Monday evening, December 7, protestors supporting Navy SEALS accused of abusing prisoners gather in front of the North Church in Market Square, Portsmouth.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 — New Hampshire’s First Congressional District has been a travesty of representative government for at least 30 of the last 40 years. We’ll reserve judgment on Norm D’Amours (1975 – 1985) for the moment, but the men who held the seat for the other 30 years, Louis Wyman, Bob Smith, Bill Zeliff, John E. Sununu and Jeb Bradley, did nothing but carry water for the fat cats running this country.

As Ron Dellums put it years ago, we have a government “of the people, by the powerful, for the rich.”

Then, thanks to the hard work of a band of still-unsung volunteers and the lunatic excesses of the Bush administration, the district elected someone who vowed to represent “the rest of us.” And she’s been doing it. This being Real Life, no good deed goes unpunished.

This just in from Mark Vallone, in Epping, thanks to Bill Duncan:

There will be an article in the Union Leader tomorrow stating that the selectmen may vote to reconsider/retract an invitation it had approved to let Carol Shea Porter hold a town hall in Epping next month.

Long story short…. there are Navy seals who will have a trial by a court martial for charges relating to the capture of a very evil al-Quaeda operative that involved charges the suspect may have been assaulted while in custody in Iraq. Republican Rep Dan Burton has circulated a letter to other US Reps demanding the Defense Dept quash the charges. Carol did not sign the letter and so now her patriotism is being questioned.

Carol Shea Porter has strongly supported our veterans and soldiers. A member of the Armed Services Committee, she has brought increased medical care to NH veterans. She has sponsored legislation to stop the burning of toxic wastes in Iraq and Afghanistan that has caused widespread medical problems for returning veterans. She sponsored an amendment to hold defense contractors accountable for shoddy work such as poor wiring that has killed and injured US soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has voted to approve increases in the defense budget and has traveled to both Iraq and Afghanistan to visit soldiers. These are just a few of the things Carol has done on behalf of our men and women in the armed forces.

I think the selectmen will back down if we show up with a group to speak our case. How ridiculous that the selectmen want to interject themselves into Defense Department issues. How more ridiculous that, instead of looking forward to address their concerns directly to Carol Shea Porter, they want to tell her to go away. How childish! How irresponsible to want to deny Epping residents their Constitutional right to directly petition the government- face to face- to redress their grievances!