The latest wave of book banning in Texas high school libraries is led by people who don’t read much. Now, they’ve gone and set up a bar that even the beloved classic Texas novel—Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry—can’t get past.

In a recent legislative hearing, the book banners put their aliteracy on public display.

Christopher Hooks writes in the invaluable Texas Monthly:

State representative Jared Patterson has never claimed, through campaign literature or any other medium, to be a reader. If he had, he might not have walked into the trap set for him last night during a House Public Education Committee hearing on his inaptly named READER Act. That proposal would add several new bureaucratic controls on the kinds of books that could be kept in or borrowed from public-school libraries. When Democratic state representative James Talarico, of Round Rock, prodded the Frisco Republican during debate, Patterson…