Steve MacDonald

Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, an award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance and the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, and more (yes, there's more) at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, the Republican Volunteer Coalition, and has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

Guantanamo Blues

Twenty-two months after announcing that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility would be closed in twelve months, the Obama administration has announced that they will now be holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at that facility, indefinitely, without any trial at all.

Making The Sausage

One of my readers did me the honor of pointing out a grammatical error I had made in a post, not once, but four times. He politely explained the issue, while pointing out that he still appreciates my work. For my part I knew the rule, but sometimes it’s not quite that simple.

An Open Letter to Republican Freshmen Members of Congress

Sarah Palin(Sarah Palin’s open letter to the newest members of the 112th congress)

Welcome to all Republican Freshmen and congratulations!

Congratulations to all of you for your contribution to this historic election, and for the contributions I am certain you will make to our country in the next two years. Your victory was hard fought, and the success belongs entirely to you and the staff and volunteers who spent countless hours working for this chance to put government back on the side of the people. Now you will come to Washington to serve your nation and leave your mark on history by reining in government spending, preserving our freedoms at home, and restoring America’s leadership abroad. Some of you have asked for my thoughts on how best to proceed in the weeks and months ahead and how best to advance an agenda that can move our country forward. I have a simple answer: stick to the principles that propelled your campaigns. When you take your oath to support and defend our Constitution and to faithfully discharge the duties of your office, remember that present and future generations of “We the People” are counting on you to stand by that oath. Never forget the people who sent you to Washington. Never forget the trust they placed in you to do the right thing.

The task before you is daunting because so much damage has been done in the last two years, but I believe you have the chance to achieve great things.

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[Updated] Why You Should Contact Senator Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell[ UPDATED Senator McConnell has officially come out against earmarks:“Today, I am announcing that I will join the Republican leadership in the House in support of a moratorium on earmarks in the 112th Congress,” he said].

NYT Link Here

Original post

Senator Mitch McConnell (R- KY) is said to be working to undermine an effort at banning earmarks in the US Senate.  This is not surprising.  Senators, as a rule, abuse the privilege more.  And while appropriations of this nature amount to a fraction of the total budget, it is an impressive fraction that rarely serves the interests of anyone more than the Seantor themselves.

Was it Carol Shea-Porter, 2012 congressional candidate in waiting who said that earmarks are necessary so that the state can get back it’s fair share of the federal taxes it’s residents pay?  Or was that Hodes?  Does it matter? Sure, congressman abuse them as well, even those who swear they have sworn them off.

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Nick Levasseur Won’t Like This..

Courtesy of Hot Air–I confess that this is just cool.  It is a live concert (the band is live) at which a holographic Anime pop singer, performs for the crowd.  Whether or not you like the song, or Anime, the holographic technology is…to quote my teenage boys…sick. Check it out.  Then follow the link–there’s another … Read more

Progressive Trade Rules

Being beholden to unions causes you to say and do stupid things.  Take Carol Shea-Porter for example.  She was against a trade deal with Panama because she claimed it would cost American jobs, when it would actually open up trade from us to them–they already had unfettered access; result?–it would have created American jobs. Provisions … Read more

Maine Squeeze

Maine by degrees of Republican-ness

Maine has something of a bi-polar disorder.  They have purple US Republican senators, democrat congressman (still) and just elected a tea party-ish backed governor while handing their entire state legislature over to Republican control for the first time in about 30 years.

Why do that?

For all the why’s and what-fors that can be imagined, at the end of the day it is hard to ignore the pressure from on high.  Two years of high-profile democrat campaigning to advance what turned out to be a very unpopular progressive-national agenda, was felt most strongly in the places where voters felt they have the most control–local state house and state senate races.  It’s been true all across the country.

Moderate to democrat Maine, it seems is no different.  In a state that has let the left dominate state government for decades, Republicans successfully sold the need to be more state-centric and that resonated locally, perhaps to fend off the nationalization of local government from massive federal overreach.

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This Week’s GrokTALK 11-13-2010

A mixture of politics, culture, current events, and well, politics, it is an Internet Radio show streaming live audio and video directly from GraniteGrok. Using a solidly Conservative and Rational Libertarian lens, we’ll take on almost any topic and have notables from the news, political figures, authors, and other opinionated folks for your edification and amusement.

