McClatchy ran a story from the Anchorage Daily News further delving into Sarah Palin’s efforts to ban books, a subject we’ve covered before. It appears she never mentioned a specific list of books publicly, but brought up the issue at least three times (emphasis added):

When the matter came up for the second time in October 1996, during a City Council meeting, Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla housewife who often attends council meetings, was there.

Like many Alaskans, Kilkenny calls the governor by her first name.

“Sarah said to Mary Ellen, ‘What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?” Kilkenny said.

“I was shocked. Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, ‘The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.’”

Palin didn’t mention specific books at that meeting, Kilkenny said.
Read more »

To follow up on an earlier BH post or two, via MBR, Unbossed has great rundown on Sarah Palin and her attempt to ban books in the town library when she was mayor. She even threatened to fire the librarian, and then did, although luckily the librarian was reinstated due to public outcry.

Let’s be clear – anyone who tries to ban books is either a dolt, a scoundrel, or both. Such a move reveals a person lacking both character and wisdom. If the same person threatens to fire a librarian, and then actually tries to do it, well, that’s a special level of mendacity. Now granted, since I have librarians and archivists in my own immediate family, I’m biased toward Biblio-Americans, and literate Americans, but hear me out.
Read more »

Today we visit Vincent Bugliosi’s book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Tomorrow we visit Vincent Bugliosi himself as he talks about his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee appearance and his book.

As you may have heard by now, the mainstream media has been giving Vincent Bugliosi’s latest book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, the cold shoulder. Never mind that he authored what was, at the time, the bestselling crime book in history, Helter Skelter, about his successful prosecution of the Manson family. Nor that he’s written numerous bestsellers since. His 2007 book, Reclaiming History, a 1,600-page attempt to dispel alternative histories of the Kennedy assassination, is being made into a mini-series by HBO and Tom Hanks.

In the only mainstream media article addressing The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder and its reception, New York Times reporter Tim Arango writes: “The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, said he had not read the manuscript, but he offered a reason why the media might be silent: ‘I think there’s a kind of Bush-bashing fatigue out there.’”

The main reason though may be Bugliosi’s agenda: Impeach Bush? Convene a truth and reconciliation commission for him and his gang? Forget all that. Once Bush is out of office, let’s drag his butt into a court of law. But the media’s perception that much of the public can’t conceive of prosecuting a president in a court of law is probably accurate.

Full article at Scholars & Rogues (interview tomorrow)

John Mueller has often gone against conventional wisdom. As the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies at The Ohio State University, he has published an array of articles and books on The declining significance of war as he explains in his book Remnants of War; The incredible overreaction to national security threats, especially the threat of terrorism and how it has harmed the country is addressed in his most recent book, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We believe Them; and his current work, how the U.S.’s attempts to prevent nuclear proliferation have been counterproductive, will be published as a book next year.

Mueller’s argument in his current work, as outlined in an article in The National Interest last year, is as follows:

The “obsessive quest to Control nuclear proliferation — particularly since the end of the Cold War — has been substantially counterproductive and has often inflicted dire costs.” Examples include the Iraq War, which was sold by the Bush Administration as the only preventative act to keep nuclear and other WMDs from Saddam Hussein’s weakened state of Iraq. The sanctions in the 1990s which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children could also be included, as well as a potential conflict with Iran.
While the fear that terrorists themselves would obtain atomic weapons and/or other WMD has taken root in the national security community, it is “highly improbable” that either a rogue nation would give these terrorist groups these weapons, nor that the groups themselves could develop them. If a nation gave these weapons to a terrorist group, and the source was discovered, “international retribution could be unfathomably fierce.” It is also incredibly unlikely that a rogue group could obtain all the necessary materials to create such a weapon, or gain access to the facilities to put it together, and then control it thereafter. Even when examining the supposed evidence that Al-Qaeda is seeking out the bomb, it is clear that they haven’t even come close to the first steps.
Countries that do obtain nuclear weapons do so either for prestige (France) or deterrence (Israel, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea). While Mueller emphasizes that he does not like nuclear proliferation, and is clear the he considers “dissuading more countries from obtaining nuclear weapons to be quite a good idea and preventing terrorists from getting them to be an even better one,” many of the actions performed in the name f nuclear proliferation have caused more harm than good. While we would rather Iran did not have such weapons, there is no reason to believe that if they got them, they would actually use them.

Continue reading here