Free Republic

GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) on Sunday urged House Republicans to take up immigration reform, despite a “trust deficit” with President Obama. “Here’s the deal: The status quo is totally unacceptable,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer. “I think we should solve this. I think [Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)] can find a way forward. Certainly, the bill that came out of the Senate was not perfect, but it was a good solution to a hard problem,” Ayotte continued. “I think it’s an important issue to solve – not only for the country, but for the Republican...

President Obama on Wednesday sought to assuage anxious Democrats who are worried that ObamaCare’s troubled rollout is going to come back to haunt them during the 2014 midterm elections. “There’s a lot of pent-up frustration” among Senate Democrats who are facing voters next year, a party source familiar with the meeting told Fox News. A Democratic source told Fox News’ Ed Henry that some of the senators in the room floated a delay of up to one year in the law’s implementation – an idea the president rejected. The source said, however, that senators left the White House feeling that...

Graham Colson, an area resident for 15+ years who has been to Keene Pumpkin Fest for just as long, said the presence of snipers was unprecedented. He was able to take the above image of a two person sniper team on the rooftop of the Keene Apartments building overlooking Roxbury & Central Square earlier today. KPD Confirms: "The pictures you put on your website were police officers."

As Columbus Day weekend approaches and New England fall foliage reaches its peak, the U.S. Forest Service has decreed that 22 privately run campgrounds in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest will have to close because of the government shutdown. According to the Union Leader, while the campsites are situated on federally owned land, they are entirely run by a private company, which has a contract to operate the sites and which pays the federal government a cut of the fees it collects. That means the closure will not only prevent thousands of campers from using the facilities, it will...

<p>A small group of Republicans reportedly turned against Ted Cruz in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, attacking the outspoken Texas Senator for leading the charge against funding Obamacare which led to the government shutdown,  the New York Times reports.</p> <p>Cruz apparently did not offer further shutdown strategy and allegedly implied his colleagues were defeatists.</p>

Photo by Dave Workman A mother needed to use the Internet to order items required by a minor emergency on the road.   Naturally, she turned to Starbucks. Starbucks has become known nationally for its neutral policy on the carry of firearms.  If you are following the law, Starbucks is willing to take your money in exchange for their product.  Here is what happened in a New Hampshire Starbucks as written by the mother it happened to, Riana, on opencarry.org: Here I am, minding my own business, sitting with my husband and son in the Starbucks on Main Street....

The principal of Concord Carlisle High School is apologizing to parents about the school’s opening ceremony on Wednesday - the 12th anniversary of 9/11 - in which a Muslim poem was recited over the intercom but the Pledge of Allegiance was not. Principal Peter Badalament said in a statement to parents that the poem was meant to promote "cross-cultural understanding," and that the Pledge of Allegiance was not read because of a mixup with the student reader. The combination of the two has "outraged a small number of members of our community," Badalament said in an email to the Globe,...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says the there’s a new paradigm in politics, one defined by the rise of young leaders and grassroots change. The Texas Republican brought the crowd to its feet a handful of times Friday night as he hit conservative talking points about tax reform, economic recovery and his goal to defund the Affordable Care Act. About 100 people came to meet and listen to Cruz as he headlined a fundraiser for the N.H. State Republican Party held at the home of former ambassador Joseph Petrone and his wife, Augusta. Cruz’s stop in New Hampshire comes after two...

Recently, the Mayor of Dover NH, Dean Trefethen, has been asked to quit Mike Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors against Guns (as the mayor of Nashua did), but has doubled down on his membership. He takes pride in standing alongside some 30 mayors arrested for crimes from bribery to buggery and back again, and pride in trying to stop “the epidemic of gun violence,” which in New Hampshire as well as the rest of America refers mostly to bummed-out losers whacking themselves (something that happens everywhere in the world where bummed-out losers despair about their miserable lives), and to criminal losers being...

MANCHESTER -- A man shot and killed early Sunday morning at a Lake Avenue apartment had kicked open the door and rushed at the resident along with another intruder, authorities said Monday. Authorities said they have not charged the shooter, although an investigation continues. They would not identify the shooter Monday, but said the victim was Michael Larocque Jr., 24. An autopsy determined that Larocque died from a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen, prosecutors said. According to homicide prosecutors, the apartment resident told police he armed himself with a handgun when he heard unknown people on his porch....

