A couple aspects of this book banning kerfluffle seem to stick out above the partisan politics, the intrinsic fear of censorship, and the general chaos associated with anything in this forum of late.

I'm taking my impressions of the event from the newspaper article initially cited. May be wrong, but I got the impression that Palin asked the Librarian if there were procedures by which one (citizen, public official, anyone) could get books removed from the stack/list and if the city government under which the library worked could overrule the Librarian. I don't see where Palin or anyone else demanded that specific books be removed. I interpreted this as a exercise in determining boundaries.

Regarding Palin asking for the resignation of a number of city employees when she took office, I see no issue. Per the article, these people were all hired by her predecessor and some campaigned for him. Evidently, the jobs were not civil service but were patronage positions. Any new administration wants its own people in key suppport positions. Does a new president carry the cabinet of his predecessor, even of the same party? Loyalty test? No, I took that as the basic "Are you going to do your job and carry out the programs of the new administration or are you going to sabotage our efforts to make me look bad?"

Now regarding censorship --- this is more philosophical in nature. Everyone recoils at the thought on censorship, evoking images on Nazi book burnings, Fahrenheit 451, and those terribly serious movies of the 50's & 60's that had the small town power figure foaming at the mouth as he demanded the immediate destruction of Catcher in the Rye or Huckleberry Finn (and also outlawing rock and roll and dancing). But is censorship inherently evil? Too often today, the censors are a small group of religious nuts who want to impose their view on the community. Replace the foaming at the mouth tyrant and the religious nuts with a majority of concerned parents who want to remove, not To Kill a Mockingbird, but Terry Southern's Candy. Now personally I enjoyed the latter book, but I don't know if I'd want it on the shelves available to any horny 10 year old. But it is something that should likely be discussed and decided by the community. And what better example of democracy than to have the community decide what is acceptable to themselves. Sure, you will lose some you should win, at least temporarily. But in the long run, The Merchant of Venice and One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich will out.