How fitting, that on this Presidents’ Day, the New Hampshire House is preparing to vote on a resolution George Washington described “as measures systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must eventually dissolve the union or produce coercion.”
Much of House Resolution 25 is lifted, verbatim, from a series of resolutions secretly written by Thomas Jefferson in 1798 and adopted by Kentucky and Virginia. The language explicitly asserts states have the right to declare federal laws unconstitutional and void.
where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right … to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them…
For the record, the courts have repeatedly found that under the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law; the Constitution gives federal courts the power to interpret the Constitution; and states do not have the power to nullify federal law. The Civil War ended most nullification efforts — or so we thought.
HR 25 is sponsored by self-proclaimed Constitutional expert and nullification proponent Rep. Dan Itse. It was approved by the House State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee in an 8-2 vote and is on the House calendar for Wednesday’s session.
Katy Burns reminds us of the parade of embarrassing Republican legislators in the New Hampshire House this session. “It’s not surprising that there are eccentrics in our huge Legislature. What is disheartening is that there are so many and that — all too often — they are embraced by the current legislative leadership,” she concludes.
Speaker Bill O’Brien:
[He told] a Tea Party gathering that when he was young and “foolish” he voted “liberal.” Students, with no “life experience,” just “vote their feelings.”
House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt:
[H]e lashed out at New Hampshire’s Catholic bishop, John McCormack, calling him a “pedophile pimp” when McCormack had the temerity to oppose the GOP Legislature’s cuts in social services spending.
Martin Hardy:
He distinguished himself when he suggested to a caller that the state’s mentally disabled — “defective people” — should be rounded up and shipped to Siberia.
Ken Wyler:
Mental health providers, he opined, are just trying to create “patients for life.” And we shouldn’t coddle a mother suffering from post-partum depression once her baby “becomes a little more animated.”
JR Hoell:
He introduced a bill that would have allowed guns in courtrooms and legalized blackjacks and brass knuckles.
Dan Itse:
[He] wanted to make it a crime for federal officers to enforce federal gun laws in New Hampshire.
Jordan Ulery:
[H]e was one of a handful of legislators who took it upon themselves to promote “a resolution requiring the Congress of the United States to reaffirm its adherence to the Constitution of the United States regarding international agreements and treaties.”
Al Baldasaro:
[H]e “thought it was great” when the audience at a recent GOP presidential debate booed a gay soldier who asked the candidates if they’d try to restore Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Harry Accornero
[H]e wrote all members of Congress and the New Hampshire Legislature “formally” asking them “to bring a commission of treason against Mr. Barack Husain [sic] Obama” for “giving aid and comfort to the enemy and attempting to over throw [sic] our government from within.”
In yesterday’s chaotic session, the GOP-dominated New Hampshire House passed HR 13 by an overwhelming 258-112 margin. The resolution “repudiates” the advisory opinion issued by the state Supreme Court that declared the legislature cannot compel the state’s attorney general to join a lawsuit against health care legislation.
Andrew Cohen, chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News, describes the House action as “the story of a spoiled, overreaching legislature, angry and sullen about being rebuffed by responsible individuals in the other two branches of government.”
Here are the fighting words of state Rep. Dan Itse, the Republican who thinks he’s Thomas Paine and who wants you to think that New Hampshire’s judiciary still takes its orders from King George III. In this passage alone you can see many of the same grand delusions and half-baked constitutional theories that animate Gingrich’s dangerous crusade against judicial independence and separation-of-powers principles.
If we do not pass H.R. 13 we will be enabling unelected bureaucrats to usurp and pervert the power of the people, destroying their liberty. The wall of the Constitution, which confines government and preserves liberty, has been torn down one brick at a time. You have the power to rebuild that wall. Now is the day and the hour, it is moment in history, to hold the line, to defend liberty.
With rhetoric like that, you would think that New Hampshire itself was in imminent peril from some despotic power. But when you learn more about the story of H.R. 13 you realize quickly that the Devil isn’t at the door in Concord (or anywhere else in the Granite State). The story of H.R. 13, instead, is the story of a spoiled, overreaching legislature, angry and sullen about being rebuffed by responsible individuals in the other two branches of government.
