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Ken Weyler, point man for budget issues in the House and a key member of the O'Brienista junta, is arrogant and dangerous. That is the only possible conclusion after the events of this week.
On Thursday, Weyler introduced a bill, HB89, ordering the Attorney General to sue the federal government to stop the federal healthcare and cap-and-trade regulation.
In the hearing on the bill, Weyler gave no rationale for why his bill would be good for NH other than a single 16 word sentence about how he read somewhere the bill will save the state a billion dollars. This is a double lie. The first is that the bill will not save a billion dollars; the second is that he read this somewhere. He did not. He made this up out of whole cloth.
In response, the Attorney General told the committee hearing Weyler's bill that it is unconstitutional on its face. The legislature cannot order the Attorney General to start a law suit against the federal government, just as it can't order him to indict an individual simply because it wants him to. It is the job of the Attorney General to interpret the law and determine who has committed a crime. Weyler's bill is trying to change the Attorney General's office "from an independent department of the executive branch into a political rubber stamp for the legislative majority." The Attorney General said, "for important reasons that strike at the heart of our democracy, the Legislature does not have the right to tell the attorney general what state and federal laws he or she should enforce or challenge."
Fast forward one day, and Ken Weyler now says the Attorney General should be elected... by the legislature! Forget our constitution, which says in Article 2, Section 46 that the Attorney General is nominated and appointed by the governor and council. Since this Attorney General refused to bow to Weyler's demands this one time, we must now change the way our legal system has worked for the past 200 years. This really is stunning.
I wish Weyler's words were just an idle threat by a mean-spirited politico drunk on new found power. But they're backed up by the chair of the committee reviewing the bill, another insider in the gang that's taken over the House, who said:
This is a budgetary issue that will cost the state of New Hampshire millions of dollars for years to come. The attorney general has to look out for the people of New Hampshire; that's his job. If he can't do it, we will get somebody who can.
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What incredible hubris. People of NH, are you watching and listening?
