Anti-choice zealots already think it well within their right to murder doctors who perform abortions (Dr. Tiller, anyone?). As it turns out, at least one individual aspiring to elected office (law enforcement, no less!) also thinks it well within his right.
Meet Frank Szabo, Republican candidate for Sheriff of Hillsborough County in New Hampshire. Frank announced today that he will stop at nothing — even deadly force — to prevent abortions from occurring in his jurisdiction (even though abortions are legal). He said he will arrest doctors performing abortions (even though abortions are legal). He also said he will do what it takes to prevent a doctor from reforming abortion (even though abortions are legal).
Frank Szabo said that as sheriff, he would arrest any doctor performing elective or late-term abortions in his jurisdiction.
“There is a difference between legal and lawful,” Szabo said.
Szabo explained the difference by referring to the issue of slavery, which he said used to be legal but was never lawful under the Constitution. He said that even though elective abortions are legal in New Hampshire, with some restrictions, he doesn’t consider them lawful.
But Szabo may have inflamed the issue further when asked if he would use deadly force to prevent an abortion.
“I would respond specifically by saying that if someone is under threat, a full-grown human being, if they’re under threat, what should the sheriff do? Everything in their power to prevent them from being harmed,” he said.
When pressed about what he would do if he learned that a doctor was about to perform an elective abortion, Szabo replied he would do what it took to prevent that from happening.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Well, I would hope that it wouldn’t come to that, as with any situation where someone is in danger, but again, specifically talking about elective abortions and late-term abortions, that is an act that needs to be stopped.”
[read full post at ABLC]
Strandedvandal
Get your burkas cleaned and pressed ladies. The Evangeliban has plans for you.
MikeJ
Statements like this are how you identify wingnuts. This and white people talking about the difference between niggers and black people.
SatanicPanic
This is terrorism. Seriously, all this guy needs is a beard, a cave and a videocamera.
Lysana
Ah, yet another reminder that Southerners don’t have a hammerlock on that sort of reactionary conduct. Charming.
KG
@MikeJ: well, there is a difference between legal and lawful, or illegal and unlawful if you will… it’s the difference between criminal and civil liability. It’s not illegal to break a contract but it is unlawful. All this guy has to do is find someone that would have standing to enjoin an abortion and he’ll be fine.
Ok, the legal tightrope walking aside, there is a whole new level of stupid there. You know why? Because I know something else that’s unlawful, it’s called “acting under the color of law”. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say trying to stop an otherwise legal abortion is acting under the color of law and the sort of thing that results in an officer having to turn in his badge and gun to a scruffy commander with a beer gut and coffee stains on his shirt.
burnspbesq
@Lysana:
No, but they earn royalties when Yankees do it, cuz they own the trademark.
suzanne
Time to make another donation to Medical Students for Choice. And listen to Mudhoney’s “FDK”.
Hate isn’t a strong enough word.
Roger Moore
Because nothing shows your respect for life like threatening to kill people…
Chris
What the fuck is he talking about? Of course slavery was lawful under the constitution. Wrong, but perfectly lawful. Which should imply that the vaunted founding fathers may not have been perfect after all, but that’s another story.
redshirt
Live free or die, bitches.
The Dangerman
Can we just give them Alaska or Hawaii and have them secede? Has to be one of those states because the fence around any of the contiguous states would be really expensive (sorry, Canada, you’d be the buffer).
Davis X. Machina
@redshirt:
LiveTax free or die, bitches.Hey, we’re talking about New Hampshire….
Ash Can
@SatanicPanic: I followed the link back to ABL’s joint. He already has the beard.
I also followed the link back to the original news story. This shit-for-brains has no law enforcement experience and believes the sheriff is above the law, and the Republican state house speaker is calling on him to drop out of the race. We can only hope that the voters in this lowlife’s district do the right thing and send him back under the rock he crawled out from.
The Other Chuck
@The Dangerman: I hate neither Hawaiians nor the Alaskan wildlife enough to subject them to the establishment of New Wingnuttia in either place.
Keith
Yet another amateur Constitutional scholar. I wasn’t aware that it gave ultimate power to local sheriffs (I love the reference to common law).
Spaghetti Lee
New slogan: Live Free or Die, ‘Cept for the Womenfolk.
SatanicPanic
@Ash Can: I hope so. This kind of thing is dangerous.
The Other Chuck
Never mind that “common law” simply means “our legal system” (check the constitution sometime, it mentions it), what it means to wingnuts is “stuff that um should like be a law and shit and without any of them courts and judging and jurismydickshun and get me another beer and some skoal!”
