Okay… So, by now you have probably heard that Ben & Jerry’s, in a “Hold my Bud Light” attempt to see who can alienate the most customers with one Tweet, kicked off July 4th with the statement, “It’s high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it.”

Please welcome Robert Roper, who will be joining us as an author/contributor when VermontGrok opens its doors.

The PR equivalent of blowing your fingers off with an M-80.

A more detailed press release explained, “Who doesn’t love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display? The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land. This year, let’s commit to returning it.” The company, which was purchased by Unilever in 2000 for $326 million, then suggested that we start by giving the Black Hills, including Mount Rushmore, to the Lakota Sioux.

So, here’s my question. If the US government, having stolen this land from the Sioux, gives it back to them, will the Sioux then give it back to the Cheyenne, the Native American tribe the Sioux stole the Black Hills from less than 75 years before the US Government signed the first treaty granting the Sioux rights to the land? Who the Cheyenne stole it from is beyond this author’s knowledge of Native American history, but presumably, it was someone. Where are the Clovis people today?

Donning my Woke Hat for a moment, isn’t it a rather Eurocentric view of history and social justice to assign these theoretical ownership rights to whoever happened to be occupying the land at the time white men “discovered” it? Isn’t that a cultural devaluation of all Native American history before the arrival of Europeans on the scene?

 

The fact is that Native American tribes were constantly at war with one another, taking and occupying one another’s territory through brutal acts of violent conquest, often capturing the members of rival tribes into slavery – sex slavery if you were a young woman, which was the style at the time.

When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth in 1620, Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag tribe, allowed them to stay (breaking a long-understood, universal Native policy toward Europeans of “trade then leave”) and gave them aid not so much out of charity, but because the Wampanoags were about to have their land taken away by the Narragansett tribe. Massasoit thought these new immigrants – and their guns – would be handy allies in preventing such an attack. It worked! At least in the short term. Long term, let’s just say there are lessons to be learned from the experience.

When Francisco Pizarro began his improbable conquest of the Inca empire, he was greatly aided by the fact that the Inca chief Atahualpa was in the middle of and distracted by his own war for imperial power, his armies away conquering distant lands and not immediately available to protect against conquistadors arriving by sea.

This is not meant to disparage the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere; it’s just to show that human history everywhere is the story of one people taking another people’s land one way or another since the beginning of time. We are “One Race, the Human Race,” and we all behave the same way, for good and bad.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Saxons took the land of the Britons. The Vikings took the same land from the Saxons. The Saxons took it back until the Normans conquered England in 1066. The Romans conquered Europe. Mongol hoards swept through Asia. When Alexander does it, he’s Great. When Ivan does it, he’s Terrible. Historical juries are fickle.

If you’re going to start giving land back to its “original” occupiers, where do you start, and where do you stop? It’s an impossible task, complicated by the fact that the victims of any injustice have been dead for multiple generations, and those being punished today for those past transgressions are innocent of any crimes, which creates its own new set of fresh injustices and grievances sure to poison the present and future without actually healing the past.

If we all go far enough back in our 23 and Me profiles, we can assuredly find ancestors on both sides of the social injustice scale. Heck, someone calculated that 16 million of us are direct decedents of Genghis Kahn. Should these folks pay reparations for the actions of their ancestor? Or receive them given that their relationship was likely the result of great, great, great, great, great grandma being raped?

At some point, you have to accept that the past is the past. It is what it is. Learn from it and use its lessons to move on into a better world for all.  Let’s be glad – and eternally grateful – that we now live in a very unique time and place in human history where property rights are respected, and wars of conquest are generally frowned upon rather than glorified. It’s a good thing that we look at the history of how Native Americans were treated and conclude as a society that this was bad behavior that should not be repeated. You cannot fix history, but you can use it to build a better future.

So, how about we use our Independence Day to pledge to keep this new and fragile record of progress regarding human rights and the continued eradication of poverty and violence worldwide moving in the right direction for future generations to enjoy? Let’s thank the rise of capitalism and the evolution of governing philosophies embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights for their huge role in ushering in this unprecedented time of peace and prosperity where anybody from anywhere can be a success — even two ungrateful hippies getting rich selling luxury ice cream.

 

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank.

Cross-posted | RobertRoper on Substack

The post Ben & Jerry’s Says, “Hold My Bud Light!” appeared first on Granite Grok.

When I filed my last Right To Know with DCYF, I had tagged these last few items. Number of data breaches; Timestamp, and Number of records exposed/each incident. And I thought about that afterward, and I came to the conclusion that more needed to be asked of this area.

After all, I grow weary of seeing Government taking much (or TOO much) time in reporting their own breaches but hypocritically turning around and actively going after the private sector for the same thing. Every time I think, “Who are YOU to tell others how to manage their affairs but can’t do it themselves?”

Sidenote: funny, the Trump Administration decided to move in a direction that would leave us citizens alone to make our own decisions. Biden, on the other hand, has decided that we all are morons and must be told what to do – yet keeps on making a mockery of itself.  But I digress…

Anyways, given that it was MY information put at risk, I was curious as to how the NH government, especially DCYF, handles our personal affairs.

Right to Know Request per RSA 91-A: “Family Connections” Data Breaches

Article 2-b of the NH Constitution by which all agents of NH Government (elected and administrative workers) shall obey:

[Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.]An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.

Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records:

From the DCYF system that aggregates putative contact information of family members of accused suspects of abuse or neglect of a child such that they are sent the contact information of care providers for that child:

• Provide the number of data breaches since the “Go Live” date (when the system/subsystem was vetted for use for certain DCYF personnel in the performance of their duties) accomplished by either by State personnel or external actors (regardless of the “breach size”):
  • Timestamp of each incident
  • Number of records exposed per each incident.
• Provide the “we screwed up” confirmation announcement utilized to communicate the breach to each affected person/entity.
• For each breach, provide:
  • the number of care providers affected.
  • the number of accused affected
• Provide the remedy/remedy’s offered by the State, to those affected by the breach for remediation of the loss of their identity information
• Provide the total cost to the State/the State’s insurance companies spent:
  • remediation costs
  • legal defense actions (either through pre-court agreements, plea deals, court actions, et al)

Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, available for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.

As you are aware, in 2016, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a governmental body in possession of records is required to produce them in electronic media using standard common file formats: Green v. SAU #55, 168 N.H. 796, 801 (2016). Unless there is a valid reason that it is not reasonably practicable for you to produce these records in the requested format, I ask that you either do so or explain why it is not practicable for you to comply.

Please also note, per RSA 91-A:4 III, III-a, and III-b, you are required to maintain the safety and accessibility of such responsive records. This also includes such responsive records (e.g., emails) which may have been deleted from respective In mailboxes/Sent mailboxes or local folders but are still available on the applicable email server or in your / email host’s backup systems or file server(s) or other archival systems.

