Salome

In 1908, wearing little more than a jewelled breastplate and a transparent skirt, the Canadian dancer Maud Allan stormed the fortress of British proprieties with her solo work, The Vision of Salomé. Allan danced an audacious choreography of desire, her body "swaying like a witch, twisting like a snake, and panting with [a hypnotic] passion", according to one dazed viewer. But while several theatres outside London barred Allan's performance as indecent, to her legions of women admirers, she was an inspiration. Margot Asquith, wife of the Liberal PM, was among those who saw Allan's dancing as a liberating expression of female sexuality.

State Representative Stella Tremblay forwarded one of the hate emails she's received this week to every member of the New Hampshire Legislature. The subject line on the email, written in response to her claim that the Boston Marathon bombings were a Blacl Ops terrorist attack by the U.S. government, read "you are a (expletive) idiot." 

To Tremblay, the email was "pure Saul Alinsky Tactics in action." But it might as well have come from her fellow Republicans, who have expressed embarrassment and called for an apology. Tremblay says none will be coming.

The frustration Republicans are feeling now has been felt on both sides of the aisle in New Hampshire in recent years. And it prompts the question: how does one who even remotely peddles in conspiracy theory get elected to the New Hampshire House of Representative?

"It happens with a surprising degree of regularity," said Dean Spiliotes, civic scholar at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H. "A lot of these people just fly under the radar."

Political observers like Spiliotes attribute it to New Hampshire's citizen Legislature, in which members receive $200 a biennium and are elected, or re-elected, every two years. By one estimate, a third of the 400-member House is new every biennium.