower for state employees and 7.4 percent lower for local workers, compared with comparable private sector employees.
This week’s “No Jobs Fair” rally in Concord highlighted the job losses accompanying the new state budget enacted by the GOP-dominated legislature.
The protest elicited a strong response from the GOP with some of the most unvarnished responses appearing in news site comments. The comments didn’t go unanswered.
GOP/Free State House Rep. Andrew Manuse took to the Union Leader to attack the demonstrators and defend Republicans and the Free State Project. A reader identified as Tom Sheffield provided a pointed rebuttal. I’ve juxtaposed their comments:
MANUSE: The people behind this protest … are radical operatives hired with George Soros’s money to turn New Hampshire into another socialist haven like Massachusetts…. These radical activists should be taken about as seriously as if Karl Marx himself was handing petitions to the House Speaker.
SHEFFIELD: What kind of representative starts off his post with name calling like ‘socialist’, ‘radicals’, ‘Karl Marx’?
MANUSE: We need stability before people will want to invest in New Hampshire. … The people of this great state should not stand for such disruptive, dysfunctional politics. They should send a message to the Democratic Party to be quiet.
SHEFFIELD: Then he moves on to villifying those who disagree with his ‘agenda’ as disruptive and then tells them to be ‘quiet’.
MANUSE: As a sitting state representative who proudly signed the Free State Project pledge, I’m sometimes shocked by the lengths some folks will go to discredit an organization that has the same goals and dreams as the founders of our nation. … Free Staters are American Patriots; people who wanted to live somewhere they could make a difference while also fitting in.
SHEFFIELD: Next we have him occupying the mantle of ‘patriot’. Is this guy for real? He doesn’t display one iota of patriotism, exactly the opposite. The first job of a ‘faux’ patriot is to demonize the opponent and make them unworthy of occupying the same space as the pretend patriot. This is what the freakstaters are all about. They don’t want the freedoms that our founding fathers gave us, they want to have the freedoms for themselves that they imagine will be good for their little fascist group and screw everyone else. God bless America? God help America.
The people behind this protest, Judy Stadtman, Zandra Rice Hawkins and Mark MacKenzie, are radical operatives hired with George Soros’s money to turn New Hampshire into another socialist haven like Massachusetts, which can barely support its own weight. These radical activists should be taken about as seriously as if Karl Marx himself was handing petitions to the House Speaker.
— Rep. Andrew Manuse, on the “No Jobs Fair” Statehouse rally