Please let me know when these records will be sent to me for inspection. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. You may email the responsive records to me at Skip@GraniteGrok.com. If the volume turns out to be substantial, I have already set up a Dropbox folder for all of your responsive records to which they can be uploaded.

Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

-Skip
Skip Murphy
Skip@GraniteGrok.com

 

 

The post DCYF – Regarding Data Breaches… appeared first on Granite Grok.

How does a person who is so feeble and lacking enough cognitive activity to complete a sentence cause so much damage to our fundamental rights and freedoms?

Joe Biden and his administration devise new and creative ways daily to curb our freedoms endowed upon us by God, not the government. A Federal judge issued a 150-page injunction slamming the Biden Administration for their activities during the Pandemic and putting a stop to dangerous practices and actions such as:

 

• Meeting
• Emailing
• Flagging
• Calling
• Collaborating
• Threatening
• Urging
• Following up
• Issuing BOLOS for censored content with social media.

 

In a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty, the judge ordered several federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech” posted on the platforms. The ruling is significant as the injunction results from many facets of our government interfering with Free Speech, with the worst offender being Joe Biden and his Administration. Types of information censored were the Pandemic, Biden policies, campaigns, and election integrity.

Officials subject to the injunction include White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Justice Department and FBI employees, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. The case was brought forth by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a GOP senator from the Show-Me State. Landry and Schmitt showed a plethora of examples of censored or suppressed social postings and, ultimately, social media accounts deleted at the request of the Biden Administration.

The most hypocritical part of this chapter in the Biden Presidency is his claim that this would be the most transparent administration in history and that he was bringing decency and morality back to the White House. I do not see how censorship of your opposition and an all-out assault on our First Amendment fits into any of Joe’s claims.

Instead of apologizing to the American people and assuring us that this practice is done and will not repeat, Biden has doubled down. The administration has appealed the injunction. This thinking can only mean they are convinced their work to shut down free speech is legal and justified. They have little respect for the Constitution, which is why Biden was confusing it with our Declaration of Independence. It angers me that nobody calls out the President when he makes an obvious mistake.

Joe Biden and his team of misfits are turning our White House into a frat house. Hunter lived there for weeks to avoid being served for the support case in Arkansas. Biden hosts a Pride Month celebration, and we have topless women on the North Lawn. This week we discover a bag of Cochin in the West Wing. If this is how Biden describes a moral White House, it is understandable why he makes mistakes daily. Biden is not in control of his faculties, so naked women, bags of drugs, and an assault on the First Amendment are just another day in the life of Joe Biden.

The post Joe Gets Busted Destroying Free Speech appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Bennington Banner has an article up applauding another bucket of someone else’s money. Vermont is allegedly getting 229 million for a broadband buildout.  The editors and the Banner left out a critical and necessary point in their headline.

 

You wrote: “Vermont to receive $229 million from Federal Government for broadband buildout.”

Should Be: “Vermont to receive $229 million from children and grandchildren robbed by Federal Government for broadband buildout.”

 

The Bennington Banner is most certainly stuffed to the gills with progressives who know better—the sort of people who whine about social justice and voting rights. The Feds are over thirty trillion in debt, with the interest on that debt rising. A mountain of responsibility piled on the backs of generations who have not been born and didn’t get to vote on it.

What happened to no justice, no peace?

 

“This country once made a historic effort to bring electricity to rural America,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “Today, we must make every effort to do the same for broadband. In the year 2023, high-speed internet must be treated as the new electricity – a fundamental and essential public utility for every member of the community, no matter their income or geography. I look forward to seeing this historic investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which we passed in the Senate in August 2021, bring quality broadband to hard-to-reach pockets of Vermont that have gone without internet for too long.”

“We have a real opportunity to transform rural America, in large part thanks to the Biden Administration’s commitment to rural broadband,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “This essential service – which is key to running a successful small business, connecting with family, and getting medical care in small towns – is also key to revitalizing our rural communities. We cannot be left behind in the digital transformation, and this funding will ensure that isn’t the case.”

 

The Political Elite is printing another 2.45 Billion for this pet project, and while I have no issues with improving connectivity, you should have the decency to admit who will pay for it.

Legions of gender-cult mutilated children who have yet to cast a vote or work a day in their lives. Every dime you spend, have spent, in at least the past few decades, has created an unfair and exponential commitment over which they had no voice. And it makes no difference what the object. Democrats applaud spending for the sake of spending, sending trillion to Ukraine while complaining about homelessness and crime, which is a byproduct not just of their policies but of their spending.

Locals (in Vermont, New Hampshire, or anywhere else) bragging about getting money from a nation over 30 trillion in debt who also claim concern over misinformation or disinformation might want to start writing more honest headlines to clarify who is paying for it in their copy.

It’s not free. It is not the rich who will pay. It is everyone else, and more than you’d like to admit, taxes due on labors, not yer performed because they have yet to be born to be taxed.

 

The post You Left Out “Children and Grandchildren Robbed” … appeared first on Granite Grok.

So to recap:

• NH DCYF sent my personal information to people I don’t know so they could contact the Granddaughter that we are caring for (6/30).
• I demanded, via RSA 91-A Right To Know, how DCYF decides who gets to give it to those people I don’t know – what are their protocols.

And now, I demanded information on the system / subsystem that is in use by DCYF that creates that list of people that would receive the private info (re: location) of where care givers. My granddaughter was amazed at the names that were reeled off over the phone by the DCYF representative. MY response was “what system do they have in order to get that information, determine the correct relationships, and who has access to that information?”.  So, another RTK – this time on some of the technical aspects of such a system (assuming it is computer based – and I have no reason to believe it isn’t).

BTW, DBMS stands for Database Management System:

Right to Know Request per RSA 91-A: “Family Connections” DBMS

Article 2-b of the NH Constitution by which all agents of NH Government (elected and administrative workers) shall obey:

[Art.] 2-b. [Right of Privacy.] An individual’s right to live free from governmental intrusion in private or personal information is natural, essential, and inherent.

Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records:

First:

• Produce the form that which my wife and me, as currently unlicensed Grandparents, signed giving DCYF permission to share our personal contact information to those people that we don’t know (or they, us).

Second – (IF an in-house system, even if hosted by an outsourced hosting service):

For the Division of Children,Youth and Families, provide the name of the database system (along with its supporting subsystems) that, when queried by DCYF staff with single given name, returns non-accused family members (immediate, secondary, tertiary, including those no longer part of a family due to divorce, et al) and their personal information such that DCYF can send them notification where any placed child can be reached.

Example: enter the name of an alleged abuse/neglect suspect and the DBMS returns records (and their personal information such that those people can be notified where a placed child can be found to foster family communications after being removed from the home.

