With attention turning toward the New Hampshire primary, it seems like an opportune time to share some of the activities of New Hampshire Republican state legislators, who must be drinking something like water tainted with LSD.
In New Hampshire, Republican state legislators seem to believe education is no longer something they should require. Via ThinkProgress:
Today the GOP-controlled Senate passed HB 542, which effectively ends compulsory education for New Hampshire students. Their House colleagues approved the measure earlier last year.
No, seriously. It ends compulsory education, and it's been passed by both houses of the Legislature? Really? Really. Here's what it says.
IX-c. Require school districts to adopt a policy allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable. Such policy shall include a provision requiring the parent or legal guardian to notify the school principal or designee in writing of the specific material to which they object and a provision requiring an alternative agreed upon by the school district and the parent, at the parent’s expense, sufficient to enable the child to meet state requirements for education in the particular subject area. The name of the parent or legal guardian and any specific reasons disclosed to school officials for the objection to the material shall not be public information and shall be excluded from access under RSA 91-A.
As worded, any parent could object to the entire curriculum and substitute whatever they wanted instead, with no measurement or assessment or accountability for that "alternative material" requirement, which means compulsory education would be dead, dead, dead.
But wait, there's more. Not content to rely on the state or United States Constitution as a guide for legislative frameworks, the New Hampshire GOP also has introduced a bill to require all legislation to be rooted in the Magna Carta. Via Concord Monitor:
As in other lines of work, lunchtime discussions among lawmakers at the State House often spur ideas. Sometimes those ideas become bills. And sometimes those bills seemed less strange over lunch.
House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.
"All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived," is the bill's one sentence.
I imagine they could have a field day with this article:
No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband.
Or this one:
No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she prefers to live without a husband; provided always that she gives security not to marry without our consent, if she holds of us, or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she holds of another.
Perhaps New Hampshire Republicans should quit drinking at lunch.
