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But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

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Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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You are here: Home / Politics / Glibertarianism / Open Thread: I Blame the Free State Project

Open Thread: I Blame the Free State Project

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Libertarians, still not ready for prime time, or grown-up real-world lawmaking. Doktor Zoom at Wonkette reports:

New Hampshire state Rep. Mark Warden (R-Fuck This Guy), was one of four members of an NH House committee to vote in favor of reducing the penalty for some cases of simple assault from a misdemeanor to a “violation-level offense.” Speaking in support of the reduced penalty, Warden explained it’s merely a matter of accommodating different lifestyle choices, you know, to be considerate of the wife-beaters.

“Some people could make the argument that a lot of people like being in abusive relationships,” Warden said during a meeting held by the committee. “It’s a love-hate relationship. It’s very, very common for people to stick around with somebody they love who also abuses him or her.”

He continued, “Is the solution to those kind of dysfunctional relationships going to be more government, another law? I tend to say no. People are always free to leave.”

Because, you know, free choice, right? Rep. Warden is a big-time libertarian who has proposed legalizing pot and has voted to broaden the state’s “stand your ground” law to allow people to shoot others wherever they feel threatened. So it makes sense that he doesn’t see why the state should protect people who are getting beaten by their spouses. After all, if women want protection, they could choose to get a gun and actually do something for themselves, right?…

Like it wasn’t embarrassing enough for us Massholes to live next to the “Live Free or Die Trying” state before the “activists” showed up. Why couldn’t the Yalie who invented the FSP just move to Idaho, like all the other paranoid social throwbacks with grand empire-building ambitions??

Reader Interactions

53Comments

  2. 2.

    ? Martin

    Hey, who’s to say those kids in Connecticut didn’t want to be shot in the head with an assault rifle? Maybe they simply had been denied the opportunity by big government to experience that?

  3. 3.

    maya

    Since it’s Austerity Eve shouldn’t everyone be out trick-or-treating dressed up as your favorite congress critter?

  4. 4.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    “Some people could make the argument that a lot of people like being in abusive relationships,” Warden said during a meeting held by the committee. “It’s a love-hate relationship. It’s very, very common for people to stick around with somebody they love who also abuses him or her.”

    I’m in one with the Republicans. I keep asking them to stop or leave and they won’t do either.

    Perhaps it’s time to “stand my ground”.

  7. 7.

    aimai

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:

    Once again they absolutely don’t get the idea of consent. The law doesn’t apply to BDSM couples it applies to people where one member presses charges against the other. For fuck’s sake this is like arguing that its not theft to take money from a cash register because sometimes the shop owner seems willing to give money from the cash register in the form of change.

  8. 8.

    Calouste

    @LAC:

    It’s a prerequisite.

    If someone had the slightest understanding of how the real world works and how real humans behave on a day-to-day basis, they wouldn’t be a libertarian.

  9. 9.

    MattF

    Rep. Warner has offered an apology ‘to those whom may have been offended.’ Now he owes two apologies.

  10. 10.

    the Conster

    @Calouste:

    That’s a perfect description of libertarianism – behavior which defies all human nature because the practical solution is against the ideology.

  11. 11.

    Ben Franklin

    In the lengthiest statement to a military tribunal Manning has provided since his nearly three-year long ordeal began, Manning, 25, said WikiLeaks did not encourage him to provide the organization with any information. But he also sketched out his emotionally fraught online interactions with his WikiLeaks handler, a man he knew as “Ox” or “Nathaniel” over Internet Relay Chat and Jabber, and whom the government maintains was Julian Assange.

    Manning’s motivations in leaking, he said, was to “spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general,” he said, and “cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.” Manning said he was in sound mind when he leaked, and so deliberately, regardless of the legal circumstances.

    Remarkably, Manning said he first tried to take his information to the Washington Post, the New York Times and Politico, before contacting WikiLeaks.

    http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/bradley-manning

  13. 13.

    MikeJ

    @Randy P: Replace who[m] with he or him. If “he” is correct, use who. If hiM, use whoM.

    Whom is incorrect. He owes three apologies now.