Second – To also be included in the Responsive Records to this part of this RSA 91-A demand, provide the following if being used as an in-house system (if a software-as-service solution is being used, see Third, below):

• The commercial name of the database management system (e.g., Microsoft SQL, Oracle, RDB, MySQL, Neo4J, MongoDB, et al) used to house “family connections” as described above.
• Type of DBMS:
  • SQL/Relational
  • Non-relational
  • Object-oriented
• The name of the hosting company as applicable (if not installed in-house):
  • AWS
  • Azure
  • Liquid Web
  • Other(s)

Audit Trail:

• The Request For Proposal (“RFP”) sent to prospective vendors.
• The listing of vendors contacted to demonstrate their wares
• The scoring results of each according to the RFP.
• The methodology used to evaluate the prospective DBMSs in processing the DCYF sample load including the methodology’s point/scoring system
• The “point/scoring award” results for each of the vendors after the testing phase

 

• The name of the winning vendor
• The final contract and pricing, including (but not limited to):
  • purchase price
  • Pricing model: seats, capacity measurements
  • ongoing maintenance pricing per time period
  • automatic maintenance price increasing (if automatic)
  • training classes
  • webinars
    • on-site (e.g., admin, programming, in-house support)
    • off-site (including travel costs)
    • manuals (as applicable)
• The implementation project plan showing major milestones and those costs vs (estimated vs actual)
• Names of the NH State Government (employees, elected officials)
  • sign off of the winner
  • signing the contract.
• The final cost of the implementation project management process.
• The number of times that the support contract has been renewed and each version’s pricing.
• Promised uptime/availability of the system as a whole

Current:

• Actual uptime/availability since “Go Live” to now
• Approximate size (in TB)
• Capacity utilization (all standard measures).
• Number of queries/day average
• Number of search results/day average
  • Non-zero
  • Null
• Personnel training/certification

 

• Rate of growth of content
• Enumerate the external sources / methodologies utilized in content lifetime for DBMS content:
  • acquiring
  • modifying
  • deleting
• Number of data breaches
  • Timestamp
  • Number of records exposed/each incident.

Third – IF a commercial software-as-service solution is used instead of an in-house system (even if then hosted by a commercial entity such as AWS or Azure):

• Repeat the above Responsive Record demands as applicable

Per RSA 91-A:4 IV(c) If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific exemption used to justify the denial to make each record, or part thereof, available for inspection along with a brief explanation of how the exemption applies to the information withheld.

As you are aware, in 2016, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a governmental body in possession of records is required to produce them in electronic media using standard common file formats: Green v. SAU #55, 168 N.H. 796, 801 (2016). Unless there is a valid reason that it is not reasonably practicable for you to produce these records in the requested format, I ask that you either do so or explain why it is not practicable for you to comply.

Please also note, per RSA 91-A:4 III, III-a, and III-b, you are required to maintain the safety and accessibility of such responsive records. This also includes such responsive records (e.g., emails) which may have been deleted from respective In mailboxes/Sent mailboxes or local folders but are still available on the applicable email server or in your / email host’s backup systems or file server(s).

Please let me know when these records will be sent to me for inspection. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. You may email the responsive records to me at Skip@GraniteGrok.com. If the volume turns out to be substantial, I have already set up a Dropbox folder for all of your responsive records to which they can be uploaded.

Thank you for your lawful attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

-Skip
Skip Murphy
Skip@GraniteGrok.com

I do wonder if anyone else that DCYF decides to pick on has the gumption and know-how to fight back without a lawyer? Would love to shake their hand!

 

 

The post DCYF – So How Did You Determine to Send TMEW’s and My Personal Information To? appeared first on Granite Grok.

We got ourselves a presidential election, and Americans for Prosperity Action is getting involved. They sent out a mailer with the happy lead that “America’s Best Days Could Be Ahead.”  I agree. Then I flipped it over.

 

 

 

I’m curious how they know that and why, if they are so certain, they aren’t spending money to help fix the problem. It’s the sensible way to go. Trump is blowing away everyone almost everywhere except Minnesota, where he only has a one-point lead on DeSantis.

But otherwise, Republican voters want Trump.

I get it. The whole Trump is undesirable to the independent’s thing—and the alleged threat of a down-ticket washout. I actually have a cure. We treat the Trump candidacy the same way the same folks tell us to take the next political class RINO they put in front of us, regardless of office. Hold your nose and vote for them.

And what makes them think the Democrats won’t do the same thing to whomever Republicans pick or that it matters? If we get the 2022 treatment, the left is going to wash out the down-ticket races the same way they wash out the top of the ticket.

The cure for that is an unstoppable freight train and people willing to vote for anyone but a Democrat, no matter who that is, because we’ve articulated the separation correctly.

AFP Action decided to tell us we need someone besides Trump. They can’t say who that would be. It is outside their approved advocacy. So you are welcome to speculate.

Is Chris Christie better than Trump? Traitors Pence or Haley? Vivek. Gov. Ron? I’d take them over Biden or any Dem, but are they the people we need to de-weaponize the FBI, CIA, IRS, DOE, Big Tech, CDC/FDA, and the rest?

I just don’t see it. I also don’t see it much mattering unless we can convince Mary Ann Williamson and RFK jr to run as third-party/indies off-ticket. If we can’t divert millions of votes, the Democrats would then also need to steal in swing states no Republican is winning.

AFP should be working on mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting campaigns, and every lefty-legal loophole they can find to match the Dems ballot for ballot.

Everything else is just window dressing.

And I think Trump can win if everyone acknowledges that if he gets the nomination, we have to get him over the finish line. No excuses.

 

 

This is not, by the way, an endorsement.

The post AFP Action Doesn’t Think Donald Trump Can Win in 2024 appeared first on Granite Grok.

I have had discussions with the Attorney Discipline Office (ADO) about Nashua’s Corporation Counsel and his fitness for duty. I tried to address this matter confidentially first with an Alderman, then the Board of Alderman, and the Mayor. The topic was too hot to touch. I then turned to the ADO.

The Supreme Court has no method available for citizens to report a fitness for duty or mental health matter for people practicing in the legal profession. I witnessed a shift in Corporation Counsel’s performance after he suffered a stroke. He appeared unable to perform his job or control his temper. He became abusive, explosive, and harassing. The personal targeting appeared outside the bounds of his legal professional conduct rules.

The ADO Deputy informed me that I could not file a complaint on mental health or fitness for duty issues. Only the ADO could act on those types of problems, and they would report the matter to the Supreme Court.

One wonders how that works. How does the ADO receive information if they won’t accept the public’s complaints? I asked the ADO and received no response. Apparently, there is an antiquated grapevine system at work. I understand that these matters are sensitive, but I am somewhat insensitive to these “sensitivity concerns” having been the target of this attorney’s uncontrolled attacks. The Supreme Court’s approach to sweeping the matter under the rug, particularly given the type of work an attorney performs, can be extremely consequential. For me, it has been extremely consequential.

