Someone get a victim doll. Because we have book-burning legislators who need to show us on the doll where the words hurt them. And even better, in a show of the continuing ridiculousness that the 100th legislative session has become, some legislators now want to walk school librarians out of public schools in handcuffs because material slipped in that they found objectionable, according to testimony on House Bill 1239.
A South Dakota legislative committee advanced a bill Wednesday at the Capitol in Pierre that would subject schools, universities, museums, libraries and their employees to criminal prosecution and jail time for allowing children to view material defined in state law as obscene or harmful to minors.
An opponent of the bill said it would put “librarians in handcuffs” for lending a book to a child that some adults might consider inappropriate. One member of the House Education Committee who voted in favor of the legislation, Rep. Travis Ismay, R-Newell, suggested an arrest might be insufficient punishment.
“If a librarian rented this out to my son or daughter, you’d be lucky if you got hauled out of there in handcuffs,” Ismay said. “So, yes, if they’re breaking the law anyway, why would we have any problem with librarians getting hauled out of the library in handcuffs?”
Representative Travis Ismay, who celebrates “White History Month” (not kidding) intimates that an arrest might not be good enough for a librarian who checks out a book with thoughts he objects to. Why? Because parents are incapable of being parents, and legislators feel the need to substitute laws for parenting because that’s the legislature’s job?
What happened? Honestly, at what point did the nanny-state envisioned by legislators become such a stifling, choking parental substitute that they insist it invade every aspect of what a parent should be doing when it comes to their kids? No where is there a better example of this than in House Bill 1239 where we have actual elected legislators – completely illiterate morons, but elected legislators – intimating that arrest might not be good enough for a librarian who checked out a book with a passage they objected to.
House Bill 1239, where Representative Travis Ismay suggested “you’d be lucky if you got hauled out of there in handcuffs” is scheduled to be heard on the House floor today. Call your legislator, or e-mail your legislator, and tell them to kill the embarrassing HB 1239.
And while you’re at it, tell them to knock off the threats to arrest school librarians, or to flog librarians in the public square, or whatever this ridiculousness is that the book burners are proposing.
The librarian could keep a few cheeseburgers behind the counter, and he would be distracted. Did you know obesity is a leading contributing factor to death in the US and worldwide? It’s funny Travis is trying to save people from medical marijuana and library books, but we have overwhelming evidence of way more dangerous stuff that Mr. Gluttony seems to ignore.
“Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Back in the Rexall drug store in 1968, we would
Slide a Playboy magazine into a sports illustrated
In the magazine rack and “read away”.
Ismay would have jailed the pharmacist.
By the way, I turned out OK from the trauma of seeing naked women.
Ismay……maybe not.
Everyone had the buddy whose dad had a few magazines. Usually, one or two were stolen and kept in the old clubhouse out in the tree belt. Remember when kids used to scrounge up old junk and build a fort that ultimately would get torn down by some old angry landowner. Cooked smores on little fires while playing with matches and tossing around old dirty mags. I feel sorry for kids these days now that they can just google whatever they want. I doubt they are looking for anything printed like we would back in the 80s. Legislation like this just makes me laugh because of how nanny state it is.
No child’s mind is being warped because they checked out a book of words from the local library that some zealot considers a bodice-ripper. Yes, be concerned about porn-hub, or twitter, or discord, but a legislator saying that “you’d be lucky if you got hauled out of there in handcuffs” about the school librarian is just absolutely, completely nuts.
Yet another Doeden Dumpsterfire PAC endorsed candidate who is participating is and a contender in the 2025 South Dakota Legislative Session Dumpster Diver Olympics.
The competition has been intense!
“Be extremely dumb to the point of a rock. Be moronic as the fence post. Spew your stupidity to baffle your enemies. Let them know you by the drool on your chin.”
-Dumb Zoo, The Art of Ismay
Mind you this is another legislator that ran on “smaller government “. Unless he can mandate his religion on you and your kids, unless he can force his morality (questionable as it is (see the white history month link)) or dictate what is offensive. I’m sure he finds the statue of David offensive because he feels it creates an unrealistic comparison and he falls short. Doubtful that he has set foot in a library and ever “rented” a book. This is becoming beyond shameful
Wannabe tough guy with the “you’d be lucky..” line. You gonna beat someone up, lunchbox?
Ismay is a card carrying member of many organizations, but I’ll bet a box of his favorite donuts that he doesn’t own a library card.
Are you deficient? Maybe flip that around. A 16 year old can get married, but if they check out a book from the library that has some sex in it, they will get the librarian sent to jail? That’s your argument? I’m not hearing any one saying that exposure to inappropriate material is a good thing. Just that maybe a librarian shouldn’t be jailed because a 12 year old boy does what 12 year old boys are want to do, and gets his hands on some erotic reading material. Are you of the mind that minors shouldn’t be able to alter their bodies permanently? I am. Therefore they aren’t old enough to enter into what is supposed to be a lifelong commitment.
Bingo.
A taxpayer funded library shouldn’t have that kind of material in the first place. Only perverts think our libraries should provide smut to kids.
What’s on your book burning list? Just so I know what you consider smut. If you don’t like a book and you can get enough like-minded zealots to agree, then you can petition the city to have it removed. Don’t jail the librarian because of some puritanical notion of decency. Your argument is barely intelligible. I would invite you to spend some time within a library and see what they have to offer. Might even find a picture book or two, if that’s more your speed.
No one’s burning anything. The material simply shouldn’t be in publicly funded libraries. Only perverts want children to have access to pornography.
By the way dimwit, this doesn’t remove potentially inappropriate material from the library. It just makes it so a librarian can be arrested for a kid getting ahold of something. You aren’t even arguing what the bill is, does or doesn’t do. And no one has said anything about wanting to give a child access to pornography. Idiot.