  14. 14.

    jl

    The guy obviously gets some intense kicks from humiliating himself in public. So, he might just be expressing his sincere point of view.

    I would recommend at least some tolerance for other people’s tastes, no matter now kinky they may seem to some of us.

    /snark tag, if it is needed.

  15. 15.

    Wag

    voted to broaden the state’s “stand your ground” law to allow people to shoot others wherever they feel threatened

    Does this mean a woman can shoot an abusive husband as he walks in the door after spending the evening at the bar and coming home ready to hit her? or does he have to raise his fists first?

  16. 16.

    Zifnab

    Rep. Warden is a big-time libertarian who has proposed legalizing pot and has voted to broaden the state’s “stand your ground” law to allow people to shoot others wherever they feel threatened.

    :-| Libertarians. Making prohibition look reasonable since 1919.

  17. 17.

    Zifnab

    @Wag: I’m sure Rep Warden would have no problem with the wife blowing her husband’s brains out. He’d have no problem with the husband blowing his wife’s brains out. Really, they could both die in a Mexican stand-off for all he cares. Cause at least they’d die Freeeeeeeeee!

    :-p

  18. 18.

    WereBear

    @Zifnab: Nope. In Florida a woman was recently sentenced to 20 years for shooting a wall instead of her abusive husband.

    Of course, she did two things wrong. She was a woman, who was African American.

  19. 19.

    Mike E

    @the Conster: That’s a perfect description of libertarianism – behavior which defies all human nature because the practical solution is against the ideology.I me mine me my me I my me I mine.

    Fixt’d

  20. 20.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    Does this mean a woman can shoot an abusive husband as he walks in the door after spending the evening at the bar and coming home ready to hit her? or does he have to raise his fists first?

    Neither, she’s a woman and subject to her husband’s every whim. Libertarian principles apply only to men.

  22. 22.

    Chris

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:

    I’d say it personifies the American relationship with the GOP in the last few decades. Even when the GOP shits the bed so thoroughly that the voters are finally persuaded to hold their nose and vote Dem (1976, 1992, 2008), they almost immediately recoil in horror at the realization that they voted for Dems, and go right back to the Republicans (1980, 1994, 2010) promising them that this time it’ll be different.

  24. 24.

    ranchandsyrup

    I just got this in an email from a Bobo-lovin’ embarrassed republican type friend from college who likes to use me as his libtard sounding board about the Brave Sir Bob Woodward:

    When I first read the op ed a week ago I thought to myself that it was a pretty big thing for someone in the Post, especially someone of Woodward’s pedigree, to be calling the president out, in that (I know we disagree about this) what I feel is a liberal mainstream press, sans FOX, Huffington, etc.., goes pretty hard after GOPers, which they should, but kind of leaves the pres alone. I was happy someone was calling him out on trying to say it wasn’t his idea. Rose got a cabinet member to admit last week and finally they have copped to it. But that is beside the point really, my point is that I think the one thing the Obama admin has always had over the past presidencies and GOPers in congress is not looking like they are on their heels ever. This feels like they are on their heels, seems like each day it gets closer to the cuts more mistakes come out, Ed secretaries misleading comments etc….. I don’t think it is a good thing for any of us, the last thing we need now is an emboldened GOP and them thinking that somehow this proves they are right.

    fucking hell. It really is always projection.

  26. 26.

    SFAW

    “Move to Idaho”? Fuck that, send him to:

    A) Somalia
    B) Democratic Republic of Congo
    C) Certain areas of Mexico, dressed like la policia
    D) Brighton Beach, wearing a big sign saying “Russians SUCK”

    and so on.

    One wonders when NH changed its motto from “Live Free or Die” to “Home to the Stupidest Motherfuckers on Earth”

  29. 29.

    Hill Dweller

    @MattF: I refuse to go over there, but someone on the twitter machine said even Politico threw Woodward under the bus today.

  31. 31.

    Mike E

    @the Conster: Truly a post-Beatles track, with John AWOL, but before Paul pulled the plug. )-:

    George’s dam would soon after burst forth with the triple album All Things Must Pass. Don’t look back!

