Seriously – there are a TON of problems facing the nation that the Congress with which it should be concerned.  A lot of them, IMHO, are functions of what they have already done – and done badly (both from a policy decision and legislation writing standpoint).  And a lot of it is from stepping over Constitutional boundaries (or ignoring them) and getting involved in things that should not be concerning them. Like the Ambassador fromthe Federal Government to NH [Senator] Jeanne Shaheen does here:

.@nflcommish should release results of checked balls. Public has right to know. No credible evidence against #TB12 https://t.co/T3hK90lncF

— Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (@SenatorShaheen) April 27, 2016

Seriously – someone that should be considering the intractable issues of the day, be concerned with protecting our Individual liberties (yeah, I know – Progressive), and then leaving we in Civil Society alone.  But here is Jeanne Shaheen, using “official” Senator twitter feed, making sure that everyone knows THAT A US SENATOR wants to throw her official weight around and tell a private concern what it should be doing.

Absolutely wrong.  This is the appearance of

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On Thursday the Washington Time reported on the CASA Act – The Campus Accountability and Safety Act. This is legislation brought forth by extreme far left wing Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. This legislation is based on the bogus claim that there is a “rape culture” on college campuses.

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What started off as a rather free form show certainly changed quickly! Grokster Mike and I started off with a WTF (here’s the link) on the Left’s propensity to label any discussion with which they disagree with as “hate speech” – and keep moving on to silence any dissent (and then work to totally destroy those dissenters careers and lives).  Then ‘Grok commenter Kathleen and Henniker tree farmer Steve Forster came on to talk about his victory in getting back his ability to hold weddings (agrotourism) on his private property (and finally defeating the developers that wanted to run him off his lands financially).  We also talked with Grokster Kimberly about Kelly Ayotte and CASA – the bill she has gotten behind that utterly strips due process against college guys and effectively removes colleges out of the American jurisprudence system (so tell me, WHY is a Republican supporting the Obama DoEd in doing this?  A former State’s Attorney General, no less).  While we had a schedule mixup with  Robert Pondiscio of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, we did talk with Gubernatorial candidate and current Executive Council member, Chris Sununu  talked with us about governmental philosophy through the lens of Common Core, Smarter testing, and local control.

And the video:

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The Massachusetts State Senate voted 32-2 this week to make it illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone under the age of 21. The move follows local laws in several towns that already prohibit sales to those under 21. Experts suggest that taking the rule statewide will reduce the number of smokers in the Bay State by 12%.

The governor likes the premise but has not said for certain if he’d sign such legislation. Before he does he should let the taxpayers know where they plan to cut $100 million a year from the state budget.

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Sorry-not-sorry to bring this up again, but will someone please point me to the place in the Senate where the abortion statistics bill was stashed?  Who could possibly be benefiting from stalling on this?

I sat in on the House study committee meetings that resulted in this year’s HB 629, “relative to induced termination of pregnancy statistics.” So did a Planned Parenthood representative, someone from the state Vital Records office, and a DHHS staffer. The study was hardly one-sided. HB 629 passed the House in January. It had a Senate hearing in March. Since then, nothing. Look at the docket for the bill and listen for the crickets. No committee vote yet, never mind a scheduled floor vote.

We’re talking about counting abortions, not regulating them.  This public health measure was a bipartisan effort up until the time the House handed off the bill to the Senate. The bill passed the House on a voice vote.

The House blurb on the bill was succinct.

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Yesterday Governor Hassan sent a press release touting her signage of the new legislation regarding rule making in the prescriptions of opioids. Suddenly Maggie Hassan and her cohorts in crime in the house and senate (from both political parties) know better than your doctor how to treat your pain. Hassan must have gotten a medical degree during her failed stint as governor but didn’t to tell anyone.

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At this point most people know that Trump was all for an ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ and waiting periods for firearms back in a book he “wrote” in 2000 – The America We Deserve. Since he has been running for President, Trump has suddenly become pro-2nd Amendment (although no one seems to have any photos of him actually shooting a firearm).

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(H/T: IBTimes)   This is not looking good.  UPDATE:

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So California has just raised its minimum wage to be $15/hr in a couple of years.  And already small biz owners are really concerned that the risk they took (and in many cases, HUGE risks, relatively speaking) will be wiped out by Government fiat (as opposed to real competition in the marketplace – after all, who can compete against a taxpayer fueled Leviathan?).  And I do ask (even though I’m almost a century late) “WHY should government, driving by the Statist politicians, unions, and special interests, be interfering with the relationship between an employer and employee?  After all, how is that any different than their mantra that no one should get in between you and your doctor?

Oh right – Obamacare.  Sorry – lost my head there for a moment.  While we are about to see some $15/hr fast food employees that are not economically worth that, we are also going to see a whole lot of those workers learn that the real minimum wage is $0/hr.  And this story shows that even manufacturing jobs are not immune to this Government distortion in California (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Ahead of $15 minimum wage, 1 company leaves California for Texas

California’s $15 minimum wage does not go into effect until 2022, but one Santa Fe Springs-based manufacturing company has already decided to leave the state this year to take advantage of cheaper wages in Texas. “This is the last thing I want to do, but I don’t see that I have a choice,” said Fred Donnelly, president of California Composites, which makes parts for commercial airplanes. Donnelly, who has lived in California for almost seven decades, said he is moving his company out of California because of its “dysfunctional” worker’s compensation system, excessive state and local regulations and the forthcoming $15 minimum wage.

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Yeah, I’m betting that the NIMBY and BANANA enviros that hate all energy other than solar are going to watch each other’s heads explode:

CO2 Increasing Food Production And Plant Water Efficiency:

Two new papers in the journal “Nature Climate Change” are pointing out the positive benefits of increased Co2 . The first claims that increased CO2 concentrations account for 70% of the increased greening of the earth and increased plant growing seasons

“We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend,”

— Nature Climate Change

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