I recently attended a court hearing, and after the hearing, Corporation Counsel engaged in a personal, red-faced, angry, agitated attack on me. This attack was witnessed by an individual who was stunned and noted that they had never before seen that level of hatred directed from one person towards another. They were afraid he would physically attack me. The encounter was witnessed by the Nashua Deputy Corporation Counsel, who said nothing.

Those closest to Corporation Counsel appear to have chosen silence rather than addressing this sensitive issue to safeguard the Counselor and the City. This approach has created snowballing legal costs and serious liabilities for the municipality.

 

The post The Judicial System’s “Policy” on Mental Health and Fitness for Duty matters within the Profession appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is a shame young people no longer read. Tweets and such just do not convey the depth of the argument decided by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) last week. Justice Thomas delivered a poignant and powerful decision overturning affirmative action.

Full text (237 pages) of the decision.

Thomas’ decision cautions against relying on experts to determine racial justice.  The dissent calls for empowering privileged elites claiming to know how to level the playing field while ignoring the pitfalls of segregating individuals into racial castes and inciting division.  History shows us the consequences of movements using similar rhetoric, Thomas cautions.

In the decision, Justice Thomas emphasizes American exceptionalism while rejecting the notion of victimhood.  He highlights his belief in individual responsibility and the dangers of dividing society along racial lines.  The Justice is critical of the acceptance of the concept of victimhood.

While acknowledging slavery and its lingering effects were a failure of the United States, he criticizes the misinterpretation of the Reconstruction Amendments by the Court.  Thomas stresses the Court should not repeat past mistakes simply because it believes current arguments superior to the Constitution.

Thomas recognizes the social and economic challenges faced by his race.  He has an understanding of all who suffer discrimination. At the same time, he shows enduring hope; America will live up to its founding principles of equality and equal treatment under the law,  as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Thomas’ strongest criticism is of Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion. Thomas argues her “race-infused worldview” fails to account for individuals’ unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. He emphasizes one’s race should not be blamed for every aspect of their life.  Justice Thomas criticizes the concept of racial determinism.

 

The post Affirmative Action Is Not About a Return to Segregation appeared first on Granite Grok.

The war on free speech continues in Michigan. The legislature is advancing a bill that would make it a felony to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.” My first thought was, no more pandemic fearmongering, then?

 

The bill, HB 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.” Under the bill’s framework, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” are included as classes protected against intimidation. If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.

 

It is meant to be anti-hate speech legislation.

 

The newest version of the bill, which passed the House, uses the term “harassment” without defining specifically what it could refer to.

“’ Intimidate’ means a willful course of conduct involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened, and that actually causes the victim to feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened” the bill states.

 

These concepts are too arbitrary and could easily be applied to the media, politicians, left-wing activist groups, or even the government.

These sorts of bills have one purpose. To intimidate and harass people who dare to question the government’s actions or motives. Dare I say terrorize and frighten people out of speaking? The very thing the bill pretends to seek to prevent, thus the theoretical paradox. No, it would never quite work that way, but if it were to become law, it would not likely survive long. The first amendment prohibits the making of laws that might abridge the right to free speech.

Borrowed from the Formella v. Hood decision I wrote about yesterday,

 

The purpose of the overbreadth doctrine is to protect those persons who, although their speech or conduct is constitutionally protected, may well refrain from exercising their rights for fear of criminal sanctions by a statute susceptible of application to protected expression. While the Constitution gives significant protection from overbroad laws that chill speech within the First Amendment’s vast and privileged sphere, the application of the overbreadth doctrine is strong medicine to be employed only as a last resort…. The substantial overbreadth doctrine applies to constitutional challenges of statutes that prohibit conduct, as well as challenges to those statutes prohibiting pure speech and conduct plus speech. If a statute is found to be substantially overbroad, the statute must be invalidated unless the court can supply a limiting construction or partial invalidation that narrows the scope of the statute to constitutionally acceptable applications. If, on the other hand, a statute is not substantially overbroad, then whatever overbreadth may exist should be cured through case-by-case analysis of the fact situations to which its sanctions, assertedly, may not be applied.

 

I’m not sure this bill would survive to a point where this would be applied, but the world is strange. One where the only thing this legislation is likely to accomplish is a waste of millions of tax dollars defending in court challenges.

 

 

The post Legislative Paradox: Michigan House Passes Bill That Should Make The Bill Itself Illegal appeared first on Granite Grok.

Have you ever thought about educating at home, but didn’t know how to start? Did you know there is a free online charter school for New Hampshire residents in grades K-12 and beyond?

Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) is easy to use and it is free for New Hampshire residents. Enrollment is open year-round, so anyone can create an account at vlacs.org and start at any time. To quote from the VLACS website: “Students choose when, where, and how they learn based on their needs, interests, and talents.”

You can enroll full-time or take any of the courses on their own. Over 150 courses are offered at levels ranging from Kindergarten to adult. There is a wide range of subjects available, from standard school classes like math, science, and history to others such as foreign languages, journalism, and computer science. Classes are not age-restricted as long as you can work at a steady pace.

One of the benefits is that you can complete your coursework any time of day or year anywhere you have access to the internet. This flexibility can come in handy if you travel a lot or participate in activities that normally occur during typical school hours. One student we know of does all of his coursework in the fall, spring, and summer so that he has the winter off to ski competitively. If your family likes to travel, you could rent an RV and travel the country while still completing all of your coursework. VLACS also offers credit for certain travel experiences.

Another benefit is that customized learning allows you to work at your own pace until you reach competency in the subject you are studying. Instructors work with you regarding your progress via email, phone, or a virtual meeting. If you are struggling in a subject, you can take the time you need in order to reach competency in that subject and get as much one-on-one help you need from your instructor. If you are advanced in a certain subject, you can choose to take an honors option and complete courses as quickly as you like.

VLACS also offers a college-preparatory curriculum as well as 15 different advanced placement (A.P.) courses and dual college/high school credit courses through Southern New Hampshire University and eStart. VLACS graduates have been accepted at numerous colleges and universities including several prestigious institutions that are difficult to get into such as ivy league and military academies.

Whether you are looking for an online school with a fully customizable curriculum or simply looking to supplement your public school or homeschool program, VLACS (https://vlacs.org) is worth a look.

The post Free NH Charter School Provides Customized Education with Complete Flexibility appeared first on Granite Grok.

Thank God It’s Friday … Meme Overflow time, and another filling-in edition at that.  More memes, political memes, a few cool pics, and no commentary from me. Just more memes.

Reminder: not every meme is for every body, so scroll responsibly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Friday Meme Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.

We must closely examine the Quran, Islam’s inviolable, immutable charter, since it enjoys such a sanctified standing. Muslims believe that Allah himself writes the Quran. Allah handed down the book, piece by piece and chapter by chapter, to the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel, in turn, whispered these words to Muhammad himself over some 23 years.