Found this over on DefDist’s twitter feed, and it appears to be a Liberator printed in New Hampshire. The first of many, I’d bet.

Two very different pictures are emerging of what took place this weekend at a series of townhall meetings by Kelly Ayotte, the Republican senator from New Hampshire.Ayotte traveled back to the Granite State to meet with constituents, and among the topics that came up were her votes against new gun control measures. But local and national news media are giving sharply contrasting accounts of what really happened when the gun control issue surfaced.If you read about the meetings in the national press, you likely went away thinking the Republican lawmaker was overwhelmed by pro-gun control critics. You might think the opposite if...

Before Congress enacts any new gun control laws, the nation’s law enforcement officers and courts should better enforce the regulations they have on the books now, according to U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte. In a meeting with the Telegraph editorial board, New Hampshire’s junior senator took aim last month at the national background check system, which does not go far enough prosecuting those who illegally try to obtain weapons, she said. "Of approximately 80,000 in 2012 that were denied (a gun) because of a background check … only 44 people were prosecuted for that," Ayotte said during the February 19 meeting.

A New Hampshire police group that plans to raffle 31 guns in May received this offer from an alarmed critic of the giveaway: He would raise $30,000, buy all the guns, and bring them to his local police station to be destroyed. Another critic floated an idea to have the guns melted, turned into jewelry, and sold to help victims of gun violence. But the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police plans to proceed with the raffle, citing fears of a lawsuit from disgruntled ticket-buyers.

CONCORD – Flags, signs and guns filled the Statehouse steps Thursday afternoon as hundreds of residents from across New Hampshire gathered to rally for gun rights. In the wake of last month’s shooting in Newtown, Conn., politics have distracted lawmakers at the state and federal level, helping them to forget about individual liberties and constitutional freedoms, speakers and supporters argued throughout the event. But, with the right to bear arms in jeopardy, gun advocates vowed to remind legislators of their responsibility to the Constitution. “All of us know we are at a crossroads in our country,” event organizer Jack Kimball,...

What do you do when you are an assistant professor at a public university and you’ve been caught red-handed retweeting a tweet advocating murder? If you’re University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, you delete your entire Twitter account ... We’re glad he won’t be advocating violence on Twitter any longer. Hopefully, he will use the freed-up time to seek help from a mental health professional. * * * Update: What exactly is Loomis hiding? Before he deleted his Twitter account, we managed to make note of a few of his angrier tweets

At a community meeting in Bedford Thursday, a resident asked the police chief under what circumstances a resident could use lethal force against a burglar. "Say you're asleep, you hear a noise, glass breaks, you hear somebody in there, you know they don't belong," said the resident, who didn't provide his name. "Are you expected to ascertain whether they're armed if you have the ability to take them out legally?" Joking that he's not a lawyer but has been accused of being one, Chief John Bryfonski sidestepped the question, saying it's inappropriate for him to provide a legal opinion. "The...

NASHUA — Following a storm of controversy in light of her criminal background, the first openly transgendered person elected to the New Hampshire House will resign her post. “I didn't want to have to do this,” Rep.-elect Stacie Marie Laughton, D-Nashua, said. “There's been a lot of people that have said, 'Stay strong, keep your head up, stay in it.'” “I'm super disappointed because I was looking forward to this more than anything. It's my lifelong dream to serve my community, and what better place to do it than the city that I was born and raised in.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — There's a new superpower growing in the Great Plains and the South, where bulging Republican majorities in state capitols could dramatically cut taxes and change public education with barely a whimper of resistance from Democrats. Contrast that with California, where voters have given Democrats a new dominance that could allow them to raise taxes and embrace same-sex marriage without regard to Republican objections. If you thought the presidential election revealed the nation's political rifts, consider the outcomes in state legislatures. The vote also created a broader tier of powerful one-party governments that can act with...

Hidden in among all the recent election news was the defeat of NH State Representative Jenn Coffey (R-Merrimack) who had led the successful fight to reform New Hampshire's knife laws. Coffey, the winner of Blade Magazine's 2011 Publisher's Award, had sponsored the bill that removed penalties for both possession and selling switchblades, dirks, daggers, and stilettos. Her bill which passed and was signed by the governor of New Hampshire changed the emphasis from the tool to the crime. In addition, Coffey is the National Legislative Director for the Second Amendment Sisters. She has written a book, Knives, Lipstick, and Liberty...