Librarians smack down Ashcroft
Librarians of today are not your mother’s librarian. Forget the old lady with her hair in a bun, today’s librarian tends to be super tech-savvy and, more to the point, gets really irritated when meddlesome governments try to ban books.
Ashcroft tried to do just that by issuing an order banning five public documents from libraries. These documents detailed “how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation.” And check out this, two of the documents are “texts of federal statutes.” That’s right, Ashcroft wanted to ban the public from reading certain federal statutes.
Well, librarians went ballistic. Ashcroft backed down and rescinded the order!