Free Republic

Earlier this week John touched on the festival of hot takes surrounding Liz Phipps Soeiro, the librarian at Cambridgeport Elementary School who attempted to refuse a donation of Dr. Seuss books from First Lady Melania Trump. I specify “attempted” because it turned out that the school board stepped in and said it wasn’t her call to begin with. That hot mess should have come and gone fairly quickly, but it turns out that there was another chapter of the story to be written.The Mayor of the town where Dr. Seuss (actually Theodor Geisel) was born decided to add some balance...

Earlier this month First Lady Melania Trump celebrated National Read a Book Day by selecting some children’s books and sending them to one school in each state. Mrs. Trump selected Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! because it was, “one of her personal favorites that she and her son have read together over and over.” Other books included in the shipment to schools in each state included One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and Green Eggs and Ham among several others. Tuesday, the librarian at Cambridgeport Elementary School in Massachusetts wrote a response which informed the...

About 300 residents packed a South Side auditorium Wednesday night to demand that the promise of jobs, economic development and other benefits of the Obama presidential library center be put in writing. The activists and residents want a community benefits agreement, something many say will protect the neighborhoods and people the center may displace. Last week, at the foundation’s community meeting, President Barack Obama himself told residents that he would not sign a benefits agreement, which would put into writing the promises the foundation has made thus far on bringing jobs, economic development and resources to the South Side.

WOODLAWN — The Obama Foundation is asking the four construction teams vying to build the presidential center to set high standards for local and minority hiring. The foundation announced four finalists Thursday morning and also the standards for hiring the foundation is setting for each. Each of the firms has to lay out how it would meet a commitment to awarding half of its subcontracts to “diverse suppliers,” which expands the normal definition of firms from women and minority-owned firms to also include veteran-, disabled- or LGBTQ-owned firms. As the definition of inclusive hiring is broadened, the foundation is specifying...

CLOVIS, N.M. — New Mexico state police say there has been a shooting at a public library in the eastern New Mexico community Clovis. The Eastern New Mexico News reports that multiple people were killed and several others were injured in a shooting. Officer Carl Christiansen said Clovis police responded to the library this afternoon in response to a report of an active shooter. He could not immediately confirm whether there were any fatalities or injuries.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced that the National Security Council (NSC) on May 23, 2017, informed it by letter that the materials regarding the unmasking by Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “the identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team” have been removed to the Obama Library. The NSC will not fulfill an April 4 Judicial Watch request for records regarding information relating to people “who were identified pursuant to intelligence collection activities.” The agency also informed Judicial Watch that it would not turn over communications with any Intelligence Community...

"I know words. I have the best words,” Donald Trump famously declared in 2015, when he was still a long-shot presidential candidate. Now, thanks to Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," those words will be on display at the new Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library. As befitting a form limited to 140 characters, the library will exist only for a weekend. The pop-up library in Manhattan will open Friday and close Sunday, Deadline reports. But according to the show, it’s not the form, but the content: "The library will be so tremendous that the public is going to get tired...

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet recently reported that the historic Surp Asdvadzadzin (Mother Mary/Meryem Ana) Armenian church in the city of Kayseri will be turned into a library and “book café.” According to the report, the project has a budget of six-million Turkish liras.The exterior of the Surp Asdvadzadzin Armenian church in Kayseri “The church became deserted years ago as there was no longer an Armenian congregation,” according to Hurriyet. The church was then used as an exhibition center, a municipal police station, and a sports center.The 2015 Human Rights Violations Report by Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches stated: “The Istanbul...

In 1906, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press described a scene that had become all too common at the city’s public libraries. A child hands an overdue book to a stern librarian perched behind a desk, and with a “sinister expression,” the librarian demands payment of a late fine. In some cases, the child grumbles and pays the penny or two. But in others—often at the city’s smaller, poorer library branches—the offender cannot pay, and his borrowing privileges are revoked. “Scarcely a day passes but it does not leave its record of tears and sighs and vain regrets in...

A library in Sweden’s capital is refusing to stock Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji’s “sincere and evidence-driven analysis” of the country’s immigration policy because the book ‘supports racism’. An examination into the results of mass migration to Sweden over recent decades, ‘Mass Challenge’ was topping Sweden’s book charts within days of its release earlier this month. Sanandaji’s analysis of the nation’s large-scale importation of people from the third world, the resulting social problems and the effects on Sweden’s economy, is based on facts sourced from Statistics Sweden, the National Crime Prevention Council, the National Board of Health and other mainstream and...

Veterans’ group in Chicago suspects being ‘muscled’ by city out of facility near proposed Obama library By Joseph Weber Published May 15, 2016 FoxNews.com A charity group that helps homeless military veterans on Chicago’s South Side says the city is trying to take control of the meager facility to make way for the restaurants, shops and other commercial venues that would complement the proposed Obama presidential library and museum. Group leaders said the RTW Veterans Center is the last privately-owned property on a stretch of S. King Boulevard near the proposed Washington Park site for the Barack Obama Presidential Center...

#BREAKING: LRPD has confirmed they're working a shooting call in the Clinton Library parking lot. We have a crew on the way. Details to come...

A witness told police she heard screaming coming from the restroom and ran in to see what was wrong. The witness pulled on the first stall door, but it was locked. Through the crack of the door the witness saw Powell with his hand over the mouth of an 8-year-old female child, who was trying to get away. The witness screamed at Powell to let the child go but he would not, the affidavit says.

A small library in New Hampshire sits at the forefront of global efforts to promote privacy and fight government surveillance — to the consternation of law enforcement. The Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, a city of 13,000, last year became the nation's first library to use Tor, software that masks the location and identity of internet users, in a pilot project initiated by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Library Freedom Project. Users the world over can — and do — have their searches randomly routed through the library. Computers that have Tor loaded on them bounce internet searches through a random pathway,...

Considered one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world still in operation, the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai is home to more than two centuries of history — and more than that of legend. Tradition claims, for example, that the main altar of the monastery is built on the spot where the Burning Bush first addressed Moses. But the monastery, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO, also holds other seats of honor. For example, it accommodates the oldest continuously operating active library in the world.From the day it was founded in the sixth century (between 548 and...

First, some historyThe Vatican Library was established in 1475 and is one of the oldest libraries in the world, and also one of the biggest and most safely guarded. Currently, Vatican Library holds about 75000 codices, 85000 incunabula and about 1.1 million books. Apart from all these, there are around 400000 coins and medals, millions of  photographs, prints, drawings. The library stores a large collection starting from the pre-Christian era to the present day collection. Vatican Library  is a huge collection, consisting of many languages from the west to the east, and has added Mathematics, Science, Social Science and other important subjects. What it...

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

The Obama Foundation has selected renowned husband-and-wife architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to design the $500 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. COMMENT: Can you believe these fools said the following: "It is a joy, an honor, and a responsibility to create a place that reflects the optimism and integrity of the President and the First Lady." COMMENT: It looks like that will be an impossible challenge. The two grifters in the white house have ZERO integrity.

MENTOR, Ohio — A man dressed as a woman groped a teenage girl at the Mentor Public Library. Police are still looking for the man involved in the May 29 incident, Mentor police Lt. Dan Molnar said Friday. The girl was not physically harmed. Surveillance cameras captured the man entering the library in the 8200 block of Mentor Avenue at 11:30 a.m. dressed in a black dress, wig and high heels. The man struck up a conversation with the 14-year-old girl, police said. The two joked about the man's attire before he touched the teen inappropriately, according to police reports.