  35. 35.

    Calouste

    @Mike E:

    That’s a perfect description of libertarianism – behavior which defies all human nature because the practical solution is against the ideology.I me mine me my me I my me I mine. F U

    Fixt’d Completed.

    And as Chris points out above, of course to libertarians (a vast majority of whom are middle class or richer white males), inequality is a feature, nah, a necessity, not a bug.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @ranchandsyrup:

    I don’t think it is a good thing for any of us, the last thing we need now is an emboldened GOP and them thinking that somehow this proves they are right.

    LOL. He thinks the GOP cares about proof.

  40. 40.

    JoyfulA

    One of my two libertarian friends was very involved in setting up the Free State Project, choosing the state, getting people to vow to move there, etc., but she’s still in Atlanta, and I’m pretty sure she’ll stay there, tending to feral and maltreated cats.

    The only people I’ve known to move to New Hampshire recently, by contrast, are a couple who claim to be Socialists and their children. They lived in Atlanta, too, but he got a job offer he couldn’t turn down. They love living there and have just bought a house. We want to drive up to visit them one of these days.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Someone needs to beat the shit out of this asshole.

    Then we’ll find out, exactly, how trivial assault and battery can be.

  42. 42.

    srv

    Noonan has had it with this nihilist president:

    But here’s what seems really new. Past presidents, certainly since Ronald Reagan, went over the heads of the media to win over the people, to get them to contact Congress and push Congress to deal. Fine, and fair enough. But Mr. Obama goes to the people to get them to enhance his position by hating Republicans. He’s playing only to the polls, not to Congress, not to get the other side to the bargaining table. He doesn’t even like the bargaining table. He doesn’t like bargaining.

    Where does that get us? We are in new territory. There is a strange kind of nihilism in the president’s approach, it’s a closed, self-referential loop. And it’s guaranteed to keep agreement from happening.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @srv:

    But here’s what seems really new. Past presidents, certainly since Ronald Reagan, went over the heads of the media to win over the people, to get them to contact Congress and push Congress to deal. Fine, and fair enough. But Mr. Obama goes to the people to get them to enhance his position by hating Republicans. He’s playing only to the polls, not to Congress, not to get the other side to the bargaining table. He doesn’t even like the bargaining table. He doesn’t like bargaining.

    Where does that get us? We are in new territory. There is a strange kind of nihilism in the president’s approach, it’s a closed, self-referential loop. And it’s guaranteed to keep agreement from happening. The United States has a black Democrat as president and he’s beating the Republicans.

    FTFY

  47. 47.

    JPL

    @srv: Thank you so much for the link. The comments were great also.
    I loved this one
    As attorney for the adopting parents, I was honored to be before such an experienced, wise, no-nonsense, and caring judge. Representing these wonderful parents will forever be the proudest moment of my legal career. But that pride pales in comparison to the pride I feel as their sister, sister-in-law, and aunt.
    from another comment ferklempt

  48. 48.

    mclaren

    What’s interesting about this one is that the police and jurists and D.A.s have been doing this for nearly half a century. It’s called “juking the stats.” If you want crime stats to drop for the Mayor’s/D.A.’s/Governor’s re-election campaign, why, you just reclassify felony rapes as misdemeanor assaults, reclassify assaults and disorderly conduct, und so weiter.

    It’s an old old scam. The novelty here is that this bozo is trying to pass a law to make it legal.

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    When these stories appear, it’s always good to point out that the NH House of Representatives is really unusual for a state legislative body: it’s got 400 members, each of whom represents a little over 3,000 people on average, and they’re political amateurs, paid a stipend of $200 every two years. It’s a recipe for bizarre antics that get in the papers.

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    Just today I made the mistake of saying it was “Live Free and Die”.
    Anyway that’s the way I remember it. probably from spending a few too many days there.

  51. 51.

    Jack

    Leave it to a Masshole to not understand that the General Court exists to alienate these glibertarians into uselessness. We don’t have a professional legislature, and that’s a good thing, stupid libertarian carpetbaggers notwithstanding.

    And the stupidest motherfuckers on the planet clearly live in Saugus.

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