Mark S.
@Ash Can:
I just read it too. The guy is fucking nuts.
So he plans to set up juries of like-minded idiots to prosecute anything he wants. Because it’s all there in the Constitution, or something.
? Martin
@Mark S.: I had no idea that Joe Arpaio had a twin.
SatanicPanic
@Keith:
The US Constitution is just the New New Testament of the Bible to these people. It’s a magic tome that means you are never wrong. The actual text is irrelevant.
Percysowner
Helping slaves escape to Canada didn’t involve murdering the slave owners. When slave revolts got violent, everyone expected the violent ones to be punished. John Brown may have been a martyr, and gotten a song written about him, but he paid the price for killing 5 people. Is the good sheriff ready to stand trial for murder and be executed for premeditated murder, or will he expect pats on the shoulder and asylum somewhere?
mai naem
@The Dangerman: Alaska but not Hawaii. Plus Alaska has the selling point of drill baybee drill.
Do conservatives drink a different kind of water then the rest of the country? Is there some teabagger only water that they all drink? WTF makes them total whackjobs? Do they require extra oxygen that they’re not getting? Did they all eat lead as children? Did they play around with mercury when they were kids? Was there a huge rash of natural births where there was difficulty coming down the canal and oxygen was cut off a few crucial seconds?
dance around in your bones
I do not think these words mean what he thinks they mean.
amk
why is america hunting for taliban in a distant land ? they are right there in their own backyard.
Roger Moore
@Percysowner:
I assume he expects the hearty congratulations of his constituents for protecting them from the abortionist menace. And if he can get elected on that platform, maybe he’s right to expect that. I don’t think he knows enough about the law to understand that won’t be enough to protect him, though.
PeakVT
Something’s really wrong in New Hampshire.
Gozer
@PeakVT: Damn…I’ve driven a lot around New England and NH always seemed pretty chill to me.
This asshole sounds like one of those sovereign citizen freaks. Why can’t they all just move to Somalia or Afghanistan or some other place where “every man is a king”.
Starlit
This is not terrorism. This is someone running for a position in public safety asserting that he will not, in fact, support the mission and role of the job.
Yutsano
@PeakVT: I think it’s the influence of the libertarians who tried to turn it into Galt’s Gulch.
Darkrose
But remember, calling them the American Taliban is uncivil!
The Other Chuck
@Percysowner: I’ll take “he cries and whines like a little bitch” for $1000, Alex.
Pen
@Starlit: Terrorism definition: “The use of violence or intimidation In persuit of political aims”
So how, exactly, is someone running for sheriff and claiming to have a license to kill to enforce their contra-legal beliefs not terrorism? Do we have to wait until he’s elected? Until he moves from threats to actually killing someone?
The guy’s not just some nobody spouting off, he’s a political candidate for a position that gives him a gun. Threatening to kill people for doing something that’s legal because he doesn’t agree? Yeah, I’d say that fits the bill.
Quaker in a Basement
“There is a difference between legal and lawful,” Szabo said.
Uh, no. Those are the same. He musta slept through the first week of the Barney Fife Academy.
Citizen Alan
@SatanicPanic:
I’ve made that point many times. These creatures understand the Constitution in exactly the same way they understand the Bible and Wealth of Nations. That is, not with any real understanding of the ideas contained within the document. Rather, they’re just to be waved around like a primative shaman would wave around a fetish bone to ward off the evil spirits of liberalism.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I sure as hell wouldn’t hesitate using “deadly force” to protect a patient and doctor from that jackhole.
Grumpy Code Monkey
You know, it’s not like abortion providers roam the countryside looking for innocent pregnancies to terminate; rather, it’s the pregnant women who seek their services. How does that play into this idiot’s fantasies? Is he going to arrest the women entering the clinic? Is he going to use deadly force on them?
Black Onion (formerly barely known as Blackfrancis)
I live in this guy’s district, I am looking forward to voting against him, and making sure others know how bat shit insane he is. His facebook page is a fever swamp, but the commenters are mostly hammering him. He’s also going on about Agenda 21, and any other crazypants teahadist nonsense he can get his hands on.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Frank-W-Szabo-For-Sheriff-of-Hillsborough-County/277456675653327
He’s a member of the Free State Project, too
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project
I should get some of his signs and put them on my car after altering them to say he’s shoot your doctor or something. Not feeling clever at the moment. Too nauseous from this guy.
