After reviewing the oath of office taken by all members of the New Hampshire General Court at the time of their swearing-in, it has come to our attention that several of the members of the House, all part of your caucus, are in violation of those oaths.

You probably don’t need a reminder, but just in case, the oath says: “I … do solemnly swear, that I will bear faith and true allegiance to the United States of America and the state of New Hampshire, and will support the constitution thereof. So help me God.” Note in particular the phrase, “… that I will bear faith and true allegiance to the United States of America …”

It appears that the following members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives are in violation of that oath:

They are the sponsors of a proposed constitutional amendment that reads: “the state peaceably declares independence from the United States and proceeds as a sovereign nation.”

In other words, these seven elected members of your legislative body are not bearing “faith and true allegiance to the United States of America,” in violation of that oath.

Many of them are on the record about their plan to undermine the United States of America, including Representative Sylvia, who in an online chat declared, “There are a lot of people very unhappy with D.C.,” he said. “The federal government has totally perverted the ends of our desired government, and it’s clearly time to make a change, and simply removing the current configuration of the United States of America is apparently a good way to go.”

We note that all of these men are members of your caucus, and it would probably be more than an exercise for you and other members of your leadership to remind them of their oaths, and of the declaration made by the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who in a 2006 letter wrote: “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede.”

‘No mask’ to masks

A lot was made of Guv Sununu’s recent announcement that he wouldn’t be running in ’22 against Maggie Hassan for her US Senate seat. Particular attention was given to his implication on CNN that he didn’t say “no” to the idea of running for prez in ’24.

Well, let the record show that the guv has a lot of learning curve to make up if he’s even thinking about a WH gig.

Submitted for your inspection: his 12/12 appearance on CBS’ Sunday gabfest “Face the Nation.”

The guv was his usual loosey-goosey self with host Margaret Brennan — giving the kind of seemingly offthe-cuff sayings and answers he likes to toss around when you see him on Channel 9 or hear him on Howie Carr’s radio shtick. But, considering the national audience and that most everybody knows a lot less about the NH guv than the peeps of NH, at times the appearance became almost cringeworthy.

In particular, was his exchange with MB about his stance on reissuing a mask mandate — which was a perfectly reasonable question, considering that NH was (and still is) first-in-the-nation for Covid infections.

After insisting that “almost no state has mask mandates right now” (Note: If 9, or 18% of states is “almost no,” an arithmetic lesson might be in order for the guv too), he added a mandate would mean that “what you’re really telling folks is thank you for making the sacrifice and getting the vaccine, getting the boosters, doing the right thing and you’re still in the penalty box.” Then he said, “And the fact of the matter is Covid isn’t going away anytime soon.”

So Covid ain’t goin’ nowhere, and the guv of a state with almost 1.4m people is throwing in the towel on taking what almost every public health official in the country says is a no-brainer: put on a mask, cut down on the spread of Covid.

Holy moly. But here’s the part when your head might actually spin like a ventriloquist dummy’s after trying to figure out the message. After all the gabbing about how and why he won’t impose a mask mandate, the guv then says wearing a mask is “incredibly important,” and then quickly adds, “but when you look at all these different mandates that you can or cannot put in place, (there) is always a downside as well.”

MAKING THE ROUNDS

Consider yourself warned. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, fresh off a visit to the Cheshire County GOP, as well as a verbal beatdown on Capitol Hill by NH’s Jeanne Shaheen over Russia, is on the record after the trip: “They can consider me on my way back to the Granite State in 2022.” (And by 2022, he means 2024 too.)

Yes, it has come to this: certain members of the House are dusting off loyalty oaths for teachers. And you aren’t in a time warp — we are two weeks away from 2022, not 1952.

Newly confirmed to the post, Energy Commish Jared Chicoine sure has his hands full trying to, first, find people to fill a raft of vacancies, and, two, figure out what to do about the PUC.

Just what the NH Dems need, yet another of the quadrennial hand-wringing over the fate of the prez primary, which only (as usual) takes their eyes off the actual goal of getting their candidates for state offices elected.