Muhammad could neither read nor write. Therefore, he had to find people who could write down what he called his revelations from Allah. Several of these katibs (scribes) wrote down the surahs (chapters), eventually making up the Quran.

The Quran commands the believer repeatedly– to make Jihad, and even the people of the book, Jews and Christians, are specifically targeted. Now, the only question remains the extent of the Muslim’s obedience to the Quran and the Sunna, the life examples of Muhammad. To be sure, many Muslims are not following the dictates of the Quran perfectly, as they should, since they consider it to be Allah’s literal immutable perfect words. Hence, what I’m saying is patently true and far from being patently false as you adjudicate. Furthermore, nowhere do I say the belief in shedding the blood of others automatically makes every Muslim get on a killing spree. Yet, the commandments of the Quran to the believers are clear and emphatic.

I am not speaking about those Muslims who are born in the religion. These individuals have not voluntarily chosen Islam as their faith and need not recite the Shahada. They are Muslims automatically by birth. They may or may not become diehard jihadists. I reference those who voluntarily become Muslims and take the oath of faith– the Shahada.

Deciding to join Islam means committing oneself to the creed and its goal. One cannot enter an order without adhering to its precepts and practices. It is absurd, for instance, for a person to voluntarily join the military while saying that he doesn’t believe in the military’s objective of killing the enemy. All these Muslims who are not rabid advocates of jihad are in clear violation of their creed. Even these people are complicit in the mayhem and murder acts of their co-religionists through financial support and other ways.

According to the cardinal rule of Islam, non-Muslims are kefirs (infidels). So, the kefirs are fair game to be maltreated, plundered, enslaved, and slaughtered. It just so happens that the followers of Muhammad, before even rasul-ul-allah (Messenger of Allah) was buried, started having disagreements among themselves about who was a real Muslim, who was a pretender, and who was actually a kefir. In no time at all, the house of Muhammad splintered into sects, sub-sects, and sub-sects and whatnot. And these “real and true” Muslims started treating other Muslims as they would treat the kefirs, in obedience to their sacred teachings of the Quran.

In short, each sect was a true Muslim and used any means to further the faithful Islam they held, often purging other denominations whenever they could.

Millions of “true Muslims” are ready to give their all in the service of jihad. Suicide volunteers, for instance, in the tens of thousands have registered in the Islamic Republic of Iran to commit mass murder. These believers vie with one another to discharge their religious duty. It is small comfort that a great many Muslims have not volunteered for the mass murder of kafir. Yet, there are enough life-in-hand believers to keep Islam living true to what it is– a belief in blood.

Does every Muslim follow the commands of the Quran? No, thank God. But as they become into communities and increase in numbers, they become more militant and less tolerant of that community’s laws and regulations. This religion’s “holy book” commands its followers to commit crimes antithetical to this country’s laws. In case you are not familiar with some of the condoned atrocities of Islam and Sharia law: are you aware that women are stoned to death for committing adultery and that gay men are hanged? Or that the genitals of little girls are mutilated to destroy their capacity for sexual pleasure and make them controllable and that children may be murdered in the name of family honor? Islam does not recognize the separation of mosque and state. Islamic republics are dominated by spiritual leaders who oversee their citizens’ strict adherence to Sharia.

In countries where Islamic enclaves and ghettos have emerged, such as France, Britain, and Germany, local mullahs enforce Sharia regardless of its conflict with national or state laws. Most Americans fail to understand that Sharia is the foundation of Islamic theocracy and totalitarianism. The establishment of global Sharia is the ultimate goal. The Quran is unequivocal in its directive to Muslims to establish an international Islamic state (caliphate), over which the Islamic messiah, or Mahdi, will rule, with Sharia as the only law of the land. Make no mistake that is the intent of influential Islamic elements in America.

The post Quran and Jihad appeared first on Granite Grok.

In the past twenty years in the United States of America, we have witnessed a political ideology totally degenerate and warp into a cancerous, self-destructive, completely corrupted intersection of ideas that is essentially and totally a tool of foreign forces intent on obliterating what was once a great country.

Many threads compose the embroidered notion of what it means to be a liberal or a leftist today: the transgender movement, the warmongering forever-conflict enabling military brass, the black supremacists, the US Democrat Party radicalized politicians, the corporatists looking only at profits and not at people.

All the followers of the leaders on the left have been deceived. There are large groups of US citizens who honestly believe that there is no center right, that there is only the Democrat Party and alt-right, far-right fascists. They believe that the Republican Party is collectively and totally homophobic, racist, white supremacist, fascist,

The main progenitors and drivers of this movement are no longer sensible, reasonable US citizens. They are individuals who have gone completely and totally insane, either through holding positions of power illegally and extralegally, in the case of complicit U.S. Democrat Party politicians, or through being supported by a nanny state and a fabric of social media and smartphone-based signals empowering a sense of entitled-ness, in the case of the activists believing they are leading some self-righteous crusade. In many cases, it is this latter case that is the most dangerous– where the smartphone and our screens have been weaponized against us to lead us blindly toward a future of dystopian self-destruction and self-hate.

The left has been hijacked by transgenders, racists, warmongers, and corporatists in a vile concoction of death, self-harm, and total hatred. They trumpet their ideology through a globally syndicated network of left-leaning media that generally is controlled by a nefarious entrenched group of wealthy and wealth-seeking folks intent on promulgating discontent and malaise wherever it goes. They pray at the altar of Bill Gates, George Soros, and Klaus Schwab. The people in this network work for institutions with vaunted and prodigious pasts like CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, NBC, ABC, and a collection of media companies with trendy branding. The ultimate infrastructure of these companies has been completely gutted so that the contemporary, present state is one that promotes this cancerous ideology.

No name is more obviously and totally representative of this reality than Rolling Stone Magazine, once an emblem of the West Coast counterculture and a favorite tabloid of those seeking the beautiful, easygoing, rock & roll mentality of California. Now, the magazine shills for a corrosive and nauseating ideology that recently promoted Independence Day in the U.S. as a holiday that commemorates occupying native lands. These people are totally out of touch with their past and basically hate themselves. That is what cancer is – when a person hates themselves at the cellular level. This is the modern leftist ideology today.

That is why it is important for US citizens to be aware of this and to recognize the cancer for what it is. Where it is present, it must be removed from positions of power and decision-making authority.

Leftism has metastasized. It must now be removed by scalpel.

Leftist and left-leaning groups from Google to Facebook, to the FBI, the US Democrat Party, to the corporations bowing to their pressure for social activism like Anheuser Busch, Walt Disney, and Nike; to the academic institutions like Berkeley, University of Arizona, and Columbia— they, themselves, cannot see the futility and backwardness of their own cause. They trumpet it forth because they lack the economic, political, and social understanding of what it is they are saying and doing. Those that do understand the ramifications of their course of action are those who are so insulated that they are not harmed by the chaos they sow, and some actually derive profit from it.

