Also on today’s menu:
And In Grafton County…
Trump Admits To Having Classified Documents
UN Team Arrives At Zaporizhzhia
Dr. David Strang, who pledged to resign from the Gunstock Area Commission once a new commissioner was appointed to ensure the panel would continue to be able to conduct business, never formally submitted his resignation, but at a special meeting of the Belknap County Delegation, the representatives in charge of appointing and removing commissioners took Strang “at his word” and approved his resignation, having appointed Denise Conroy to maintain the commission’s three-member quorum requirements. Now Strang is suing Commissioner Douglas Lambert for staging a “coup d’etat” — Lambert and Commissioner Jade Wood had called for Strang to resign in order to get Gunstock’s management team back on the job — and Strang wants to include the rest of the commission in the court action. As a result, on August 31, the commission unanimously agreed to hire Timothy Tapply, the attorney already representing Lambert, to defend all three commissioners should a judge grant Strang’s request to increase the number of plaintiffs.
Another lawsuit, brought by a citizen of Belknap County, is targeting the county delegation for holding what the plaintiff maintains was an illegal meeting on August 1 when 10 representatives called the emergency meeting at which they accepted Strang’s resignation. The chair of the delegation, Michael Sylvia, maintains that only he can call a meeting, and he declined to do so on short notice. Sylvia and several other Belknap County representatives did not attend the meeting.
The management team at Gunstock had walked out of a July 20 meeting of the Gunstock Area Commission, resigning in protest of the commission’s recent questioning of their activities. They had agreed to return if then-chair Peter Ness and vice-chair Strang would resign. Ness resigned on July 29 and Strang gave his pledge to resign on July 30. The team returned to work, just in time to see that the Christian youth festival SoulFest went on as scheduled, once the delegation dismissed Strang.
Despite the pending lawsuits, the Gunstock Area Commission was able to resume its normal work after months of acrimony sidelined the normal planning for the upcoming ski season.
And In Grafton County…
Former Grafton County Corrections Officer Max Fournier, 24, is facing four felony counts of sexual assault involving two female prisoners, and two related civil rights lawsuits have been filed against the county.
Fournier is being represented by defense attorney Mark Sisti of Concord.
The civil rights lawsuits, filed in Coos County Superior Court and Merrimack County Superior Court, also name Grafton County Corrections Superintendent Thomas Elliott, the Grafton County Department of Corrections, and the Grafton County Commissioners as defendants for allegedly failing to intervene.
Trump Admits To Having Classified Documents
Lawyers for Donald Trump claim that the Department of Justice is trampling on his rights, and demanded an independent review of materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate, but the former president undermined his position by posting on his TruthSocial network that he had kept the classified the documents in cartons.
“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet…” he wrote.
His lawyer, Alina Habba, made things worse by telling Fox News, “I’m somebody who has been in his office…. I do have firsthand knowledge…. I have never, ever, seen that…. That is not the way his office looks…. He has guests frequently there.” So Trump allowed guests into an office where there were classified documents.
UN Team Arrives At Zaporizhzhia
A team of United Nations experts have arrived at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to assess the risk of a radiation disaster from shelling near the site. Russia and Ukraine have been accusing each other of trying to sabotage the plant in south-central Ukraine, which is controlled by Russian forces but is operated by Ukrainian staff. Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said Russian shelling had forced the shutdown of one of only two operating reactors at the site, while Moscow said it had thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to seize the plant.
In shelling that delayed the UN team’s arrival at the plant, the Russian-installed governor of Zaporizhzhia district, Yevgeny Balitsky, blamed Ukraine, saying at least three people had been killed and five wounded, and the shelling destroyed three kindergartens and the House of Culture. Power to the town had been cut in the morning, he said.
Ukrainian officials have expressed hope that the arrival of the IAEA team will lead to the demilitarization of the plant. They say Russia has been using the plant as a shield to hit towns, knowing it will be hard for Kyiv’s forces to return fire.
Cafe Chatter
On ‘Making A Point’: Thanks for the quote. I am sure that you remember that some in Mass. wanted to succeed from the union after being the only state that voted for McGovern in the 1972 landslide for Nixon. (D.C, also voted for McGovern) turns out Mass and D,C, were prophetic. You might also remember that Nixon threatened to take the U.S. Constitution out of Boston Harbor. I feel like it’s become a game. There is no actual way to do this. And, the blithe indifference to how entangled each and every state is to federal and interstate laws are laughable. I thought we had strange and violent times during the Vietnam war protests. Nope.
On ‘A New World’: Having worked at the state school back in my early 20’s it’s difficult to know which buildings they would want to preserve. A lot of difficult situations there. Back then, as a Psych Aid, (with no actual training), I was handing out Thorazine, and other psychotropic drugs. When I started it was common to still use straight jackets and padded solitary rooms. As far as Gorbachev goes, it’s an amazing part of history. I was not a Regan fan, especially due to his administration throwing off a bunch of mentally ill disabled social security recipients, which then the courts put back on. Which was extremely painful for them, and a crazy time for people like myself who had to find them and get their benefits back. Breaking the unions, and other things. But, his administration did an amazing job working with Gorbachev to bring down the wall and help his citizens.
— Candace Skurnik
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