The library sagas continue with the most recent controversy, with St. Tammany Parish joining neighboring Washington Parish, according to an update to our Washington Parish story posted earlier today.
It seems that the St. Tammany Parish Library Board held a marathon special meeting in Slidell that lasted more than nine hours on Jan. 21 an effort to hire a new library director that parish.
This underscores what LouisianaVoice wrote earlier about efforts by outsiders to usurp local authority under the guise of protecting innocent children from all that nasty porn that the reformers are so fascinated in—so fascinated, in fact, that they go around all over the state spending inordinate amounts of time going through books in search of prurient material. The question must be asked, though, are they really trying to protect children or are they trying to stimulate their own suppressed libidos?
Anyway, four finalists for the job were interviewed after which an extended conversation was held between Sonnet Ireland, the Washington Parish Library Director who will come under fire in that parish later today, and anti-library critic Devin McGee.
One witness to the conversation noted that McGee “was sitting within 10 feet of the security guard from the local police department, he (McGee) casually walked away from the conversation to chat with someone else.”
Despite that description, MeGee later filed a police complaint in which he alleged harassment and physical contact with police.
The observer who witnessed the exchange said a St. Tammany Council member (most likely, she said, David Cougle, an original anti-library activist who co-founded the St. Tammany Library Accountability Project) called the Washington Parish President who in turn called tonight’s “ad hoc” meeting with the likely intent of terminating Ireland.
To support her theory, she attached the following state from the presiding judge in the civil case St. Tammany Parish Council v Library Board members McHugh, Parr and Taylor:
“Mr. Ireland is well-supported by those who know her knowledge, dedication and qualifications,” the witness said. “In addition to serving as Washington Parish Director, she has been a tireless advocate at the state level and in her (home) perish, St. Tammany.”
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeal dismissed the discrimination lawsuit by the three members, ruling, incredulously, that they lacked “standing” to pursue such litigation, leaving court observers scratching their heads and wondering what the prerequisites of standing might be.
Louisiana Voice 
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