Please bear with me: this diary will have you smiling, and I think you can agree that we could all use some good news now and then in the final dark years of BushWorld.
Last week at Blue Hampshire State Representative Jim Splaine graced us with a diary, Iraq: This Déjà Vu Is Insane, wherein he wrote:
But this war has to end. We don't need a target date to pull out. We just need to get out. We need to apologize for the attack, reduce our troop level to zero, get our brave soldiers home safely, claim the good we did by getting Saddam and his Republican Guard out of power, and work diplomatically with the Iraq government and regional interests to try to bring some stability to that part of the world. That makes more sense than what we're doing now.
While it was great to have a state house politician come to blog on our site, what happened next was really special. Kossack and Blue Hamster nhcollegedem commented on the diary with this:
Agreed, Rep. Splaine (4.00 / 3)
Many State Legislatures are taking a stand against escallation. I wrote about this here.
Will you take the lead by introducing a resolution in the General Court against escallation in Iraq?
Here's the best part. Jim Splaine did just that. And he got the idea from the blogger's comment above.
About a week ago I wrote a Blog post about Iraq in BlueHampshire, and one of the readers suggested putting in a resolution so we can get the New Hampshire Legislature on record opposing the "new" policy advocated by President George W. Bush.
The process at this point requires getting permission of the House Rules Committee to introduce a resolution, since the deadline for filing legislation for this current year was December 6th. If we don't have deadlines, we can't manage workload. Already about a thousand bills are in various stages of discussion at the State House.
It is unusual that the NH House takes time to discuss national issues, but this is an important issue, and with the New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary we have a voice unlike other states at affecting the focus of visiting candidates, not that the Democratic candidates, at least, don't know the importance of Iraq.
By a vote of 5-3, the House Rules Committee approved my request to be allowed to introduce a resolution. The vote was yesterday (Thursday - 2/22) and followed party lines.
Next week I will be working with Legislative Services, the branch of attorneys which draft bills for the House, to finalize the resolution for introduction. The initial draft, direct from the House of Representatives resolution discussed in Congress, follows:
Resolution Opposing President George W. Bush's Iraq Policy:
(1) The New Hampshire House of Representatives and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and
(2) The New Hampshire House of Representatives disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.
It will be cosponsored by NH State Representative Paul McEachern and myself.
He goes on to talk about how the resolution will continue to get refined through a hearing, and he's asking for suggestions in his diary on how to get this ball rolling. I encourage you to read his post in full, and, especially if you are from New Hampshire, or are familiar with similar statewide resolutions from other states, to leave a comment and maybe a thank you both to Splaine and nhcollegedem.
I don't know about you, but this just made my day. There may not be enough willing Senators federally to stop the filibustering Monkey Wrench Gregg set, but at least we can make our voices heard from state to state, and get some momentum going.