Roll Call : 178 House Reps. Voted to “Infringe” Your Rights at Will

The Constitutions, Federal and State, were crafted to identify natural rights that the government was not permitted to infringe. Free Speech, Assembly, Religious Conscience, Self Defense, redress, and Due Process, to name a few. But 178 NH Politicians voted to infringe them at will.

That vote was to oppose a measure to prohibit the Executive branch from using emergency powers to take away those rights. To allow a governor to continue to ignore Constitutional Limitations on state power (as has the current occupant). Some folks will say, we need that, but they’ve not thought it through.

If, as an NH Superior Court Judge states, the State Constitution does not constrain political power during a State of Emergency, what then stops anyone in that position from declaring one for that very purpose?

Related: Most NH House Dems Voted to Allow ‘Suspending’ Constitutional Rights

Nothing is protected. Nothing!

BLM could be prohibited from peaceful protest. The Concord Monitor could have its reporting silenced. No more need for warrants to search and seize property (we saw that under the COVID ‘response’), so why not abandon trial by jury, as Ian Hyuett points out here.

Look over the Bill of Rights and decide for yourself: which rights are essential in times of emergency and which should we deem expendable? For example, should we protect freedom of speech, but allow future governors to suspend the right to “public trial, by an impartial jury?”

And don’t forget about the New Hampshire Constitution. Should we protect the Article 22 right to “Liberty of the press,” but let governors suspend the requirement that “All elections are to be free”? Critics of HB 440 have not told us which rights should be off-limits to suspension and which rights are optional.

Which rights would you throw away to the whims of a partisan agitator playing governor and god? Or, what would you prefer to keep because that’s gone forever in NH pending a ruling by a higher court on some distant day, if ever?

And that’s a problem. We’re waiting on the government to tell us what rights the government can infringe and when including the ones you’d rather they not.

Even with the best of possible intentions, this sort of universal mandate is not just dangerous it is short-sighted. As blinkered as the those in the “hate speech” crowd, who think giving a government power to suppress speech they don’t like will never come for theirs. A government that never gives back one it has been given.

Idiots.

New Hampshire has its fair share. Elected officials who swore to uphold the constitution. A responsibility that would suggest support for any change to the law that protects the limiting powers of that document over their own or that of the Governor.

Not in this case, and don’t be surprised to see eleven Republicans on this list.

House Roll Call on HB440 (The Civil Rights Defense Act), Passed 192 – 178, currently in the Senate where they need to hear from you in support of that bill.

Added: Video from this post– Prime sponsor talking about HB440.