I made
the mistake of engaging a "birther" named Tracy who spammed
all the New Hampshire state reps. I sent him/her/him/them
what seemed
at the time to be a reasonable reply. As a result, I ended
up being
one of
the villains in a November 25 YouTube video produced by
someone/something called "KenyanBornObamAcorn" I also
inspired a second, very similar video, on November 29. The
material
at the end of this one, about my friend and former Election
Law
Committee chair, Jane Clemons seems to be derived from
remarks I made
in my
commentary on the earlier video.
Both
videos basically consist of a brief article read by a
robotic voice,
although there is some badly-recorded audio of a phone call
to the
New
Hampshire
Secretary of State's office:
The controversy, such as it is, over Jane Clemons's
appointment is overblown. She knew the Speaker planned to
appoint her
to the Ballot Law Commission before she resigned from the New
Hampshire House. But she wasn't formally added to the
Commission's
membership until the day after her September 13, 2011
resignation.
For more commentary and the text of some of the
documents referred to in the video see:
[December
6, 2011] I came up with a couple of what I thought were snarky
but
insightful retorts I could email back to the "Birthers." We
New Hampshire state reps do get a lot of email about this
issue,
though basically we just get a lot of similar messages from a
small
but passionate group of fanatics. Both my responses basically
tell
the fanatics to go bother officials in their own damn state. It
is
hard to imagine that anything we reps say to these people could
change their thinking— however, I have noticed that CDR
Charles Kerchner has started blogging about a "50
State Ballot Challenge Initiative"
The first one necessarily varies slightly from state to state,
and I have sent it to Pennsylvania, Louisiana and a few other
states:
From:Timothy
Horrigan [mailto:timothyhorrigan@mac.com] Sent:Saturday,
December 03, 2011 4:34 PM To:Sam
Sewell Subject:Re: FW:
Two Thumbs Up for your work and your integrity!
With all due
respect, if you vote in Florida rather than NH, I
would like to ask you to leave us NH state reps
alone. The ballot law commission has made its
decision, it is not going to be overridden, and the
ballots are already being printed. If you
don't like Obama, there are many other candidates
you can vote for.
You also have a legislature in Florida: go talk to
them about this issue.
Thanks,
Rep. Timothy Horrigan
The
second one also varies from state to state and is a little
more
technical. The delegate process, by the way, does works
pretty much
the same way in every state:
RE: Natural Born Citizen: The States Have the
Constitutional Power to Pass Legislation
Prescribing Presidential Ballot Access
Requirements Including Determining Whether a
Candidate Meets the Eligibility Requirements of
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5
With all due respect sir, you are from
Pennsylvania. Please leave NH alone. If
you think there is a real problem, please take this
matter up with your own state government in advance
of your own state's primary/cacucus.
NH's authorities have
made their decision and in fact the ballots have
already been printed up.
The NH Primary exists as
a vehicle for determining Presidential preferences
and for allocating delegates based on those
preferences. Although there is one other
serious candidate (John Wolfe, Jr.) virtually all
NH Democratic voters would prefer Obama over Mr.
Wolfe and the other candidates. The best and
only thing to do is to allow the process to proceed,
so that the Democrats can choose their
delegates. If for whatever reason President
Obama does not choose to (or is unable to) continue
running for re-election, those delegates can simply
vote for someone else who shares Obama's policies.
Thanks,
Rep. Timothy Horrigan
\
I
will add that I went to a meeting about the Democrats'
delegate
selection process in Concord on December 2, 2011. Every
quadrennium,
the convention gets less and less significant while the
delegate
selection process gets more and more complex. I ran very
unsuccessfully in 2008 as a potential John
Edwards delegate. I have not made a decision about
2012.
The
last time anything newsworthy happened at a Democratic
National
Convention was in 1980.
The Republicans made a little news in 1988, when the
George Bush the
Elder waited till he arrived in New
Orleans to pick Dan Quayle as his Vice President
nominee. (At
least, those were the last two times anything newsworthy
happened at
the convention itself.)
[December
12, 2011] I am surprised this didn't happen sooner, but one of
the
birthers has played "
the Hitler Card
" on us. CDR
Charles Kerchner has treated the NH state reps to the
following
email blast on Sunday, December 11, 2011:
"The
American people will never knowingly adopt
Socialism. But under the name of liberalism they
will adopt every fragment of the Socialist
program, until one day America will be a Socialist
nation without knowing how it happened." Ronald
Reagan alerting us to Norman Thomas' and the
socialist/progressive's long-term stealth agenda
to transform the USA from a constitutional
republic into a socialist form of government
Ronald Reagan did indeed cite this quote in a 1961
radio commentary. Reagan claimed that Norman
Thomas's quote dates back to 1927, but this has never
been verified. Be that as it may, 1927 and 1961 were
both a long time ago, and a lot of history has happened
in the meantime. Reagan has been dead since 2004, and
Thomas since 1964. Obama wasn't even born when Reagan
recorded his commentary.
Norman Thomas ran for President six times, running
every cycle between 1928 and 1948: his high water mark
was his second run in 1932, when he garnered 2.23% of
the national popular vote. (1932 was the year Herbert
Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
[December
6, 2011] I came up with a couple of what I thought were snarky
but
insightful retorts I could email back to the "Birthers." We
New Hampshire state reps do get a lot of email about this
issue,
though basically we just get a lot of similar messages from a
small
but passionate group of fanatics. Both my responses basically
tell
the fanatics to go bother officials in their own damn state. It
is
hard to imagine that anything we reps say to these people could
change their thinking— however, I have noticed that CDR
Charles Kerchner has started blogging about a "50
State Ballot Challenge Initiative"
