Good news! After Republican legislators in the state House defunded the state’s libraries for daring to sue the state to overturn a censorship law, the State Senate restored the libraries’ funding of $4.5 million. Yes, there are some sane Republicans in Missouri.
JEFFERSON CITY — The chief Senate budget writer said he plans to restore state funding for Missouri’s public libraries that was stripped out of the House version of the state’s spending plan.
Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the panel will place $4.5 million back in the budget, which covers spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
“There is no way that money is not going back into the budget,” Hough told the Post-Dispatch.
The restoration could mark the second reversal of a House budget prioritythat has stirred controversy under the Capitol dome. Hough and Senate President Caleb Rowden earlier said they oppose Republican language in the House blueprint that would prohibit the state from spending tax dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives….
The library money was removed from the House blueprint by House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and backed by the Republicans who control the chamber last week. He cited a lawsuit by two library groups to overturn a new state law banning sexually explicit material in school libraries.
The ACLU, the Missouri Association of School Librarians, and the Missouri Library Association in February asked a judge in Kansas City to find the law unconstitutional or clarify how and when it applies.
Smith, R-Carthage, believes the state shouldn’t subsidize the lawsuit by giving public libraries money.
Hough’s hometown library district, which covers Springfield and Greene County, would receive an estimated $368,000 if the money is restored.
Hough said libraries serve multiple purposes in communities, allowing people to not only get books, but internet service, job assistance and programs for adults and children.
“Libraries are an important resource for so many people,” Hough said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But do not forget the ********s who tried to kill the libraries. VOTE THEM OUT!
👍🏽
Ding Ding Ding! Three In A Row. Chicago, Wisconsin, Missouri.
How about Florida next.
From your lips to the ears of the various gods!!!
And a great big thank you, this morning, to Vladimir Putin for doing his part to strengthen NATO!
And in other news, stable genius Jabba the Trump left his arraignment yesterday and went back to the Mar-a-lago Senior Center, where, in the course of excruciatingly familiar toddler English ramblings and rantings, he attacked his New York judge’s wife and daughter and suggested that the DOJ special counsel investigating him had had a sex change operation.
Keep running at the mouth, Donnie Boy.
The NY judge may have to give him a gag order.
Better yet: LOCK HIM UP.
OR, psychiatric evaluation.
YES!
It would be hilarious AND ALTOGETHER APPROPRIATE if the judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
And Gag order!
The nation would be grateful
Funny. I gag a bit every time I hear him speak.
He would be totally incapable of obeying a gag order. LOL. His staff would have to lock him in a room without his phone, the sundried, verbally incontinent, bloated, confused old creeper.
Or put a sock in his mouth.
Gives new meaning to “it makes me want to gag.”
Civic education that doesn’t make into the textbooks: A major tactic of reactionary legislators is to offer a controversial proposal that has little hope of surviving. The hoopla and time is takes from the legislative calendar fulfill the goals of making government seem ineffective while doing anything to make it even more true. Fighting the same political/legislative battles over and over and over again is a political victory for American fascism.
It’s apparent to me that the Fascist Republicans, also know by me as MAGA-RINOs, don’t understand what the word “CHOICE” really means.
Libraries are all about CHOICE.
Everyone that uses libraries goes there because it is their CHOICE to use libraries.
What library patrons across the country check out and read is also an individual CHOICE.
Too many Fascist MAGA-RINO Republicans want to take that CHOICE away from everyone and be in charge of what we can read be removing anything “they” don’t like.
I started visiting the local public library where my family lived as a child in 2nd grade, sifting through the books in the child’s section finding what sounded interesting to me. I liked history, science, dinosaurs, spaceships, et al.
Since I was 7 or 8, I wasn’t thinking of pornography. Heck, at that age, I didn’t even know what porn was. I recall that the first time I heard about porn was when I was in the Marines but by then I wasn’t a child anymore and my interests had expanded.
MAGA-RINOs clearly do not trust anyone at any age to make a choice the fascists approve of. They also don’t want free thinkers, avid readers, critical thinkers and problem solvers. They want to be the deciders of everything.