Who Needs Books Anyway?

I know I complain about the library. A lot. But, as it's functioning as my de facto office for the time being, I'd like to once again mention one of it's many, many shortcomings.

They don't have any books. Matt Yglesias' new book? Nope. The book reader 'pw' suggested, China: Fragile Superpower? Sorry. The new book The Dark Side, about the Bush/Cheney torture regime that everyone's talking about? Lost. Their only book on blogging? Lost.

My university library was connected to almost every other library in the state, and I had access to 25 million volumes. I can only remember a couple of instances (out of hundreds) where I couldn't get what I wanted, no matter how obscure, academic, or recent a publication it might have been. I would give my firstborn child to have that access again.

Not here. It's especially sad in Matt's case, as he's a DC resident. I've said it before, but if it's a public facility in DC, and it's not federally owned, it's almost certainly underfunded, understaffed, and underutilized. To all those of you that think your state's politicians are a collective bunch of incompetents -- this is what happens when you don't have anyone to advocate for you on a federal level. It's criminal that the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia don't have a single person in Congress to represent them. And why is that? Because Republicans would never allow us to have a voice, as that voice would almost certainly be one of the most consistently Democratic voting blocks in the country. 'Cause, you know, basic democratic principles should really be subservient to the political interests of one party.