If you have read this essay, and if it resonates with you, you must act. There is no sitting back and watching this occur. If you do not act, you are guilty of complicity. This is not a situation where the problem is just going to fade away on its own. The corrosiveness here is infecting all levels of US institutions, corporations, and levels of government.

We can remove it easily by recognizing it and choosing a better path.

The post The Followers of the Leaders on the Left Have Been Deceived appeared first on Granite Grok.

If you did not know, charges were dropped against all the remaining defendants of the NH9 – the individuals targeted and arrested at an October 2021 Executive Council Meeting. And here’s something else you might not know. Things have gotten more interesting since then.

We know you can get your ginned-up charges dropped if you subpoena the Governor as a witness – which he was. You can also ask important questions of your Executive Councilor who was present during the illegal arrests, like, “Did you knowingly participate and coordinate the unlawful arrests of nine innocent people on October 13th, 2021.”

One of Janet Stevens’ constituents asked that very question. This was her response.

 

 

Since a polite “no” would have been easier than blocking him, some folks might conclude EC Stevens has something to hide. Complicity would be the thing.

In the event of a civil suit, should Councilor Stevens expect to be subpoenaed as a witness? She was near the Governor when he appeared to signal the State Police to arrest and remove nine individuals who appeared to have been identified in advance, and there’s evidence to suggest this. Terese Grinnell Bastarche’s “Defendant’s Opposition to Motion To Quash Subpoena Of Governor Christopher T. Sununu” includes details you can – on your very own – confirm by watching the video that has been available since the day of the arrests. It is interesting reading.

 

• The Governor is the Prime Material Witness in the Case
• The video in this matter does not disclose anything that could be remotely characterized as a “disruption” by the defendant prior to her arrest.
• Governor Sununu is uniquely situated to testify whether, when, and how the meeting was disrupted.

 

If you need more proof, Governor Sununu is listed on the complaint as having ordered the arrests. Now go back and look at the video and ask yourself when and how those nine individuals were identified when no one actually did anything to disrupt the meeting.

The arrests appear planned, and these nine individuals were targeted. The Governor signaled the State police, who then went right to those people and removed them. The arrests were only disruption of that meeting to occur.

You don’t need to be an Executive Councilor to see that.

While we wait for word of a civil suit, any or all five Executive Councilors should expect to get subpoenaed to testify, including Councilor Stevens’ whose blocked constituent might have a different bone to pick.

Has she violated his first amendment rights by blocking him on a social media account where she engages in a reasonable amount of political communication? It is a common tactic of elected officials, regardless of political party, to block people. One I caution against. Several cases addressing the issue have been decided, so there is a growing precedent to suggest that blocking constituents may violate their First Amendment Rights in some instances.

I’m sure Councilor Stevens can find a judge in New Hampshire to disagree. That doesn’t seem too difficult for people in positions of power in this state. You then hope your accuser can’t afford to climb the Judicial ladder to a Circuit Court or Supreme Court. Most cannot.

What you can’t change is that Councilor Stevens blocked him, and now thousands of her constituents will know about it. The violation is a subject of debate among likely voters instead of between Janet and the constituent she blocked. You’re welcome.

Two closing points.

First, I get that annoying, angry, or vulgar trolls may not have much defense if blocked. Our practice is to remind people to be polite and on point when reaching out to anyone in government, with the understanding that, short of a finite number of circumstances, blocking a constituent on social media might violate the law.

Second, the constituent’s question was nothing that rose to the level of an annoying, angry, vulgar troll. “Did you knowingly participate and coordinate the unlawful arrests of nine innocent people on October 13th, 2021,” is a relevant question whose answer should be no. That’s not what the counselor did, which implies many things other than no.

If you were thinking about issuing a subpoena for a witness in a civil trial against Governor Sununu for false arrest, assuming there was one, Janet Stevens looks more than ever like your gal.

I’m sure that’s what she was thinking when she blocked the constituent rather than answer the question.

 

After her charges were dropped, Terese Grinnell Bastarche sat down for an interview with the GIP Guys. This is an excellent resource if you’d like more background on that day and what followed.

 

!function(r,u,m,b,l,e){r._Rumble=b,r[b]||(r[b]=function(){(r[b]._=r[b]._||[]).push(arguments);if(r[b]._.length==1){l=u.createElement(m),e=u.getElementsByTagName(m)[0],l.async=1,l.src="https://rumble.com/embedJS/u4"+(arguments[1].video?'.'+arguments[1].video:'')+"/?url="+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+"&args="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify([].slice.apply(arguments))),e.parentNode.insertBefore(l,e)}})}(window, document, "script", "Rumble");

Rumble("play", {"video":"v2vdarw","div":"rumble_v2vdarw"});

 

The post NH Executive Councilor Blocks Constituent After He Asks Her a Question about The Arrests of the NH9 appeared first on Granite Grok.

It used to be a weekend event in Chicago where we counted the dead and wounded from gun shootings. Now it can be any day of the week, and it might be Philadelphia, Atlanta, or a small town like Naples, Maine.

No city or town in America is immune to gun violence from some deranged individual with their agenda. The only thing guaranteed is the Right will call for stricter use of the laws already on the books, and Liberal District Attorneys will call a press conference to plead for more gun laws. Both are feeble demands, but the call for gun control to end these random, senseless shootings is worse than feeble.

The claims are lazy. Gun controls have minimal impact on these ridiculous losses of life, for when the dust settles, and the facts come out, most of the weapons used in these shootings were obtained illegally. The strictest gun laws in the country will not keep a person hell-bent on injuring and killing people from accomplishing their objective.

Look at the details of the shooting incident in Philadelphia during the holiday weekend. First, people were appalled that the event happened during the 4th of July celebration. Holidays or days of the week mean nothing to these killers. When they snap, they snap, period. The randomness of the shooting is most alarming to me. In the neighborhood security video, we see the man in the video raise the AR-15 and begin shooting round after round into a parked vehicle.

When he finished shooting, five innocent people were killed and two injured. The shooter was soon arrested without incident. Officers arrested Carriker during a chase on foot, and he had an AR-style rifle, a 9 mm handgun, a scanner that tracks emergency response radio traffic, and was wearing a bulletproof vest and ski mask, authorities said.

Authorities are also investigating a since-deleted social media page believed to belong to the accused gunman, 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker, that includes a series of posts about guns, the Second Amendment, and the “loss of freedoms,” according to a law enforcement source. Initial reports from neighbors of Carriker indicate a growing rage, and many felt he was prone to performing the violent act he acted out on Monday night. This lack of action, not gun control, is the problem. People saw the person’s personality change but did nothing about it. His posts on social media showed he was a ticking time bomb; on Monday, the fuse was lit, and the carnage was left in his wake.

