New Hampshire Impeachment Update: Resolution of Ineptitude

House Resolution 24 crept into the chamber of the NH House of Representative, and nothing was accomplished. The NH House, minus a few Republicans who chose to leave the floor, voted 227-95, to table the resolution. Tabling the resolution means that it is not dead, and could be resurrected, as political pandering requires.

WMUR News Report: Politics of Dancing

In a week in which we learned that the NH deficit is approaching $300 millions dollars, the best the Democratic leadership could do was take no action on a resolution they do not support. But what would you expect, House Speaker Terie Norelli is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

If Norelli allows the resolution to be voted on, and it passes, she exposes the Class of 2006 as a partisan group of malcontents. If it doesn’t pass, she risk alienating the fringe elements that make up the Democratic Party. Both outcomes playing right into the hands of the Republican Party. If HR24 had passed it was facing an uphill battle just to make it out of NH, let alone appear on the floor of the US Representative. The Constitutionality of the resolution would have been challenged, and it would have lost.

The House Leadership is only fanning the fire of this lunacy more by allowing HR24 to hang around. As long as HR24 is still alive, every ill-informed “impeachment nut” will cling to their delusions that HR24 is the “Holy Grail” that will help finally rid the world of the evil President Bush.

But the Republicans aren't above petty politics either. NH Rep. Al Baldasaro, Londonderry, introduced an equally incompetent piece of legislation in retaliation to HR24. Mr. Baldasaro's amendment called on the U.S. House to expel Democratic U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter from Congress. Mr. Baldasaro was just as wrong as Rep. Hall, (along with their supporters) for having turned the floor of the NH House into a three-ringed circus, featuring Terie Norelli as its ring master.

Petty squabbling and politically charged legislation is no way to run a government. The ignorance of those that claim to represent the people far outweighed their good intentions.