because cuban children are not like the rest of us.

Following the apparent surge of Cuba-related news, we have this interesting tidbit from today's New York Times. Seems that the Miami-Dade School Board voted 6-3 to ban a children's book on Cuba, entitled "Vamos a Cuba"/"A Visit to Cuba" due to its allegedly containing "deceptive information and paint[ing] an idealistic picture of life in Cuba."

The cover of the book shows smiling Cuban children in the uniform of the Pioneers, the Communist youth group to which every Cuban student must belong. The 32-page book describes July 26, a Cuban national holiday that celebrates a historic day in Fidel Castro's revolution, as a carnival where people dance and sing. Critics also found misleading a page reading, "People in Cuba eat, work, and go to school like you do."

"This is a very simplistic portrayal of all of the countries in the series because it's intended for our youngest readers," said Joseph Garcia, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Superintendent Rudy Crew. "Complex subjects like Communism are not addressed."

But Juan Amador, the parent who made the complaint, said the book depicted Cuba as a paradise.

"It portrays a life in Cuba that does not exist and omits a lot of facts," Mr. Amador said. "Such a book should not be accessible to our children."

Obviously, because a children's book suggests that Cuban children go about daily life in a way similar to their American counterparts, it is "misleading" and ought to be taken out of schools. God forbid that six-year-olds not be explained the horrors of socialist government gone awry.

Predictably, however, the ACLU comes to the rescue!

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said the ban violated the First Amendment and pointed out that the book was optional reading material and not a required textbook. The A.C.L.U. plans to file a lawsuit next week to challenge the decision.

"This is a throwback to the kind of politics we saw in Miami a few decades ago in which the war against Castro was played out as a war against the First Amendment in Miami," Mr. Simon said. "It's a self-inflicted embarrassing black eye for Miami-Dade County."

Indeed. The situation is almost as mortifying as the Harry Potter book-banning controversy in Georgia, save for the fact that the Gwinnett County School Board eventually made the less embarrassing decision. In the meantime, the book - and the 23 others that join it in its series - are being taken off of library shelves. Oh reactionary politics, up yours.