Carriker had no previous record, but many of the shooters recently have had multiple incidents where they were not incarcerated but let back into society to repeat their crimes. These DAs can continue to call for new laws, but until they enforce those on the books, they should skip the press conference and do their jobs.

 

The post Stop With The Gun Control, Do Your Job appeared first on Granite Grok.

Attorney and farmer John Klar has released a book with Vermont’s Chelsea Green Publishing titled Small Farm Republic: Why Conservatives Must Embrace Local Agriculture, Reject Climate Alarmism, and Lead an Environmental Revival.

Farmer, writer, and food rights activist Joel Salatin writes in the Foreword to Small Farm Republic:

“[Klar] dares Republicans to get off their chemical industrial anti-health soil-degrading train and embrace a bottom-up entrepreneurial solution: small farms serving local food needs. This book is prescient and timely. “Food liberty is necessary for any liberty at all.” Amen, John Klar. Conservatives who embrace liberty and freedom can get on the right side of national health and food/farm integrity by embracing this prophetic treatise. ”

Chelsea Green Publishing writes:

“John Klar offers an alternative that puts small farmers, regenerative agriculture, and personal liberty at the center of an environmental revival.”

Klar calls for a nonpartisan focus on chemical pollution over greenhouse gasses; small farms over globalist plans to dominate food production; and improved American food quality and security over increased dependence on foreign food. Many of the policy proposals advanced in his book were part of Klar’s political platform in prior elections.

Small Farm Republic is available at Amazon, where it ranks as #1 in Agriculture & Food Policy, and at Chelsea Green Publishing (chelseagreen.com). Klar’s substack newsletter and podcast is johnklar.substack.com.

 

Editors Note: John Klar will be one of the regular contributors to our new venture in Vermont.

The post Brookfield Author John Klar Releases New Farming Book appeared first on Granite Grok.

The modern techniques used by the U.S. Democrat Party to install its politicians have been gradually developed since the 2000 election, which saw Al Gore lose to George Bush II on technicalities in Florida.

Many on the U.S. political left cried fraud, and there likely was some involved.

Many US Republicans have been complicit or accepting of DNC-led fraud because they remember 2000 and are willing to play political ball and give a victory here. Unfortunately for them, the US Democrat Party has metastasized into a group of totalitarians, fascists, communists, and radical socialists hell-bent on the total destruction of the USA so that they can rebuild it in their own image as a new country.

Step One of the Playbook is to smear all political opponents in the most rude and base ways possible so that US citizens do not bother to read or hear anything that the opposing politicians say. The object is to get U.S. citizens to simply ignore all candidates and vote Democrat. RFK, for example, is smeared as an anti-vax, anti-science conspiracy theorist. What does that even mean? Most U.S. Democrat Party followers would not be able to really tell you.

Trump is smeared as a far-right, homophobic, racist, fascist, Nazi, white supremacist. Despite none of these claims actually being true, they have been drumbeat for so many years that most people do not bother to even question them. The ridiculousness of the smears makes it difficult to actually produce an intelligent and logical response– they are that dumbfounding. Have you noticed that according to leftist news media sources, there are no center-right candidates in the US political field? These leftist legacy media folks have lost all credibility in the eyes of any intelligent, honest citizen.

The Second Step of the DNC’s Election Fraud Playbook involved polling and disinformation. The Democrat Party, through its institutionalized media outlets like The Atlantic, Politico, and a slew of polling institutions, puts out numbers that it has allegedly drawn from legitimate polls, which show its politicians as favored or within reach of winning. In reality, most DNC politicians have no chance of winning their elections. Almost all of them require some sort of ballot fraud.

Step Three of the DNC’s Election Fraud Playbook (EFP) involves Secretaries of State and Governors. These individuals are either Democrat Party politicians themselves or under threat of death to follow the Democrat agenda (like the Georgia governor, whose staffer was killed in 2020 to send a message to him to cooperate or else). These people in state office wield their power to force election-related policies that will set up later ballot fraud. They hire and train election workers. They work in conjunction with Big Tech NGOs, like Zuckerberg’s Center for Tech & Civic Life (CTCL) and other organizations, to subliminally show poll workers how to throw the election. Of course, Alphabet and Meta, the parent companies of Google and Facebook, do their fair share in manipulating peoples’ information streams on their smartphones so that they understand their role in the election fraud strategy.

Step Four of the EFP is election day itself. On this day, many techniques are used to prevent Republicans from voting. Different states use different methods, and these methods constantly develop in order to circumvent Republican and Independent efforts to maintain election integrity. Maricopa County in Arizona, for example, sabotaged ballot readers in Republican majority precincts, which resulted in long lines and ballots up for adjudication (see next step). In California, for the Gavin Newsom recall election against Larry Elder, many residents reported that their vote had already been cast somewhere else when they hadn’t yet voted. This is another popular technique– the ghost vote. Democrat-led voting precincts take all measures possible to remove Republicans and Independents from counting rooms and voting centers, citing voter intimidation or some other nonsense.

Step Five is the ballot adjudication. This works especially well for mail-in ballots, which have drastically increased in usage after COVID. Most Republican-led legislatures are too distracted or too complicit to effectively walk back COVID measures, and most states are maintaining high volumes of mail-in ballots. These must all be opened by hand and can be easily set aside for adjudication. When a ballot is damaged or marked incorrectly (according to the poll worker or the counting machine), it must be adjudicated.

In 2020, adjudication rates skyrocketed. This process is usually conducted in a secret location that the public and media cannot oversee. In Pennsylvania, the adjudication process takes up to seven to ten days after the election, which gives the PA Democrat Party, one of the most corrupt in the country, plenty of time to manufacture however many votes it needs and prevent any opposition. This is also a time when additional ballots can be printed and appeared.

In 2024, there is an additional step being prepared that comes even before Step One. This is a Step Zero. It involves all of the newly arrived illegal immigrants from the Biden junta’s first few years in office. All of these people have been trafficked from places all over the world through sophisticated networks of racist NGOs intent on packing the USA with Africans, Asians, and anyone they can find who isn’t Caucasian. The mission is to prepare for a planned Caucasian ethnic cleansing that is being perpetrated in academic institutions in California, New York, Arizona, and Chicago. The plan is to have illegal immigrants staff the election.

These newly minted U.S. citizens, many of whom have court dates over the next seven years, have been issued smartphones by the U.S. government with Apple and Google operating systems. They are the perfect pawns for the U.S. Democrat Party. Since they are not even U.S. citizens yet, they can be abused extralegally, and the U.S. standing laws don’t neatly apply to them as they would to longstanding citizens. These illegal immigrants already have loose morals and know that they are in the country potentially illegally. They mostly all have very fluid identities and a fluid sense of how the world works. They can be manipulated through their smartphones via signals intelligence warfare techniques very easily. They are all beholden to the Biden junta and the U.S. Democrat Party because those people enabled their access to the USA and helped them to set up their lives here. Additionally, many of them have conflicted identities and relationships with the countries where they came from, many of which are outspoken critics or outright geopolitical enemies of the USA.