New Hampshire Exceptionalism

The voters on this Granite island took a democrat majority government and turned it into a Republican super-majority, making the historical re-election of democrat John Lynch historical for it’s inability to stop anything the legislative super majority can agree is in the best interest of the people who elected them.

The Three Amigo’s

In an email posted to the entire Republican caucus, team player Gene Chandler invited everyone to a luncheon to meet the Republican candidates for speaker of the House.  Gene announced that he would be there, along with John Reagan, Susan Emerson….and…..that’s it.

So three of the four candidates have arranged a lunch (those three seem to do everything together now) at 11:30 the day of the vote for speaker–which happens at 1pm–to do a meet and greet, and have purposefully excluded William O’Brien.

I wonder if the progressives are catering the event and filled out the invites?  The democrats would not have invited Bill O’Brien either.

I mean, wasn’t it Dean Barker at Boo Hoo Hampshire who said, if he had to have any of them, he’d prefer Gene?

Ringing endorsement from an ultra liberal democrat.

I say eat Gene’s free lunch and then vote for the guy who was not even invited to the event.  The one the democrats do not want to be speaker.  William O’Brien.

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VoteCrier.com

Someone has just performed what appears to be a great service to the People of New Hampshire. (I just have not figured out who they are yet.) It’s called VoteCrier.com. It’s premise is to provide a database where New Hampshire legislators can explain how and why they voted for particular bills, and a method by which voters can sort and read these responses.
In the words of the Guinness guys. “It’s Brilliant!”

Did SB500 Work?

Correct me if I am wrong, like you wouldn’t anyway, but were we not told repeatedly that the best thing about SB500 was that it would allow the former inmates to work their way back into society under a more supervised regiment than if required to serve out their entire sentence.

What Was He Thinking?

Gene Chandler has been taking a good deal of heat lately.  He deserves it in my opinion.  He knows full well the Democrats will make the same hay over the trumped up corn roast scandal, just like they did back then.  That means if he wins he’s on the defensive every single day instead of focusing on business.  It also means that the entire caucus has to defend their electing him to the post as well, even if they didn’t vote for him to be Speaker.

And if they try to claim they did not vote for him, now we have to defend against attacks of party division over the so-called "ethically challenged" Gene Chandler.

If you, for one moment think that won’t happen you are deluded.

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Trouble in Utopia

From AP – Courtesy of the Union Leader   WASHINGTON (AP) — In a fresh sign of turmoil among defeated Democrats, a growing number of the rank and file say they won’t support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically symbolic roll call when the new Congress meets in January. “The reality is that she … Read more

To Spend And Protect

Image Courtesy of The Tizona GroupThe State Supreme court announced that is sees a conflict between current state law and spending cap initiatives approved by voters (Manchester in particular).  This is not unexpected but it is fortuitous, and to some degree ironic.  In their quest to defend any liberal-leaning municipalities desire to spend beyond the ability of their residents to pay for it, groups like Keep Manchester Moving have just financed the blueprint by which the now Republican super-majority state government can adroitly engineer a fix.

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The Biggest Special Interest Of All

Two Sheets PleaseThere’s something you might want to keep in mind about the state level Democrat wind machine as we move forward toward 2012.  It has been their practice to ignore their own out of state campaign dollars as they attack anyone or anything on the Republican side with even the most tenuous connection to influence from outside the state.  Even the governor has stood up and declared that he is against the influence of money from outside the state, while hundreds of thousands have poured into his pockets from places farther  and wider than the political borders of the Granite State.  But that’s all superficial by comparison to this.

How do governor Lynch, Chairman Buckley, presumptive democrat candidates for 2012 at every level, the whole of the democrat party, even their RINO sympathizers, explain why they embrace massive infusions of out of state money and all the disruptive influence it has at the state and local level…from the federal government?

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Oh yeah, I’m getting one of these…

Virgina wll soon offer a special Gadsden license plate option to its residents. Texas is talking about it as well. Now that we’ll have a sensible House and Senate on Concord, maybe New Hampshire can follow suit.

Can Gene Chandler Salvage The Liberal Agenda?

Provocative title, yes?  Well before you complain about it ask yourself a question.  Why does Dean "Bob" Barker, and the leftistas prefer Chandler over O’Brien?  "That the Dems, if unified, can play a role in preventing him [O’Brien]from being House Speaker, is good news. Dean is part and parcel to the entire Buckley/Sullivan progressive fringe … Read more

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