Billion upon billion for no bid death contracts, but $25.5 million for support of the RIF literacy program? Not a chance. REPREHENSIBLE ACTION BY BUSHCO!!! Keep 'em stupid so they can't protest what we are doing is what they are saying. MY STOMACH CHURNS AT THIS!

Create illiterates! Good idea! They can't read the Constitution! Getting jobs that pay enough to support themselves will be challenge too... but then again they can always join the military. The killing machine will always welcome them. One smart guy, that Mr Bush!

And, for those who've read Freakonomics or other studies, he should know that merely giving out books is not the answer to solving illiteracy. This seems to be a pattern of the Bush administration in educational policy: if it sounds good, then pass it. (e.g. NCLB was based on an educational experiment where in the end, somebody messed with the stats to make the result look better).

"The future German man will no longer be a man of books, but a man of character."

This was from a Nazi propaganda speech in a film-clip, seemingly at a book-burning, shown recently on Sundance channel as part of the 2003 film Language Does Not Lie. The film is based on the diarires of the late Werner Klemperer, Professor of Literature at Dresden University, one of the rare Jews who survived the war inside Nazi Germany. During the war he devoted himself to studying the power of language as propaganda.

Limiting access to books diminishes the spread of critical thought, and makes the control of thought through propaganda all the easier.

Correction... Victor Klemperer. Not known to me to be a relative, Werner was the camp commander in Hogan's Heros.