Friday Morning Fringe: Burn 'Em, Ban 'Em, Hang 'Em From a Lightpole

1. Johnston County, N.C., school officials, having successfully banned Julia Alvarez's "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents" from both the school curriculum and the school library, and feeling empowered in their quest to save their teenagers from any appearance of "evil," are said to be "scouring" their school library shelves for other books that need to be consigned to the flames of hell. Said Vinetta Bell, an English and language arts consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction, such frenetic censorship seems to follow the broadening of school reading selections beyond "the work of well-known white, male authors of the literary canon."

2. Chapel Hill town councilman Mark Kleinschmidt has received the attention of a neo-Nazi group, Vanguard News Network, which listed Kleinschmidt as part of a "National List Of Openly-Homosexual Public Officials." After Kleinschmidt linked his personal blog to VNN to point out his notoriety, someone identifying himself as a "senior member" of the Vanguard posted a comment that if killing homosexuals ever becomes legal, "I'll be more than happy to provide this information to those that might legally string you degenerates up" -- "this information" being Kleinschmidt's home address and phone number.