Prog Blogs, Orgs & Alumni
Bank Slate
Betsy Devine
birch paper
Democracy for NH
Granite State Progress
Mike Caulfield
Miscellany Blue
Pickup Patriots
Re-BlueNH
Still No Going Back
Susan the Bruce
New Hampshire Labor News
Chaz Proulx: Right Wing Watch
Politicos & Punditry
The Burt Cohen Show
John Gregg
Landrigan
Pindell
Primary Monitor
Scala
Schoenberg
Spiliotes
Campaigns, Et Alia.
NH-Gov
- Maggie Hassan
NH-01
- Andrew Hosmer
- Carol Shea-Porter
- Joanne Dowdell
NH-02
- Ann McLane Kuster
ActBlue Hampshire
NHDP
DCCC
DSCC
DNC
National
Balloon Juice
billmon
Congress Matters
DailyKos
Digby
Hold Fast
Eschaton
FiveThirtyEight
MyDD
Open Left
Senate Guru
Swing State Project
Talking Points Memo
50 State Blog Network
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Texas
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Because House Republican leadership can never get enough of making themselves look like vindictive and incompetent stumblebums, Legislative Administration Chairman and L'Affaire Brunelle High Inquisitor Paul Mirski decided, just as he did last week, that the optimal move was to toss the matter to a person outside the committee (that was charged by the House with dealing with the matter) to fiddle with for a while and drag out this imbecilic and hypocritical juvenile prank of a political hatchet job a bit longer.
Hatchet job? That might be giving them a little too much credit. It's more like a bad indie remake of "The Lizzie Borden Story," where Lizzie is drunk, blindfolded and armed with a herring.
In this case -- to mix film metaphors -- the guy who gets Leslie Nielsen's "stalling for time at the Oscars" role from The Naked Gun 33 1/3 is not the hapless committee researcher, with the apolitical role of furnishing nonpartisan historical information. It is Speaker O'Brien-appointed House Counsel Ed Mosca, who is being asked to take all the information that the researcher has provided (mostly petitions from the 1790s -- no, seriously) and tell the committee what it should do next, in 2011.
So the Committee on Legislative Administration, a full standing House committee charged with examining the matter and providing its considered opinion to the entire House, is now, courtesy of Chairman Paul Mirski, instructed to surrender its capacity for debate and judgment to a single unelected political appointee, who owes his position and salary to the erratic anger gnome -- the worst holder of the House gavel in living memory -- whose crony he is.
And with the sole honorable exception of Rep. David Kidder (R-New London), who's intelligent enough and been around long enough to recognize a baseless partisan attack when he sees it, and who is a sufficiently decent human being to refuse to take part in it (is that really so hard a thing to expect of every representative?), every Republican on the committee lined up behind the Honorable Paul Mirski -- and sure, he is an honorable man -- and voted for his stage-managed motion, as semi-competently mouthed by Rep. Marilinda Garcia. (Whose good looks, youth, femaleness and willingness to carry the hierarchy's water make her a preferred mask on its ugly, obsolescent and overwhelmingly male face. She has shown no evidence of having the zealously pro-ignorance ethos and monstrous personality of Sarah Palin, but make no mistake -- whatever prominence she is given will be for exactly the same reasons that Palin was given hers.)
What will Edward Mosca tell the committee to do? Well, that depends on whether petty preening potentate William O'Brien's hatred for the Democratic Party and all it represents outweighs his fear of the contempt that his tinfoil-hat crusade is fomenting, or whether he does a gut check, finds himself lacking, and bails on the whole process by telling Mosca to throw up some legal cover while he cuts and runs.
Watch next week's Brunelle work session to see if the Big O is capable of going all-out against an enemy. If Mosca comes back with plans for show trials, he is. If he comes back with "homina homina homina," not so much.
And that's this week's report on the laser-focus-on-jobs House, incorrigibly iniquitous inquisition edition.
Oh, and hey, here's just a little bonus about why you parents shouldn't be all frivolous about divorces, like you always are:
(Background: this is testimony on HB587, banning no-fault divorces for couples with minor children. [Surprise! O'Brien's gung ho for it, because you're such selfish and irresponsible people, so you'll "have to identify some cause to enter divorce, and not that you just decided you don't want to invest in the relationship any longer". Because, yeah, that's totally why people with kids go through the horrible gut-wrenching process of divorce these days, because they're all, "Meh, I don't feel like this anymore."] Y'all couples who just plain loathe the very sight of each other now get to flip a coin to see who gets to be accused of adultery, and who gets to perjure him/herself. Family values!)