Excuse me, but how is this a federal issue?

A few years ago a lesser-known NASCAR driver named Bubba Wallace found a garage door rope with the end tied into the shape of a hangman’s noose. And this became the latest cause celeb, proof of American racism (including anyone who had never watched NASCAR), in spite of the Mr. Wallace’s relative success and wealth in NASCAR. 

 So, the FBI sent in, ready, 15 agents to investigate the latest uprising of the KKK. Fifteen agents. Good lord, they didn’t put that manpower to look into the Hunter Biden laptop showing our current POTUS was taking bribes. All that money, manpower, and excitement to learn it was not the only one tied like that, and it had been so for months before anyone knew Wallace would use that garage. In other words, it was much ado about nothing. 

 

Not to be outdone, we now have federal authorities investigating a school library in Texas for LGBTQABCDEFG books.

 

A Texas superintendent ordered librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed books. Now the federal government is investigating.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has opened what appears to be the first-of-its-kind investigation into the Granbury Independent School District after it banned school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.

First question, why does the US Department of Education have an Office for Civil Rights? I looked this up:

The mission of the Office for Civil Rights is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights…

The Office for Civil Rights enforces several Federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance from the Department of Education. Discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin is prohibited by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; sex discrimination is prohibited by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972; discrimination on the basis of disability is prohibited by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; and age discrimination is prohibited by the Age Discrimination Act of 1975...

Forgive me, but doesn’t the US government have a Department of Justice already? Isn’t its job to enforce the federal laws of this nation? Doesn’t this include the civil rights laws of the federal government? Not sure which is a bigger waste, this or the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General?

The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books.

Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender…

“…I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women and there are women that think they’re men,” Glenn told librarians in January, according to a leaked recording of the meeting obtained, verified and published exclusively by the news outlets. “I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”

And they don’t. At least not in elementary school libraries. I can see this being appropriate for high school libraries, and maybe junior high, but not for elementary schools. Now the article is does not make clear if this was all school libraries, or just a particular grade level. 

But more to the point, this is not a federal issue. The libraries are paid for by the taxpayers (particularly the property owners through their taxes), and if they want to have a say in how their schools are operated, that is their business. 

More to the point, nothing is being banned. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of banned: 

: to prohibit especially by legal means

ban discrimination

Is smoking banned in all public buildings?

 

also  : to prohibit the use, performance, or distribution of 

ban a book

ban a pesticide

“By legal means?" This was administrative, not legal, so no. Is the “use, performance, or distribution” of these books prohibited? Not at all. You can go to your local bookstore and buy them, or you can get on Amazon.com and order them. If little Jane or Johnny want to read them at school on their lunch break, no one is stopping the kid. But a library, public or private, is not required to provide them. Any library has limits to what it can purchase

Last week I published on the American Free News Network an article on the Congress passing a ridiculous bill funding “de-escalation” training for local law enforcement. It gave an average of $4,000 a year per agency for training most agencies are doing to one degree or another. A point is federal money always comes with strings attached. The bigger point is Democrats want to federalize local law enforcement.

Now we see another example of the federal government trying to stick it’s nose into a local issue. If the parents and taxpayers of the Granbury Independent School District want to control what books are available to their children at their schools, that is, get this, their business. Not the business of a bureaucrat in a completely worthless agency in the District of Columbia. Hopefully this school board tells the feds and ACLU (six of one, half dozen of the other) where they can stick this complaint. Maybe Mitch McConnell can look at deleting this Civil Rights division of the Department of Education as a “priority” of the Republicans in the senate.