GOP Brother From Another Planet (or perhaps Idaho):
N.H. Legislator Makes Conditional Offer to Quit
CONCORD, N.H. (Reuters) - A New Hampshire Republican lawmaker who said cop killers are heroes and drug laws should be repealed offered on Monday to resign from the state House of Representatives if his colleagues take up his agenda.
Tom Alciere told a news conference he would resign if legislators agreed to push for his proposals to repeal compulsory school attendance, replace public school with computer-based learning and repeal drinking age restrictions and drug control statutes.
``If a sufficient number of my fellow representatives go on the record pledging that they shall perform these simple parliamentary roles, then I will happily give up my fancy new license plates,'' Alciere said.
He added that if he did quit, he might run again in the special election that would be held to fill his vacated seat.
He has said his anti-police comments were meant to provoke a response and his Internet site suggests he sees some good coming from the uproar.
``One positive thing that will come out of this is a lively discussion of just how the government and its cops should be prevented from violating the rights of the people,'' he says on the Web Site, (http://www.tomalciere.com).
Alciere's views were laid out in hundreds of e-mail contributions to Internet discussion groups over the last several years.
One of them, titled ``A patriotic message'', reads: ``Speak highly of the cop killers, for they are America's only hope. If you kill a cop, the news is fleeting, your message broadcast on one evening's news if you live to make it to trial. But cop killers are there, and we can spread the glory of their deeds.''
``Don't kill anything that isn't a cop,'' another said, and a third suggested a funeral for a slain officer was an opportunity to kill even more officers.
``Hundreds more targets will be standing at attention in nice, neat lines outside the church a few days later, allowing for perhaps the most efficient use of America's most precious resource, its cop killers,'' the message said.
Alciere, who lives in Nashua, won his state House seat by 55 votes running as a Republican. In the past he was registered as a Democrat and many of his e-mails boast of his membership in the Libertarian Party.
Party officials from both sides of the aisle -- including New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, and the state's Republican Party Chairman Steven Duprey -- have called for Alciere to resign.
His controversial views became widely known only after his Nov. 7 election and a small New Hampshire newspaper connected him with the inflammatory views in the e-mails.
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