https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/h ... 573283.phpTexas wants to demolish an old warehouse. They just need to figure out what to do with 750,000 bats first.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnew ... cna1283397Houston Astroworld: At least 8 dead after 'panic' at music festival
When the Llano County Library shuts down for three days this week, starting Tuesday, it won’t be for the holidays.
Instead, a group of six librarians in this small Central Texas county will be conducting a “thorough review” of every children’s book in the library, at the behest of the Llano County Commissioners Court. Their mission will be to make sure all of the reading material for younger readers includes subjects that are age-appropriate. A new “young adults plus” section will be added to separate books written for an older teen audience from those geared toward younger readers.
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“I think we owe it to all parents, regardless if it’s a school library or a public library, to make sure that material is not inappropriate for children,” Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham said.
The Llano County community’s push to scrutinize the local library’s book stacks comes two months after a Texas lawmaker first questioned the inclusion of more than 850 books about race, equality or sexuality in public school libraries.
And Llano County is not the only community in Texas asking harder questions.
Local public libraries in Texas, including those in Victoria, Irving and Tyler, are fielding a flurry of book challenges from local residents. While book challenges are nothing new, there has been a growing number of complaints about books for libraries in recent months. And the fact that the numbers are rising after questions are being raised about school library content seems more than coincidental, according to the Texas Library Association.
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One Victoria resident who pushed for book removals was Cindy Herndon.
“It’s nothing that I have against anybody in any community,” said Herndon, 64. “I don’t have any resentment or lack of respect for them. It’s just about protecting the children and exposing them to things that they really don’t need to see right now.”
One of the books she wanted removed was “The Black Flamingo” by Dean Atta, a coming-of-age novel about a mixed-race gay teen who becomes a drag artist.
After reading the book, Herndon said she was opposed to it because to her it seemed to “sexualize children, especially into alternate lifestyles, and make them want to be someone else than who they were born to be.”
That does not suit the small narrow minds Brian. It is UnAmerican. You have to lead the sheeple and you cant let them think; far too dangerous.Brian Peacock wrote: ↑Tue Dec 21, 2021 7:42 amWhat about just making books available and letting parents and children decide what they'd like to read?
Amazing but would expect anything else.Juno Dawson wrote:My work is among 850 inclusive titles a Texas lawmaker wants out of school libraries. And what a surprise, 62% are LGBTQ+
It’s becoming worryingly frequent for me to get emails from librarians telling me that one of my books has been “challenged”. Recently, two of my titles – This Book Is Gay and Understanding Gender – appeared on a very long list of books that the Texas lawmaker Matt Krause would like to see removed from schools. I’m in good company: Margaret Atwood, the young adult bestseller Adam Silvera, and the V for Vendetta author Alan Moore also feature, alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeffrey Eugenides and – for whatever reason – a book by James Patterson.
Book “banning” is nothing new. Few sights are more enduring, or chilling, than the photographs of Nazi youth raiding Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology in 1933 and burning the books they found there. Book burning remains synonymous with censorship, dictatorship and autocracy. As a writer, I think it’s up to publishers to decide if they want their name associated with prejudice – even with authors and books I disagree with fundamentally on ideological grounds. But this isn’t indicative of some evenly split “culture war”. Krause only wants liberal, or inclusive, books banned.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... itizenshipThe secretary of state flags anyone as a suspected non-citizen if they register to vote and then subsequently visit the Texas department of public safety (DPS), the state’s driver’s license agency, and indicates they are not a citizen.
Local election officials in Texas’ 254 counties are then asked to review the names. If those officials cannot verify citizenship, they are required to send them a letter asking them to prove their citizenship within 30 days or else their voter registration gets cancelled.
But election officials in Harris county, the most populous in the state, are concerned about the accuracy of the data being used to challenge voters.
After the county mailed proof of citizenship requests to 2,796 people, 167 voters - nearly 6% of those contacted – responded with proof of citizenship. The state removed an additional 161 people from the list of people whose citizenship needed to be verified, according to a county official.
“We are not confident in the quality of the information we are being mandated to act upon,” Isabel Longoria, the county’s election administrator, said in an email.
In Fort Bend county, just outside of Houston, officials mailed notices to 515 people in October. About 20% responded with proof of citizenship and the rest were removed from the rolls, according to John Oldham, the county’s election administrator. Many of the people who responded said they had accidentally checked a box during their DPS transaction indicating they were not citizens, Oldham said.
In Cameron county, along the US-Mexico border, election officials have sent out 246 letter since September, almost all to people with Hispanic surnames, according to the Texas Monthly, which first reported the program restarted. About 60 people have been cancelled so far.
After the notices went out, a married couple who had heard about the notices came into the elections office to provide their naturalization papers, even though the couple’s citizenship wasn’t challenged, said Remi Garza, the county elections administrator.
“It saddened me too,” Garza said. “People who shouldn’t have to be concerned about this type of proving citizenship felt that the had to do that.”
Voting rights groups say they are trying to better understand the process the state is using, but are concerned eligible voters are getting targeted.
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