The NH House Calendar is published weekly on the NH General Court website. It's a weekly update on what is coming up for the House: voting on legislation, committee meetings, fiscal notes, amendments, and notices. It's a serious publication about the business being conducted in the People's House.
When a voting session is coming up, the Calendar will list the bills that will be voted on, in the order in which they will be dealt with. In the listing of each bill is a report from the committee that the bill was assigned to, and their recommendation on whether the House should pass the bill or vote it "ITL" which means inexpedient to legislate. The report is a short summary from the majority viewpoint of the committee. There may also be a minority report written by those who disagreed with the majority. These reports are traditionally businesslike summaries of why the majority finds the bill to be worth supporting or worth rejecting. They are not, traditionally, a place for ideological hand wringing and hysteria. This year is not traditional.
I confess - I'm a nerd. I'm a geek that reads the House calendar. (The Senate, too). I'm a nerd that's been reading the calendar for about a decade, which is how I know that this year is different.
HB 441, requiring The Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be placed in all public schools. INEXPEDIENT TO LEGISLATE
Rep. Ralph Boehm for Education. This bill requires the school board or board of trustees of a charter school to place a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in all public schools and in every classroom where civics is taught. This is not needed, as the USA has our own Bill of Rights. If anything, the US Bill of Rights should be in our classrooms and not a declaration made by another governmental agency that includes non-democratic believing countries. In addition, NH public schools currently have the right and authority to make local policy regarding issues such as the United Declaration of Human Rights without the need for another statutory directive from Concord. Lastly the bill is yet another unfunded Part I, Article 28-a constitutional issue. Vote 17-3.
This is pretty straightforward. You can see what the intent of the bill is. The majority of the committee doesn't support the bill. In a normal year, the summary would consist of what the bill would require, and a sentence or two about why the majority doesn't support it. It would not, in a normal year, consist of a rant about the Bill of Rights and the UN. This is partisan bleating, and has no place in the House Calendar. And as you'll see, this is by no means the worst from the April 2 Calendar.