A lot of talk on here has been about how fun and harmless it is for young boys to look at pornography. What a sick perspective.
How many books, videos, magazines and papers are in a large library? Hundreds of thousands? Maybe millions?
Control freaks like yourself will be busy for years finding all of that filth. And then you will have to agree with the other control freaks on which ones to remove.
An “internet troll” is a person who intentionally posts provocative, offensive, or inflammatory comments online to deliberately upset or anger others, often by using anonymity to disrupt conversations and stir up trouble on forums, social media, or other online platforms; their primary goal is to get a reaction, not to engage in meaningful discussion. (Google AI definition)
Also, I think I’ve got the source of all the ismay, sun tzu quotes. I believe it is his wife who has been following him around the capitol, rarely leaving his side and waiting for him outside of committee meetings. Who is homeschooling all of their kids during all of this? Truly an embarrassment.
As we all know, the Bible has all sorts of language that these puritans would ban if it were in any other book. They are nothing but control freaks.
Bigot
At least we’ve moved on from “dolt”.
You are still a dolt. A dolt with a personality disorder.
Ismay is a loose cannon . He will not be reelected. He first speech on the house floor was to threaten with guns more than informative. This bully extremist must go.
Read Song of Solomon to some kindergardners then. Or about how the Israelis ethnically cleansed the holy land after leaving Egypt. Some real kid friendly stuff there in the OT
Your trolling is obvious… to everyone.
Probably shouldn’t forget about this. This is Ismay’s sister-in-law. Maybe he’s overcompensating? They were both found guilty by the way.
RAPID CITY – United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced that a Federal Criminal Complaint and Arrest Warrants were returned on a Vale, South Dakota, husband and wife charging Production of Child Pornography.
Timothy Scott White, age 42, and Leslie Marie White, age 24, were arrested on the Complaint on December 19, 2022. They appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Daneta Wollmann on December 21, 2022, and pleaded not guilty.
If convicted of the charge, the defendants each face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison, up to a maximum possible penalty of 30 years in federal prison and/or a $250,000 fine, a lifetime term of supervised release, and a $100 assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund. Restitution may also be ordered.
The Whites were arrested pursuant to an ongoing investigation involving online child pornography production and distribution. The charge relates to the Whites, being the parents of a minor, permitting or encouraging the minor to engage in or assist another person in engaging in sexually explicit conduct, for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct. The visual depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct were then transmitted over the Internet. The conduct is alleged to have occurred between February 1, 2022, and December 19, 2022.
Timothy White was employed by the Spearfish Emergency Ambulance Service and the Piedmont Fire Department.
The charge is merely an accusation and the Whites are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The investigation is being conducted as part of a joint effort between the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Butte County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Sazama is prosecuting the case.
The Whites were remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending trial. A trial date has been set for February 28, 2023.
I send my kids to school in part to offend them. Otherwise they’ll remain the same forever, unchallenged and ill-prepared.
I assume you mean you send your children to school to be challenged and educated. While children should learn to deal with being offended, that shouldn’t be an intentional part of a public education.
They start with controlling libraries and the internet. Then it will be television and the arts. You know… what good is restricting the library if the TV is out of control?
But it MUST be done. For the children. And freedom.
Taxpayers should have control over publicly funded libraries. Also, laws criminalizing exposing children to pornography are a legitimate function of government.
Taxpayers? You mean YOU. You should have control over the contents of an entire library because some child somewhere might see something they shouldn’t.
You are right. It should be YOU who has control. As in, you the parent. Parent your kid and monitor what they are viewing. Don’t expect the state to be your nanny.
The state has ALWAYS regulated access to pornography.
Except control freaks want to determine what is and is not porn. If they’re so afraid of porn, I hear the Middle East has a few countries that might suit their prudish views better.
No duh. But we are talking about making librarians and musuem curators criminally accountable for someone seeing something they shouldn’t. If the argument is about what should be allowed to even be in a public space, fine. That’s a separate argument and we would probably find some definite common ground. I personally think pornography is one of the most harmful things that people can be exposed to. That beind said, I can’t fathom a librarian being responsible for my buddies and me smuggling a playboy out of the library.
This is a response to the past four years of Transgender story time at libraries across the country and the proliferation of child access to questionable sexually oriented subject matter on the shelves. Parents and legislators want something done to keep that from ever happening again. Their method may not be the best approach, but the result they’re insisting on, a prohibition on child access to sexually oriented material in libraries, is justified.
More Mom’s for Fascism propaganda that has very little to do with South Dakota. Book burners.
Best approach? It’s not even a good approach. While I can agree on the lunacy of transgender story time, et al., I can’t even start to support criminalizing librarians. Craziness from one side does not justify knee-jerk reactions that are equally crazy.
No, you absolute clown. We are saying parents are responsible for their kids and should prevent it themselves. Stop demanding a literal nanny state because you’re a bad parent.
You cannot control everything seen by someone. Everything they read or hear or talk about. Oh… it has been tried in a few countries. But never in a free one.
“You can’t entirely so you shouldn’t at all.” That’s a strawman argument.
That’s the librarian’s job. Not yours. You and your kooky friends should be fighting over last week’s sermon – and leave the libraries alone.
No, it’s called the nirvana fallacy. A strawman is setting up a weakened, but similar, version of your argument and attacking that. Maybe you need to get to a library, bud.
Bud? What are you some keyboard tough guy?
Nothing says “Thinks he is a tough guy” like pointing out incorrect use of philosophical terms. Terrible deflection attempt. Or maybe we call it a strawman, since apparently everything is a strawman now.