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Last week Governor Lamont's re-election campaign began broadcasting a new television commercial showing him walking through an office carrying a cup of coffee and boasting about how "impatient" he is.

Also last week Connecticut's Hearst newspapers published a shocking investigative report about longstanding terrible conditions at state government's mental hospital for children, the Albert J. Solnit Children's Center in Middletown. The report found that when July ended 38 of 159 hospital employees were absent, receiving workers' compensation because of injuries. In four weeks 22 employees were hurt by patients.

The hospital building is in decrepit and even dangerous condition, with broken glass and other sharp debris becoming weapons and instruments of self-harm in the hands of patients. 

Housekeeping is poor. Patients often commit vandalism. Wall paneling has been pulled off. There is mold in shower rooms. Recreational opportunities for patients are extremely limited.

The hospital, which was recently transferred from the state Department of Children and Families to UConn Health, is licensed to care for 50 patients but recently was so overwhelmed that its patient population was reduced to 24. Even when patients are deemed to have improved enough for release to less restrictive treatment, there is often no place for them. Special group homes seem to be needed.

Hospital management denied a request by the Hearst reporters to inspect the facility, and the governor's office denied them access to budget requests made for the hospital. UConn Health and DCF acknowledged that the hospital requires much improvement, pledged to deliver it, and said progress is being made. But it will take time and probably cost millions of dollars.

The hospital's conditions didn't collapse overnight. Its unionized employees long have been complaining about them but not loudly enough to cause the governor to bring his coffee cup, his purported impatience, his videographers, and the Hearst reporters for a tour of the facility. Maybe that will become politically permissible after the election.

Also after the election maybe the governor and the General Assembly can undertake an investigation to discover where the growing numbers of disturbed children in Connecticut are coming from. No law says only the symptoms of big problems, not their causes, can be acted on. But then the causes of problems may be scarier than the problems themselves.  

* * *

Last week was what the American Library Association calls Banned Books Week, wherein public and school librarians in Connecticut and throughout the country warn everyone in the land of the free and home of the brave that anyone who questions them about the books they place on their shelves is a budding fascist.

This celebration is misconceived, since no books in the United States are or can be banned. Removing them from libraries or school curriculums just deems them inappropriate for the circumstances, and some of those reasons may be correct.

Like everyone else in democratic government, librarians are obliged to answer to the public, directly or through chains of command. 

Of course some challenges to library books and school books are nutty and made rudely by hysterics. But then the paranoia and unaccountability demonstrated by many librarians are nutty and rude as well, and some of their book selections are nutty or politically motivated. Even when they are not nutty or politically motivated they may be fairly questioned.

A good case in point was cited by the Connecticut Mirror last week. A library in New Haven had obtained a children's book, aimed at ages 4 through 8, whose theme was to normalize transgenderism. It prompted a complaint.

Should libraries be introducing and normalizing transgenderism to children that young? Are there no more compelling books for those children? How politically correct must a librarian in New Haven be?

One doesn't have to be a Nazi to pose those questions.

In any case the irony of Banned Books Week is that, by its own standards, the biggest censors in the world are librarians themselves. For with a virtually infinite number of books available, librarians choose against millions of them every day.     

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