We got trouble, right here in....
... Livingston County. Certain folks are up in arms about other people's children reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Augusten Burroughs in high school English classes. And having failed to convince the school board and the population at large to obey their demands, they've adopted a new tactic.

"If it's determined that these printed materials are sexually explicit matter as defined in the statue, and the distribution of which to minors constitutes a criminal offense, whether it would be a school officer or a library or bookstore person wouldn't make a difference," said Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse. "There are no exemptions for those people."

Morse, U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox received letters of complaint last month from Vicki Fyke of the Livingston Organization for Values in Education that assignment of four books in the schools may violate laws against distribution of pornography to minors.

Morse plans to have an answer by Monday, and Murphy referred the matter to the FBI, a move his office called "routine" but free-speech groups called "bizarre."...

The Michigan state code appears to contradict Mr. Morse, but that's not to say that the zealots and a like-minded prosecutor, or one who wishes to court their votes, couldn't make life uncomfortable for booksellers, teachers, or librarians who defy their dictates.

This particular storm's been brewing for a while. Ms. Fyke and her followers initially tried to get the school board to remove the books from the high school, and adopted this tactic only after their demands were rejected by the school board after a period of comment from parents and other people. (Fyke apparently does not children or grandchildren in local schools.)

Fortunately there seem to be folks -- including bookstore owners and library directors as well as the state branch of the ACLU -- who are willing to stand up to well-funded bullies.