NH Mayor: No “Free Speech” On His Flagpole!

Democrat Mayor Jim Donchess of Nashua has changed the city’s policy regarding the flagpoles in front of city hall. Where they were once willing to allow the public to petition to fly a flag, that policy is no longer. The city will fly the flags it likes, and that’s the end of it. We predicted (more than once) that Nashua would be sued for refusing flags on a public pole (just like the City of Boston).

Their inability to freely share that space would end the “public” pole (just like the City of Boston).

That just happened.

Boston got sued and lost, after which they disposed of the public pole (the practice, not the actual device). Nashua begged to get sued, has, and now they’ve arrived at the same end (we’re just waiting for Nashua to lose the lawsuit, which they will).

Another thing these two tales have in common is that the plaintiffs all have bylines on GraniteGrok. What can we say? Free Speech matters to the people who create for our pages, unlike the dastardly Dem Jim Donchess, whose deleterious denials have destroyed any illusion of a non-partisan city government.

It was inevitable.

Donchess is an intolerant child who is incapable of brooking any message outside his narrow worldview. Free speech continues to interfere with that, so pulling the public pole, so to speak, is just a way to get out from under any obligation or appearance of forbearing. Even as the elected leader of the state’s second-largest city, Jimmy is incapable of acknowledging that the Constitution exists to protect the voices and views of others from the discriminating jackboot of government.

Even lip service to this ideal is dead. If Donchess can’t tolerate a flag flying on a pole in front of a building that houses his temp job (no one is mayor forever), there is little hope he is capable of tolerating anything else or even inclined to try. And we know he will not.

He does not even feel an obligation, which signifies that he has been in the office (or at least this office) for too long. He no longer serves Nashua; he only serves Jim Donchess. And the longer the citizens of Nashua put up with it, the more expensive this lesson will get for them.