The 2024 election may be the most fraudulent yet. The Biden junta will try to stay in power by any means necessary. They may attempt to assassinate RFK Jr, hoping that US citizens will sheepishly allow another Kennedy politician to be killed for the power and profit of the globalist-corporatists and the military-industrial complex. They will continue to attempt to jail Trump, and continued programming from legacy media channels is their rationale behind promoting basically any ridiculous charge they can concoct.

The charge doesn’t matter– what matters is that the U.S. Democrat Party can encourage a handful of loud, obnoxious activists to show up and make a scene so that it seems there is some consensus in support of the U.S. Democrat agenda (which is not one that supports real, true democracy, but seems to subvert it at every level).

 

 

The post The 2024 Election Fraud Playbook, brought to you by the U.S. Democrat Party appeared first on Granite Grok.

White nationalists hung a banner on a highway overpass. When asked to remove it for failing to have a permit, they did. The State, looking for something – I speculate on that more here – charged them with a civil rights violation that I concluded would fail miserably. It did.

Not only did the State fail to make a compelling civil rights case, but it also failed to secure a trespassing charge, as the defendant’s motion to dismiss was granted.

You can wade through the details of the full decision here. There are some interesting points about trespassing, the overbreadth doctrine, how the State chose to charge the defendants, and how the judge wrangled the related law and statute.

At the end of the day, this might be the most crucial part of the decision (IMO).

 

The State’s construction does not stop at messages motivated by race. Presumably, the State could bring a civil action against a person whose presence on public property is motivated by any other protected characteristic. For example, the State could, under this theory, bring a civil action against a person who walks on public sidewalks, knocking on doors to spread the message of their religion. The State could likewise regulate a person who drives a car on a public highway to a job working with people with disabilities. The State could prohibit abortion protests on the Statehouse lawn. “Such a law that confers on police a virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation of the resolution is unconstitutional because the opportunity for abuse, especially where a statute has received a virtually open-ended interpretation, is self-evident.” (citations removed).

 

How the State of New Hampshire tried to invoke a violation of the Civil Rights Act opened the door to wide-ranging abuses of power, which was a point from my remarks on this case in early June.

 

Disregarding how offensive we may find white nationalists, neo-nazis, anti-semites, BLM, Antifa, or anyone else willing to use racism, intimidation, or violence to advance an agenda in the absence of incitement (an expression directing immediate acts of violence – a challenging standard to meet), there’s no there there.

You can’t have a civil rights law that infringes on the First Amendment, nor can you pretend it capable of such a thing when the legislature never intended it.* What are you after, and why do you think you can get it? I’m opposed to anti-semitism and race-hating white purity movements but not at the expense of free speech.

Is this some veiled effort to get a shadow of a penumbra of a hate-speech ruling squeezed out of 354B:1, and if so, to what end?

 

I think this was a fishing expedition searching for court precedent that would allow the State to use civil rights law to pick and choose opportunities to chill the right to free speech. “[a] virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation of the resolution is unconstitutional because the opportunity for abuse, especially where a statute has received a virtually open-ended interpretation…”

It is fair to ask why.

 

 

The post NH AG’s Civil Rights Case Against White Nationalist Group NSC-131 – Dismissed appeared first on Granite Grok.

You might have heard that in Croydon, our superintendent admitted, on two separate occasions, in public, that even for $1 million per student per year, he wouldn’t be able to teach the two dozen kids in the Croydon Village School (CVS) to read.

What you probably haven’t heard (unless you were at my talk at PorcFest this year) is that at a recent school board meeting, the principal of CVS admitted that ‘we don’t really know how to teach kids to read.’

What you definitely should hear is the podcast Sold a Story, which explains how one publisher, and a few academics, made a pile of dough (enough that one of the academics drives a Maserati), pushing a theory of reading that is contradicted by basic facts, known for decades, about how brains process the written word.

(It’s also contradicted by common sense, although teachers enamored with the approach don’t seem to recognize that. As you listen to the description of the ‘reading recovery’ method, ask yourself how you might, when reading a book on biology, be able to guess a word you’ve never seen before — like ribosome or mitochondrion, or chirality — from context, without being able to sound it out. Or how you might, when reading a book on history, be able to guess the name of a city or country, or historical figure that you’ve never heard of. And so on.  The very idea boggles the mind.)

There is a reasonable chance that this approach is being used in your local schools, as it is in Croydon. (At least one in four schools across the country uses it.) You might want to check with your school board.

As I listened, I couldn’t help thinking about all the parents in Croydon who were terrified at the prospect that privately-run micro-schools might ‘make a profit off the children.’

Oh, the irony.

 

The post Trust the Experts appeared first on Granite Grok.

On Monday, James O’Keefe announced a court win for a case started while he was still running Project Veritas. Veritas challenged Oregon’s Laws regarding recording people in public, and the 9th Circuit Court agreed with O’Keefe and Veritas.

 

Today, on the eve of our Country’s birthday, I received incredible news on the result of a lawsuit that I filed almost 3 years ago: Oregon State recording laws have been overturned! That’s right – I was able to change a state law that disallowed my investigative journalists to covertly record their subjects while doing our reporting.

 

The opinion notes that,

 

“We conclude that Oregon’s law is a content-based restriction that violates the First Amendment right to free speech and is therefore invalid on its face.”

“Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.

 

New Hampshire law reads like stereo instructions to me, but the gist of it is that you need consent from both parties to record unless it is an obvious public place or recording equipment is visible and there to record others. That means you can’t claim you were recorded without consent if you are caught on a microphone at an event where recording is obviously taking place.

There is a boatload of exemptions for state and law enforcement to surveil you without permission, and there’s no requirement anywhere in public where you have no expectation of privacy. But the dual consent law exists and likely impacts the ability of journalists to get details that might be held back in the presence of a visible recording device.

This may be good or bad, depending on your opinion. It is my practice to speak as if I am always being recorded. This solves two problems. First, no open-mic gaffes because your speech sis yours and it is deliberate, and second, there is no opportunity for inconsistency in your principles.

If I’m being me in all cases instead of pretending to be something I’m not, then there is no oops moment, not that this matters in the context of New Hampshire Law. The statute is indifferent to truth or falsehood; it is the act of recording that is regulated. And in Oregon, they are going to have to revisit it, thanks to James O’Keefe.

 

The post O’Keefe Gets Oregon’s Recording Laws Overturned – Reminded me of NH, a Bit … appeared first on Granite Grok.