Tag Archives: Republicans

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Times They Are A-Changing, Web & Technology, Weblogs (Blogs)

Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

Published February 2, 2023 by Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Kristy Darby, a Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress.

Bird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish is now available to view in the new EPUB reader.

The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction.

All books in this collection were published under open access licenses, meaning the e-books are available to use and reuse according to the terms of the licenses. Users can access the e-books in the Open Access Books Collection by reading directly online in a browser or downloading the book as a PDF or EPUB file.

Green book cover for Bird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish, edited by Dieter TietzeBird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish is now available to view in the new EPUB reader.

When we first made open access e-books available on loc.gov, titles were available for download in either PDF or EPUB format, but PDF was the only one available for reading directly on the website; loc.gov did not support viewing EPUBs in the browser, and they were only available for download. As many books were available in both formats or in PDF only, this ensured most titles were viewable directly on the website.

However, we recognized an increase in titles available in EPUB only so we are happy to share the news that an EPUB viewer was launched on loc.gov. The viewer makes EPUBs available for reading on loc.gov and provides a richer interface for users.

Source: Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Now the far right is coming for college too — with taxpayer-funded “classical education” | Salon.com

Republicans are channeling tax dollars to right-wing institutes at colleges across the nation. What’s the endgame?

By Kathryn Joyce, Published May 31, 2022 6:00AM (EDT)

Statue of Socrates, the philosopher (Getty Images/vasiliki)

Last fall, when professors at Flagler College, a private liberal arts school in St. Augustine, Florida, gathered for a faculty senate meeting, they learned that the college administration had worked with their local legislator to propose a new academic center on campus, the Flagler College Institute for Classical Education.

To administrators, it was an exciting prospect: the chance to receive $5 million from the state to shore up their “first year seminar,” a universal core curriculum for incoming freshmen intended to help students, particularly first-generation students, prepare for the rigors of college.

But some faculty members felt concerned, reading between the lines in a state that has become ground zero for the nation’s education debates — where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Trump-style Republican with his eyes on the White House, has imposed gag orders and mandates on K-12 schools and described universities as “hotbeds of stale ideology” and “indoctrination factories.”

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Now the far right is coming for college too — with taxpayer-funded “classical education” | Salon.com

Current Affairs, Politics, Times They Are A-Changing

New research on Trump voters: They’re not the sharpest tools in the box | Salon.com

Now there’s proof: Trump’s voters lack “cognitive sophistication,” often believe Bible is literal word of God

By Chauncey DeVega, Published March 23, 2022 6:00AM (EDT)

Supporters gather at a rally by former President Donald Trump at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds on January 15, 2022 in Florence, Arizona. The rally marks Trump’s first of the midterm election year with races for both the U.S. Senate and governor in Arizona this year. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The United States is experiencing an existential democracy crisis, with leading Republicans and millions of their voters and supporters either tacitly or explicitly embracing authoritarianism or fascism.

Democrats, for the most part, have not responded with the urgency required to save America’s democracy from the rising neofascist tide.

American society was founded on white settler colonialism, genocide and slavery. This unresolved birth defect at the foundation of the American democratic experiment meant that the country was racially exclusionary by design, from the founding well into the 20th century.

At present, American politics is contoured by asymmetrical political polarization, in which Republicans have moved so far to the right that the party’s most “moderate” members are far more extreme than the most “conservative” Democrats.

–From article…

This makes substantive compromise and bipartisanship in the interests of the common good and the American people almost impossible.

Source: New research on Trump voters: They’re not the sharpest tools in the box | Salon.com

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Memories & History, Politics

There’s new pressure to ban books at schools : NPR

Attempts to remove books from school libraries have increased, spurred by activism from conservative parent groups and resistance to teaching socially progressive ideas in schools.

December 6, 20215:10 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition

By Nomin Ujiyediin

Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

TRANSCRIPT:

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Attempts to ban books in schools are as old as books themselves. But there’s new momentum on book bans now that’s driven by conservative activists targeting local school boards. Nomin Ujiyediin of member station KCUR in Kansas City reports.

NOMIN UJIYEDIIN, BYLINE: Books about LGBTQ issues and race have spurred more conservative activism against school boards in recent months. It’s often the same books that are challenged, like “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins, because they deal directly with issues of sex, racism, violence and drugs. One group leading challenges calls itself No Left Turn in Education. It publishes lists of books and guides to help activists complain to their school boards. Andy Wells heads the Missouri chapter. He considers books like “The Bluest Eye” to be pornographic and argues they shouldn’t be in schools.

Source: There’s new pressure to ban books at schools : NPR

Politics

There’s a Word for What Trumpism Is Becoming – The Atlantic

By David Frum, July 13, 2021

About the author: David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy(2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Adam Maida / The Atlantic

“I became worse.” That’s how double impeachment changed him, Donald Trump told a conservative audience in Dallas last weekend, without a trace of a smile.

This was not Trump the insult comic talking. This was the deepest Trump self. And this one time, he told the truth.

Something has changed for Trump and his movement since January 2021. You can measure the difference by looking back at the deadly events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Trump made three statements about those events over four days. He was visibly reluctant to speak negatively of the far-right groups. He praised “fine people on both sides” and spread the blame for “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.”

Trump’s evasions triggered a national uproar. As Joe Biden complained in an essay for The Atlantic at the time:

Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.

–Joe Biden

Source: There’s a Word for What Trumpism Is Becoming – The Atlantic

Current Affairs, Politics

The Republicans Who Backed Trump’s Election Lies Are Hatching a Plot to Take Over | Vanity Fair

Trump wasn’t able to steal the 2020 election because enough state and local officials held firm against his anti-democracy efforts—but what happens if the ex-president’s allies nab key roles in future contests?

By Eric Lutz, May 24, 2021

Donald Trump arrives at a Pennsylvania rally in November.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump put United States democracy through a grueling stress test in the last election, forcing Americans to consider all sorts of chilling “what if” questions and underscoring how little a process that relies heavily on the honor system can constrain someone who has none.

It’s tempting to view the fact that the country passed—Trump eventually did leave office and Joe Biden took his place—as a testament to the strength of our institutions. To some extent, it was.

–from article

But the fate of those institutions depends on the people who comprise them, and it’s possible they could have fared worse were it not for several key officials who resisted Trump’s demands. Indeed, what would have happened to Biden’s victory in Georgia had Brad Raffensperger, a pro-Trump conservative, not stood his ground and declined to “find” 12,000 votes for the incumbent?

What if election officials in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona hadn’t won out over the will of Trump and GOP state legislators, who insisted, without basis, that the vote had been marred by fraud? Could Trump’s relentless attempt to undo his loss have worked?

Source: The Republicans Who Backed Trump’s Election Lies Are Hatching a Plot to Take Over | Vanity Fair