The 2008 New Hampshire Liberty Forum, for me, was three action-packed, fun-filled days of meeting great people, hearing some of the best speakers anywhere, and partying hard late into the nights.

In the middle of all this I had the additional work of shooting videos and trying to get them on the Internet in some kind of reasonable timeframe. This I didn’t manage to accomplish. First, the Internet connection in my hotel room died, then my video editing software started acting strangely, (and it still is acting strangely) and to top it all off I shot so much video that I ran out of hard drive space, which meant I couldn’t render the videos from Saturday and Sunday until I got home where I left my external hard drive.

And still, when I got home I was so exhausted from running around and having fun that I simply fell asleep, meaning I missed even more fun when current.tv descended on Murphy’s Taproom last night. I really wanted to go to this, but I couldn’t have possibly stayed awake. I hear something is going on there tonight, which I will certainly attend. And then there’s Tuesday, the day of the primary here in New Hampshire, a long day of getting people to the polls and then a victory party with Ron Paul in the evening.

So the fun isn’t over yet, but I want to take a moment to recap the Liberty Forum. Thursday night I met up with a nice and attractive young woman and Ron Paul supporter from Texas who is planning to move up to New Hampshire for the Free State Project. We spent some time in my hotel room watching the Iowa caucus returns and heckling Barack Obama. I was up until around 3 in the morning. And that was a relatively quiet evening compared to the rest of the weekend.

That night there were literally dozens of people wandering around the hotel openly carrying their sidearms, something we freedom lovers like to do whenever possible. It appears that some of John McCain’s staff, who were also staying in the hotel, complained, and the hotel asked us not to openly carry them. After hearing that, some people disarmed themselves, but most, including myself, simply concealed their firearms.

I was so upset after hearing this that Friday morning I filmed one of the McCain staffers and immediately put that online, with my own complaint about McCain’s apparently not caring about our Second Amendment rights. From that point through the rest of the weekend, McCain’s staff avoided everyone with a camera that they could, and at one point on Saturday night physically shoved one videographer out of the elevator that McCain was in.

Friday I watched the opening ceremonies and then rushed through lunch so I could get back and upload the videos I’d already shot. Then I took a nap and managed to miss all the afternoon panel sessions. I’m kind of upset about this because I really wanted to hear Peter Christ from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and a couple of the other Friday afternoon sessions. But I woke up in time for the cocktail hour and the dinner and keynote address from Bernard von NotHaus. Excuse me, Captain Roughseas.

After his address, I took some people from the New York City Meetup group to Murphy’s Taproom where a few hundred Operation Live Free or Die activists were hanging out, and we had a few beers and enjoyed the place. Here I ran into David Weigel from Reason and clued him in on a Ron Paul event for undecided voters on Saturday which wasn’t on any published schedule. I think he blogged it afterward. Then it was back to the hotel room to once again post and upload some videos. I was up until 3 am again.

Saturday I yanked myself out of bed around 9 am and went back to work on more videos. It really takes forever to process these things, when you’ve shot hours of video and have to render them on a laptop. At home I can use a small render farm of three computers to speed things up, but on the road it takes longer.

I got to lunch at noon and managed to meet up with Peter Christ there and chatted with him. (I decided not to shoot any video at lunch; I wanted to concentrate on eating.)

Then it was off to see Barry Cooper, yet another person I really wanted to see. I don’t really do illegal drugs, but I recognize that drug prohibition has caused so many problems with our society that it must be stopped, and current efforts to stop the drug war are not doing enough, that we need some more aggressive approaches, and Barry Cooper certainly has some aggressive ideas. They might even work. Only time will tell.

I also got some short video of Bernard von NotHaus hallmarking copper and silver Liberty Dollar pieces, including three that I bought for myself. These things will sell on eBay if I ever really need the money.

After I shot those videos, it was back up to the hotel room to download it all off the camera. I did so much of that that I missed yet more afternoon sessions I would have liked to attend. I think next year I’ll bring someone with me to do all this grunt work so I can have fun.

Saturday night was John Sununu’s keynote speech. He wasn’t as warmly received as many other speakers, despite being considered the most libertarian Senator, and there was even a small protest outside the hotel. When he came in, I handed him my business card and the expression on his face when he read “Homeland Stupidity” was priceless. Regrettably, my video camera was off at the time. That would have been a YouTube moment.

Sununu made a short self-promotional speech and I’m not sure I really got my money’s worth on that one. Fortunately it was short, so I could leave and go watch the debates. While I filmed the whole thing, as I said, it really wasn’t worth watching; however, I have posted a short clip of a Ron Paul joke he made during the speech. Depending on your perspective, it’s either the high point or the low point of his speech.

I ran into Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache from CNET News.com again and took them to Murphy’s Taproom, where Ron Paul supporters were mixing it up with Barack Obama supporters, and from the idle talk I heard, were actually converting some of them into Ron Paul supporters. Declan bought me a couple of beers and expensed them, but then again I introduced him to several interesting people in the liberty movement here.

When I got back to the hotel, near 1 am, a party was in full swing in the lobby. We got thrown out and promptly retired to the rooms of Ian and Mark from Free Talk Live, one of which became the cigar smoking room, and the other of which became the room for smoking things other than cigars. Barry Cooper, who announced on Free Talk Live Saturday night that he is a marijuana smoker and that it saved his life, was in the latter room. Gardner Goldsmith dropped in and brought beer and wine with him. It’s no wonder everybody likes him. I finally got to bed at around 4 am.

Sunday morning I was up at 9 am yet again, and realized why I stopped smoking marijuana all those years ago. Combined with alcohol it gives me serious headaches. Or maybe that was all the cigar smoke rather than the other smoke. I can’t tell. Fortunately the headache was short-lived and after some coffee I was mostly functional again. I filmed the closing ceremonies, including Ron Paul. And just today remembered that my name was announced to win a free Bureaucrash T-shirt, but I was so tired I forgot to claim it.

Afterward I went off to find food. In the hotel bar I found Jason Osborne from Sakal CAI, Barry Cooper and some other people watching a football game while I ate and tried to work with some video.

Unfortunately at the time I didn’t realize I was low on hard drive space and that that’s why I couldn’t get anything to work right. Didn’t figure that one out until this morning.

All in all it was a hell of a time, and despite it being utterly exhausting I wish it had gone on longer. The people who believe in freedom so strongly that they’re even thinking about moving across the country to get more of it, let alone the people who have already done so, are some of the best people you’ll ever have the pleasure of meeting.