Calouste
@Spaghetti Lee:
Well, the Womenfolk can’t the “Live” or “Free”, but they can still have the “Die”. Maybe even the “or”.
mdblanche
@PeakVT: New Hampshire is where Massachusetts dumps its wingnuts. I’ll give you one guess which county most of them wind up in.
Origuy
@Gozer:
Spot on. The bit about the county sheriff being the ultimate law is part of that nonsense.
TenguPhule
Screw you Dangerman, we don’t want them!
TenguPhule
Corrected for Accuracy.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
karl
Good heavens, don’t get your undies in a bundle; the guy’s running in the primary — any registered Repub can do that. He’s not in office now and surely won’t be nominated (that goes too far even for NH, I hope). Of course, if he wins then it’s a sign of the Apocalypse.
e.a.f.
I couldn’t stop laughing when I read this. Then I realized it wasn’t a joke, it was in the U.S.A. which has its own version of the Taliban. Just another crack pot republican. So this guy is going shoot drs. who preform abortions. This should be good. So he shoots the dr. That is murder. So in his mind its o.k. to kill living human beings but end a pregnancy. I never did get that but I guess those “closest” to god know all.
This candidate is right up there with Akin & his ilk.
Abortion is legal in the U.S.A. as it is in Canada, England, most first world countries. Now the U.S.A. has people running for law officer positions so they can shoot & kill people they dont’ agree with. I thought they only did that in China & sometimes Russia. Oh, well the U.S.A. hasn’t been a true free country for some time. It just keeps getting worse.
I know the U.S.A. has been building a wall between themselves & Mexico to keep people out of the U.S.A. I think we in canada might want to build a wall to keep out idiots like the guy running for sheriff & some of the other loonie republicans. Maybe it is just some genetic defect which causes people to become republicans & act this way.
Patricia Kayden
Don’t the Rightwingers already support killing doctors who perform abortions? Not sure if Szabo’s stance is that controversial to people on the other side of the aisle. There have already been incidents where doctors have been murdered/harassed by anti-choice zealots.
danielx
Well, I can see where his confusion over ‘legal’ and ‘lawful’ arises. There’s a lot of that going around these days. After all, there’s a big difference between unlawful acts that result in arrests and prosecution and unlawful acts that…don’t.
After all, if you rob a gas station of a couple of hundred bucks and get caught, you’ve committed an illegal act and will spend some time in a 6 x 10 room with concrete walls. If you set up and commit an elaborate (and illegal) fraud by creating a deal you know will fail and then bet on the failure (*cough*Goldman Sachs*cough*), you’ll walk because it’s “too difficult” for the Department of Justice to prosecute you – ‘we know they committed an illegal act but it’s just too hard, dammit’.
See how that works?
Matt McIrvin
@karl: The dude’s running in Nashua, which is one of the bluest places in NH. I could see him getting elected somewhere up north.
peggy
Hillsborough County in New Hampshire is a suburb of Boston. It’s cheap and Rt.3 and 93 scoot right down to the Hub.
This kook can parade, but he won’t win an election.
Gus
@The Dangerman: No, we can give them Arizona or Texas or something. The fence is worth it. Alaska and Hawaii are too beautiful to ruin.
sherparick
@mai naem: The sad thing is that 30% of the county will vote for this guy.
As for the slavery not being lawful under the Constitution, there is so much wrong there, starting with this clause, still in the document, in Article IV, Section 2.
“No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
AKA “The Fugitive Slave Clause,” which even Lincoln acknowledged before the Civil War obligated the Free States to deliver up escape slaves to their owners, as distasteful as that was.
Jay in Oregon
@Yutsano:
Yep, New Hampshire is the site of The Liberty Project.
Hmm… looks like this guy missed a memo or two…
BigHank53
To clear up a point for the non-natives: the county sheriff position in NH is a complete nothingburger of a job. He (or she) is responsible for the following: communications, serving summons & warrants, the county jail, and transporting prisoners. Every single town has its own police department, of the usual variable competence. But the county sheriffs have very little to do with everyday on-the-street law enforcement. Not only does he not have a keen grasp of the law, he doesn’t even know what’s in his future job description.
New Hampshire has low barriers for elections, too: I’m willing to bet all he had to do was walk over to the county courthouse, pay his $200, and shazam!–he’s a candidate for sheriff.
Jennifer
If I was running against this doofus, my campaign would revolve around asking voters if they wanted their taxes to go towards providing them with services, like roads, streetlights, water & sewer, etc., or if they wanted them to go to pay settlements for lawsuits against the county – because if this jerkoff gets elected, they’re going to end up paying a lot of those.
