Free Republic

The photos of the victims are horrifying. With their bodies covered with huge pustules that will have left large craters in their skin forever (if they survived), the victims of smallpox suffered unimaginable agony. Along with the pus-filled lesions came crushing headaches, delirium, extensive bleeding, crippling backaches, chronic fatigue, unstoppable diarrhea and vomiting, bone infections, pneumonia, and fevers that oftentimes ran above 104 degrees. Highly contagious, it is easily spread through droplets expelled by sneezing, coughing or breathing, and it can also be spread through contact with an item touched by an infected person, like a set of keys, cell...

The current flap over Spanish-language dirty comic books on the shelves of the Denver Public Library raises a number of serious questions. One such publication is titled La Policiaca Novela. It features graphic illustrations of well-endowed, bare-breasted women repeatedly engaged in sexual intercourse or on the receiving end of severe beatings from men. Diane Lapierre, the library's director of strategic initiatives (more on what that title suggests later), prefers to call these comic books "illustrated novellas" and says they are very popular among Latino library users. She claims, "They are targeted at people who don't have strong reading skills and...