Remember that Janet Jackson song What Have You Done For Me Lately? It’s a tune from my teenage years that comes to mind when I think of our Senate Judiciary committee, the body that rubber-stamped HB1002 last year during Queen Sharon’s (committee) leadership and also got that judge-retirement-age question on the ballot. Yeah, we’ve had an election since then, and the enemy camp membership had some personnel changes; Senator Twitley and Baby Shamu were replaced with gun grabber Altschiller and Attorney Tara Reardon.
Team Red, however, has the same 3 ENEMY OF 91A members, but with different status/titles within the committee. Queen Sharon, now busy with the gavel and its duties, stepped down from her chairmanship to become just an ordinary member, frequently absent from essential hearings. Attorney/Senator Gannon was rewarded for doing Queen Sharon’s bidding by having six figures’ worth of resources spent attacking Emily Philips in their primary. On top of that, Sharon promoted him from vice chair to chair.
The 3rd member of Team Red, Attorney/Senator Daryl Abbas, was promoted from ordinary member to vice chair. He went from having no committee leadership positions in last year’s senate to having two now. Whether or not he’s doing a good job as the Children and Family Law chair is a question for the family law reform activists.
I am telling you all this as a reminder that the Senate Judiciary Committee is, unsurprisingly, loaded with lawyers, and that Attorney Lehmann is often in the room when it meets.
The legislature’s job is to make law, and many of us are aware that the other two branches of our state government have a behavioral pattern of not staying in their lanes. It seems to be getting worse as time goes on, even though the Damn Emperor has since retired from his serial abuse of executive orders in the form of COVID edicts, all 80 plus something of them.
And as for the courts, we’ve heard from contributors like Daniel Richard, Doris, and the Paul Ingbretson Claremont video series, featuring many legal minds (Attorney Lehmann, Ed Mosca, Mr. Sorg, to name a few) as his guests. Leah Cushman, Claire Best, and Laurie Ortolano have been sounding the alarm for years about the cancer in our courts, from the superior court, family court, and criminal court, all the way through the Supreme Court.
As most of us know, Shakespeare wrote, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Unfortunately, not enough people know or care that the “something” that is rotten in NH is ALL of our government. Yup, that’s all three branches, including the elected, appointed, and hired.
It’s up to the legislature to effectuate change, and that starts with the Judiciary committees on both sides of the wall. Seeing that Judge Lynn is a bad actor who aged out of the highest leadership of one branch and coasted into his House chairmanship, it’s up to his counterpart committee on the other side of the wall to aggressively push for positive change, either by actually blocking bad House bills and preferably sponsoring some good bills seeking to reform courthouse and courtroom operations.
Please click here to read Laurie Ortolano’s recent article, and tell the Senate Judiciary Committee you want them to address her complaints.