1badbaba3
Hmmmm, more macho shitheads using hypothetical violence in improbable situations to fluff themselves to climax. God, I love the GOP. VICTORY.
blackfrancis
Doesn’t anyone check the comments in moderation? sheesh.
Cassidy
@1badbaba3: I owldn’t stand that close. You might get some “freedom” on you.
Cassidy
@BigHank53: Sounds like Georgia.
dnfree
@Grumpy Code Monkey: That’s what I wondered. He is going to take action regarding elective abortions, but what is a non-elective abortion?
Grumpy Code Monkey
@dnfree:
Good question; wonder how familiar he is with the various complications related to pregnancy, and which of those complications result in termination.
If I had to guess, I’d wager his medical knowledge is at least as deep and vast as his understanding of the NH state constitution.
Cassidy
@Grumpy Code Monkey: KNOWLEDGE! WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ KNOWLEDGE!
kindness
It’s funny as New Hampshire’s motto is ‘Live Free or Die’. It’s on all their license plates.
Kathy in St. Louis
Upon whom is this guy going to use deadly force, the abortion provider or the woman seeking the abortion? Is he going to shoot the doctors and nurses working in a legal situation to provide requested care, or the woman? Just curious how this guy’s alleged mind works. So far, nada.
r€nato
I don’t necessarily have a problem with this point of view.
(yes, I have a problem with acting upon it)
If one is going to insist that abortion is murder, period, then of course one would have, at the very least, a moral duty to stop someone from committing a murder if it were within one’s power to do so. If you’re law enforcement, it would be part of your job to do so.
Furthermore, at the very least this position also implies that women who choose elective abortion should be charged with being an accessory to murder, if not manslaughter or murder itself.
Calling abortion ‘murder’ also ought to mean that there really shouldn’t be exceptions for rape or incest.
Those who want to call it murder really need to own the consequences of that position, instead of trying to make it seem more humane than such a drastic statement really is.
celticdragonchick
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Exactly. I have been wondering at what point does it become possible to actually defend yourself from tyrannical “conservatives” using the coercive power of the law to basically break the law.
Johannes
The “common law” as used in the Constitution denotes the body of judicial precedent adopted by the colonies, then the states prior to ratification. In ordinary legal usage, it means judicial decisions construing statutes or the Constitution, or filling the interstices where no enacted law governs.
It emphatically does not mean what some bohunk with a badge thinks is right, formal law be damned, “FREEDUMB!”
Matt McIrvin
New Hampshire is a strange place. I live three miles away on the Massachusetts side and have family members there, so it’s endlessly fascinating.
It’s been turning into a Democratic state in presidential elections, and there are a lot of liberals in Hillsborough County, but it’s also got this reserve of completely crazy libertarianism in its politics. The House of Representatives has about a zillion people in it who are essentially unpaid, so naturally it’s made up of politically amateur retirees who are constantly saying or doing bizarre things.
There was an enormous Republican sweep in the 2010 Tea Party wave, and one of the things they wanted to do was repeal the same-sex marriage law that the Democrats had voted in previously, but they couldn’t do it, and it was partly because a significant fraction of them were hardcore libertarians who wanted to repeal state-sponsored marriage for everyone.
By the way, the Nashuans who commute down to Boston do get socked when it comes to state taxes, because they have to pay NH property tax (NH gets much of its revenue this way, because of the lack of income or sales taxes) but they still have to pay Massachusetts income tax as well.
Ruckus
@mai naem:
Once again I have to say if it involves multiple choice about the wingnut/conservative position, then E. All of the above is the correct answer. Your question begs the answer that it has been a confluence of stupid for the last 40-60 yrs and it is swirling around the bowl right now and doing an Al Bundy.
Hungry Joe
It’s great fun to get overwrought about this guy, but he’s just a loon who filed papers or did whatever you have to do to get on the ballot for a primary in a small section of New Hampshire and came up with a new twist on “twisted.” I get as much of a kick as anybody by passing along stuff like this (e.g., what that wacko judge in Texas said about defending his county from Obama’s U.N. troops) to friends, but it’s a sideshow: The ones we have to worry about, and fight, are those who don’t appear to be insane or have room-temperature IQ’s but get in there and do the real damage.
Matt
@mai naem:
I suspect that the cognitive strain of believing that there’s an angry invisible man in the sky who’s terribly concerned about sexytime because a bunch of Iron Age shepherds said so via a two-millenia-old transcription of the results of a centuries-long game of telephone might contribute… ;)