Family Law, Opioid Crisis, States Rights, and Wondrous Civility in the Granite State

“The Legislature shall assemble for the redress of public grievances and for making such laws as the public good may require.” — New Hampshire’s constitution.

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

Some folks in New Hampshire, including myself, are having fun mocking my candidacy for the US Presidency. Let’s start with my bus driver.

When I got on board this morning, I said “Is this bus going to Manchester?” (knowing full well that it is strictly a Concord bus). He said “Yes, we are going to Manchester.”  I said “I mean Manchester, England.” He said “This is a plane and we are headed for Manchester, England.”  I said ” If I am flying overseas, I should be on Air Force One.  Said he: “This is Air Force One.”

Anyway, I hopped off at the State House, intending to give testimony at a hearing on a military matter. The public is welcome to show up and offer comments on any subject that is pending n the Legislature. Entered the Marble Hall and asked the receptionist-guard where the military thingie is held. He said “Room 206.” Please note, he did not ask to see a passport, frisk me, or hold captive my laptop.

On entering Room 206, I filled out the pink slip for persons who may feel moved to give testimony. (I’m not sure the name of the chair a testifier sits in; I’ll call it the hot seat.) When the Chairwoman called the session to order, it seemed to be on the subject of Family Law, instead of the military.  What ho! I was in the wrong place, but decided this was worth staying for (and it was).

There were 16 members of the legislature in the room, and about 4 testifiers. When it came to be my turn — the Chair reads the pink slips — she said “Mary Maxwell will now speak.” I had to say “I withdraw my request, please” (since I couldn’t very well comment on a bill I had not seen). Madam Chair said — to my amazement — “Thank you anyway, Ms Maxwell, we are glad you are here with us.”

What? Like hello?  She does not know me from a bar of soap, so she couldn’t have meant “We are glad to have a candidate for the presidency here today.” She simply meant “Welcome, O Citizen.”  Try to imagine that happening at, say, a Family Law hearing in South Australia. (OMG, OMG, OMG.)

Family Law

The Family Law bill under consideration had to do with exempting the family home, from the assets to be demanded of a person who has not paid child support. Into the hot seat got a member of the legislature who is not on this committee. She endorsed the bill on the basis that when the payments get into such arrearage that a parent has to sell the house, the kids suffer.

Sorry, I didn’t see the bill but I believe it has to do with putting the non-payer in jail for contempt, as this speaker also said that the debtor, while in jail, may also lose his job.  One of the 16 committeemen said “and may lose driver’s license, fish and game license, and professional licenses.” (Fish and game is kind of sacred here.)

Then a retired judge on the panel, who is now in the legislature, argued that many non-payers use tricks to avoid reporting their assets. Then a lawyer got into the hot seat and argued, absolutely genuinely as far as I could tell, for the best interests of the child. Gave me a thrill, it did.

By the way, the yearly salary of these legislators, if I understand it correctly, is in the 3 figures.  Compared to Congressmen with a 6-figure salary. And civility has not died in the Granite State. There is a culture of courtesy and I reckon a new member would follow it just as naturally as certain other pollies follow the culture of corruption, the culture of closed-mindedness, and so forth. This is really an important matter.

The Opioid Crisis

When this session of the Judiciary Committee ended, another one started immediately. I guess God knew to send me to this Room 206, as the subject was the opioid crisis and asset forfeiture.

The first speaker was a Mum who found her 22-year-old opioid-addicted son in the basement two months ago, on Thanksgiving Day. — He was curled up in a ball and his skin looked purple. She knew how to give CPR but said it was too late, rigor mortis had set in.

She said he got started on softer drugs, then heroin.  The dealer of this item — I think it is oxycontin, a prescription pain killer — told the boy he could give him an incredible high, and offered the first sample free.

Mum said it was not the first but the second high that got her son hooked, and no matter how he tried, and no matter how ashamed he was of having hurt the family, he could not get off opioids.

A snappy looking young cop then took the stand. This is because the details of the bill have to do with the uses to which asset-forfeiture funds can be put. He, naturally, wanted the funds to stay in the control of police.

By the way, he was wearing a blackjack and a holstered gun. Probably half the people in the room were packing, concealed. As I said, when I entered the building, no restriction was put on me. This is New Hampshire, the freest state.

I might mention that an American guy told me years ago that when he went to collect his daughters from high school, he noticed a man sitting in a car, from whom some older kids were apparently buying drugs. The Dad was furious. (Thank you, Dad.) He approached the dealer and asked “Have you got something?” The dealer said “Yes.” The Dad said “Well I’ve got something for you.”  Let me leave it unsaid what happened next. Use your imagination.

States’ Rights

Since coming back to NH from Oz recently, I have not had the chance to see if its admirable resistance to federal power has been able to hold out.  I doubt that it has. But in the old days, I encountered the most defiant statement of states’ rights in a 2009 bill sponsored by Reps Itse, Ingbretson, Comerford and Denley.

The “founding father” on the right is Rep Dan Itse. The caption on the citizen’s tee shirt reads: “The Second Amendment: America’s original homeland security.”  Photo by Gislain Breton

The 2009 bill failed, but in 2018 Rep Itse tried again, now joined by Reps Hoell, Spillane, and Sullivan. Here is the text, abridged:

HOUSE RESOLUTION 20

A RESOLUTION affirming states’ powers based on the Constitution for the United States and the Constitution of New Hampshire.

Whereas, the intent of this resolution is to support the States in preserving and enforcing the Constitution of the United States of America ….

Whereas, the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 1, Article 7 declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto, [except those] by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled….

Therefore, the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States of America, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, all remaining powers for their own self-government; and

Whereas, the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) … goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution:

… Therefore, whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force [Yay!]

Whereas, the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, offenses against the law of nations, and slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever:

Therefore, all acts of Congress, the orders of the Executive or orders of the Judiciary of the United States of America which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory….

Therefore, all compulsory federal legislation that directs States to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires States to pass legislation or lose federal funding are prohibited …. [Wow. Wow. Wow.]

Therefore, no officer not authorized by the Constitution or by law or exercising a power not authorized by the Constitution, nor their subordinates shall have any authority in, or over the sovereign State of New Hampshire, nor any inhabitant or resident thereof….

Whereas, the Constitution … Article II delegates no legislative power to the Executive branch whatsoever.  Therefore, any Executive Order that pretends the power to create statutes controlling the States, their inhabitants or their residents is unauthoritive, void and of no force….

Whereas, treaties are ratified by the President and the Senate (representing the States) only, but laws are ratified by the House of Representatives (representing the people) and the Senate (representing the States) and the President, no treaty can be lawfully construed to restrict or amend existing law; and … no treaty can be lawfully construed to restrict or amend the Constitution ….

Whereas, the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress…. [Ahem]

Whereas, the Constitution for the United States of America Article I, Section 9 limits the power of Congress to suspend habeas corpus to cases of rebellion or invasion; and Whereas, the Constitution for the United States delegates no power to declare martial law except as is inherent in a declaration of war.

now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring:

that this State continues in the same esteem of [the other states’] friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union:  that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to those specified in their federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness, and prosperity of all the States:  that faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation:

that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government … is not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this State is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers …

but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy….

Status

That 2018 bill failed by a voice vote. No worries, it can be tried again by NH, and all states are free to lift it.  In fact, much of it was lifted from the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 that defied the Alien and Sedition Act — and which were penned mainly by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Finally, here’s my sales pitch for the Virginia Reso. It’s a video that was kindly filmed by Listen Up, New Hampshire, back in 2006 when my aspirations were slightly lower than for a bus ride on Air Force One: