A real live angel

 

Ouch

I don't know the details ('cause I'm not reading it), but at the very least, this is a bad look.

Back to the dark ages in Tennessee

 

Going for the libraries

Resisting fascism in the courts

 

MAGA

 

It's all on the chopping block in Trump's fever dream

 

Sign the petition.  And write/call your representatives.

Testing the limits in Arkansas

[O]n Christmas Eve, a federal judge struck down a law that put booksellers and librarians at risk of imprisonment if they provided minors with “harmful” material. That includes themes about race and being LGBTQ. The Judge wrote that the law tried to deputize “librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship” and that if their decision were made in the shadow of “fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest.”

Holly Dickson, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, called the law “an attempt to ‘thought police,’” and said the Judge’s decision was a “victory over totalitarianism” and “a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers and readers who refused to bow to intimidation.” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “Schools and libraries shouldn’t put obscene material in front of our kids.”

It’s likely we will see an appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals from the state as early as this week.

  Joyce Vance

YWA PSA

Please stop electing Republicans

She also signed a law weakening child labor laws.  Those kids probably don't have time to read.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fascism on the march

Huge win

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This is your GOP - Part 2

These fuckers are out of their minds and taking the country down with them.

Missouri House Republicans voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries, in a proposed $45.6 billion state budget that will soon move to a vote in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

The Missouri House debated for over eight hours last Tuesday on a budget that is roughly $2 billion less than the one Gov. Mike Parson (R) proposed last January, cutting not only the $4.5 million Parson had slated for libraries, but also costs for diversity initiatives, childcare and pre-kindergarten programs.

  Heartland Signal

GOP: the party that really cares about kids.

Missouri House budget committee leader Rep. Cody Smith (R-Carthage) proposed cutting library aid due to a recent lawsuit filed against the state last February.

The lawsuit — filed by the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association — seeks to declare Senate Bill 775 unconstitutional, a bill that has resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes.

[...]

“Library funding is guaranteed in the MO constitution,” the [Missouri Library Association] wrote on Twitter. “This tactic, meant to bully MLA into submission, instead directly harms public libraries who rely on those funds, especially the smaller, more rural libraries.”

Democrats also fought in support of the libraries; Rep. Peter Merideth (D-St. Louis) argued that it is “not appropriate” to punish libraries because Republicans are “mad that libraries are suing to question” censorship.

The budget bill has yet to move to a Senate vote then to the governor’s desk, as it still needs its third House reading, which has not yet been scheduled.

Part 1 in Texas.

UPDATE 04/12/2023:

UPDATE 04/27/2023:

This is your GOP

Also in Missouri.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ.  I am so sick of these fucking Republicans fascists.  

UPDATE 04/15/2023:

Much needed good news out of Texas

A federal judge in Texas ruled that at least 12 books removed from public libraries by Llano County officials, many because of their LGBTQ and racial content, must be placed back onto shelves within 24 hours, according to an order filed Thursday.

Seven residents sued county officials in April 2022, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books deemed inappropriate by some people in the community and Republican lawmakers were removed from public libraries or access was restricted.

  CNN

Good for them. I keep wondering why only certain people's (often certain parents') rights matter.

Books ordered to return to shelves include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

The library system also is required to reflect these books as available in their catalog and cannot remove any books for any reason while the case is ongoing, US District Judge Robert Pitman said in his order.

“Although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination,” Pitman said.

The fight to protect access to books comes amid a book banning boom, with an alarming increase in attempts to censor books in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries. Many of these efforts seek to pull books with LGBTQ characters or themes and are part of a broader, conservative-led movement to chisel away at the rights and status of LGBTQ Americans.

Many of the book bans have also been aimed at authors of color exploring history, racism or their own experiences in America.

[...]

In 2022, the number of attempts to censor library books reached an unparalleled record high since the American Library Association (ALA) began documenting data about book censorship over 20 years ago, ALA said in a March press release.

ALA cataloged 1,269 attempts in 2022; nearly double the number of challenges in 2021.

Fascism on the rise in America.

Bless librarians

Fits the GOP profile

This Republican looks a bit suspect to me.  I think I need to be told the desired pronoun.  I think I'll just go with "it".

What a fucking ass.

Clemens’ language may be cartoonishly unenforceable, but the draconian intent behind his words has real support in the North Dakota legislature. Unfortunately, there are a host of other anti-LGBTQ+ bills currently making their way through the body, including a bill to incarcerate librarians who don’t comply with book bans. Remind us, which U.S. party is supposed to stand for limited government again?

  them

But they don't like it when you call them fascists.

MAGA

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A little good news for a change

To the not even 15,000 souls who actually live in the [Pennsylvania's]  fourth least-populous county, the Fulton County Library on North First Street, in the county seat of McConnellsburg, is a kind of a metaphorical turnpike to a wider world, offering computer terminals for locals lacking internet access and meeting rooms for an array of community groups, while trying to acquire the latest books on its shoestring budget.

Last week, library leaders — who’d seen a small county subsidy (just under 4% of its budget) slashed in half during the Great Recession — sent the Fulton County commissioners a request for an additional $3,000 in the new year, which would bring its total stipend back up to $15,000, or what it had been in the 2000s.

But the two Republicans who wield majority power on the three-member panel said absolutely not, and — according to the account of the meeting in the local weekly, the Fulton County News — they were blunt in explaining why: The library had over the summer given an OK for a proposed new support group for Fulton County’s small, largely invisible LGBTQ-plus community to hold biweekly meetings in its public space.

[...]

“If we support them, we have to support Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter,” said [GOP commissioner Randy] Bunch, one of the 85.3% of Fulton County residents who voted for Trump in 2020, the highest percentage in Pennsylvania. The other Republican commissioner, Stuart Ulsh, agreed with Bunch and offered a seeming non-sequitur in defense of his position.

“Do we want Muslims moving into our county?” Ulsh asked, before citing an internet conspiracy theory — thoroughly debunked by Snopes.com — that a Muslim man had been arrested on U.S. soil with a 30-year blueprint for taking over America.

[...]

The blowback started with a local activist Emily Best.

[...]

Over the weekend, Best’s plea for support on Twitter circulated among a community of progressive activists, and it gained steam when a social-media heavyweight — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a 2022 Democratic candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat — adopted the cause. She also learned of a similar campaign that had been launched on Facebook as a response to the commissioners’ comments about the LGBTQ community. By Tuesday morning, Best’s GoFundMe page had raised $14,495 from 382 donors, while the Facebook drive has raised more than $9,000, or more than eight times the additional dollars sought from the county commission. That total is sure to rise as the controversy gets more publicity.

There’s no immediate plan for how that new money will get spent, but Brambley told me the library would love to add to its current collection of 25 almost-always-out internet “hot spots,” expand its on-site community resources such as 3-D printers and sewing machines, and add to its growing collection of expensive but increasingly popular e-books.

[...]

But the real value of the Fulton County library fund drive is both intangible and worth far more than $24,000 — the notion that political hate and ignorant intolerance can be beaten back, even in Pennsylvania’s Trumpiest county.

  Philadelphia Inquirer

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Missouri's dark ages never go away

A new bill proposed in Missouri aims to prevent inappropriate sexual content from getting into the hands of kids, but critics are warning it amounts to censoring and could land public librarians in jail.

The bill was introduced earlier this month by Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker (R), who has argued that the measure is meant to protect children when they visit their public libraries.

“The main thing is I want to be able to take my kids to a library and make sure they’re in a safe environment, and that they’re not gonna be exposed to something that is objectionable material,” Baker told local news station KOAM.

  The Hill

Aside from the problem of being afraid of sex, Ben Baker should pay more attention to his children when he takes them to the library (hint: do you think he ever does that?) if he doesn't want them getting an education.

The bill would ban libraries that receive state funding from allowing minors access to "age-inappropriate sexual material." To identify what that content is, the bill would include the creation of "parental library review boards" made up of five locally elected community members. The boards would then review what content it considers appropriate.

If you can't ban books outright, start small and work your way up.

“This is a shockingly transparent attempt to legalize book banning in the state of Missouri,” [PEN America's deputy director of free expression research and policy, James] Tager told the Post. “This act is clearly aimed at empowering small groups of parents to appoint themselves as censors over their state’s public libraries. Books wrestling with sexual themes, books uplifting LGBTQIA+ characters, books addressing issues such as sexual assault — all of these books are potentially on the chopping block if this bill is passed.”

[...]

In his interview with KOAM, Baker addressed critics, saying his measure would not entirely ban books from the library but would only keep them out of the children's section.

Don't be surprised if this bill passes.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.