Book Burning in Little Havana

Fla. school board asks to pull Cuba book
By ADRIAN SAINZ, Associated Press Writer

Civil-liberties lawyers Wednesday defended a book about Cuba that omits references to Fidel Castro's communist government, as a judge asked them to compare the work to a hypothetical book about Adolf Hitler that didn't mention the Holocaust.

The discussion came as the Miami-Dade County School District asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to remove 49 copies of "Vamos a Cuba" and its English-language version, "A Visit to Cuba," from its libraries. The board argues that the books, for children ages 5 to 8, present an inaccurate view of life in Cuba.

Senior Judge Donald Walter asked American Civil Liberties Union attorney JoNel Newman if a school board would be allowed to remove a Hitler book omitting the Holocaust from library shelves.

Newman said "Vamos a Cuba" is a geography book about daily life on the island, not about Castro himself.

"The political reality in Cuba is not what the book is about," Newman said. "The school board can't remove it because it wishes to inject a political message into it."

Circuit Judge Ed Carnes noted that "there's a difference in enormity" between the Holocaust and actions by Castro's government, but that Walter's hypothetical addressed the "omission of facts."

Carnes presented his own hypothetical, asking Newman if a book about North Korea could be pulled from shelves because it failed to mention problems in that communist government.

Newman countered by saying such political discussions shouldn't be required for books for elementary school students, arguing whether a book about the Great Wall of China must mention Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.

Full story here.

It's a geography book for little grade-school-age children, for crying out loud.

I don't expect the public schools that my children attend to teach them about the atrocities committed in the name of Capitalism; I'm perfectly capable of teaching it to them myself. So if you want your child to know what you think of Fidel and the history of Cuba, then by all means teach it to your children, not everyone else's.

Of course, these are the same sick vultures who were dancing in the streets when they heard about Castro lying on what was, at the time, thought to be his death-bed....



These people can't wait for that man to die.