“Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”
In my previous entry about a “Hunter” who was seriously injured when a tree stand that he climbed into collapsed, causing him to fall, there was a presumption that the “Hunter” was lawfully engaged in the activity of hunting upon the land of Charles Corliss. That is not the case. WILLIAM JASMIN HAD NO LICENSE TO HUNT.
On Wednesday, July 13, I went to the New Hampshire Fish & Game Licensing Division and filled out the form, N.H. FISH AND GAME DEPARTMENT INFORMATION REQUEST . “The information requested was not found” was how the form was returned.
This morning’s, Concord Monitor featured a story entitled, “Hunter falls from tree, sues property owner” where in that story Jasmin’s attorney B.J. Branch admits that Jasmin was drinking the day of the accident and he tells the monitor, “[w]as at or below the legal limit for intoxication. He added that because of Jasmin’s serious blood loss, the blood alcohol test may not have been accurate…”
But all of that aside, other questions arise. For example, N.H. RSA 635:2 (Criminal Trespass) states in part, “A person is guilty of criminal trespass if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place…”
RSA 214:1(License Required) states in part, “No person, except as hereinafter provided, shall at any time fish, hunt, trap, shoot, pursue, take or kill…[w]ild animals in this state, without first procuring a proper and valid license to do so, and then only in accordance with the terms of such license and subject to all the provisions of this title…”
When Jasmin, through his attorney filed his writ, he asserted, “On or about November 17, 2009, William Jasmin sustained serious injuries while hunting on property owned by the defendant…” Jasmin, through his attorney, made a “sworn statement that he was “hunting.”
RSA 207:36-a (Use of Tree Stands) states in part, “No person shall erect, build or use a tree stand… [o]n land of another person that damages or destroys a tree by inserting into the tree any metallic, ceramic, or other object used as part of a ladder or observation deck, without express written permission from the property owner or designee...” Jasmin asserts he had an “invite” to use the tree stand. Chuck Corliss states he hasn’t hunted in 40 years and was not aware of the tree stand’s presence. I believe Chuck Corliss and if the court does, then Jasmin violated yet another law. If a person hunting happens upon a tree stand and climbs into the stand…and branches have been cut, and then a Conservation Officer thereafter happens along, the C.O. is going to ask for the persons “written permission” to have a tree stand where limbs have been removed. Having no permission, a citation is inevitable.
Why can’t democrats trust their own constituents to do the right thing? Their first response to every problem is to institutionalize it with more government, typically as far up the legislative food chain as possible. That means as far away from you as they can manage, even to the point of giving control to unelected bureaucrats you can’t punish, just to keep you from messing with it. They entrench it in a bureaucracy, make it impossibly inefficient and expensive and then refuse to let anyone touch it ever again, while charging you more and more to maintain it.
The left always considers any comment by clergy, in the secular affairs of state, an affront to imagined Constitutional separations unless the remarks support their positions. Such is the case with the Reverend Gary M. Schulte of the United Church of Christ (UCC). With a fusion of left wing talking points and liturgical flair, he leapt the imagined Jeffersonian separation of State and Church, to 
Government is a necessary (preferably limited) evil, laid out like a salad bar. There are all kinds of services your tax dollars pay for. Some of them are for “just in case kinds of things” like public safety. Then there are roads and schools and clerks and so on. And then there are unemployment, welfare, heating aid, and a host of social support services, and the cost of the bureaucracy itself. 
Democrats continue to insist that they created jobs. To do this they extracted trillions from our economic future in an effort to create jobs that did not yet exist–that perhaps were not needed yet. Looking at similar exercises, cash for clunkers–which moved car sales forward a few months but has since resulted in a collapse in the market; the home mortgage bail outs, supports, credits, and the "home affordable" programs which improved home sales briefly but which have since collapsed (also to historic lows); and then there’s the stimulus, several public sector employee bailouts, bank lending infusions, small business bills, and everything in between including health care reform–many trillions spent, all made with claims that they would create, save, or incentivize job creation.
Don’t expect ShaHodeSheaPorter to wrestle with this conundrum; while running for office in 2008 they insisted that the Bush Tax cuts were "for the rich," or "the wealthiest Americans." The class warfare rhetoric made the case that Republicans didn’t provide tax relief for anyone else, and the democrats promised to remedy this the moment they were elected. The result was to embark on a multi-trillion dollar spending binge that cannot possibly be paid for without taxes on everyone and everything–though they still insist otherwise.