Rock Island, IL - Rock Island Public Library and the Midwest Writing Center will partner to celebrate the freedom to read with a Banned Books Week Reception and Reading next Tuesday, Sept. 24 at the Rock Island Main Library, 401 19th Street.

The Rock Island Library event begins at 6:00 pm with a public reception. From 6:30 to 7:30 pm, readers will celebrate their First Amendment rights by offering public readings from their favorite banned or challenged works. The event is free and open to the public. No registration is required. Content of some readings may not be suitable for all ears.

Attendees may also show their support for intellectual freedom by entering to win Banned Books merchandise, such as cups, bookmarks, pins, bags, t-shirts, and more.

Banned Books Week is an annual event, held this year from Sept. 22 to 28. Since 1982, Banned Books Week has rallied librarians, booksellers, authors, publishers, teachers, and readers of all types to celebrate and defend the freedom to read. Each year, the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from library shelves and from classrooms. The list of banned or challenged works includes classic novels of the 20th Century, such as The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read. For a full list of Banned or Challenged Books, and more information on why books on the list were challenged, visit the Banned Books Week Web site at http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks.

For more events at Rock Island Library, visit the library website at www.rockislandlibrary.org, follow the library on Facebook or Twitter, or call 309-732-7323 (READ).

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Amana - Would you like to turn $100 into $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 or even $5,000?

It might be possible when you buy a raffle ticket during The Old Creamery Theatre's 2nd Annual Great Raffle for the Arts!

Buy a ticket for $100 and you get the chance to be one of four cash winners, top prize of  up to $5,000! Only 400 raffle tickets will be sold.

Final cash prize amounts will be determined by actual number of tickets sold.

If all 400 tickets are sold, prizes will be as follows:

One cash prize of $5,000

One cash prize of $3,000

One cash prize of $2,000

One cash prizes of $1,000

Tell your friends and coworkers and purchase a ticket together! The drawing will be held as soon as 400 tickets have been sold, or December 22, 2013.

Tickets are available at The Old Creamery box office or call us and we'll send you a ticket order form, 319-622-6262. The box office is open 7 days a week and always at least 2 hours prior to a performance.

Money raised will go toward sound equipment and other theatre enhancements.

All prizes awarded are subject to federal and state taxes.

The Old Creamery Theatre Company is a not-for-profit professional theatre founded in 1971 in Garrison, Iowa. The company has been bringing live, professional theatre to the people of Iowa and the Midwest for 42 years.

SPRINGFIELD, IL (09/16/2013)(readMedia)-- Sixty-four Soldiers competed in the Illinois National Guard's fourth annual Adjutant General's Combatives Tournament at Camp Lincoln in Springfield, Ill, Sept. 15.

The tournament was open to all Illinois Army National Guard Soldiers regardless of combatives experience.

Fighters competed individually in brackets based on weight class, while team points were awarded based on total number of bout wins and individual placement. The 2nd Squadron, 106th Cavalry Regiment received the overall team award, an axe hand forged by Col. Michael Glisson, the 65th Troop Command Brigade commander.

The tournament was double elimination. The preliminary rounds were fought under Modern Army Combatives standard rules, which allows takedowns, joint locks and choke submissions. The championship bouts were fought under intermediate rules, which added open hand strikes to the head, punches to the body and head to toe kicks.

Individual winners included:

Bantamweight division (110 pounds and under): Sgt. Kassandra Cussen of Johnsburg, Ill., with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 33rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion in Machesney Park, Ill.

Flyweight division (110.1 to 125 pounds): Spc. Jose Duarte Jr. of Elgin, Ill., with Troop C, 2nd Squadron, 106th Cavalry Regiment in Aurora, Ill.

Lightweight division (125.1 to 140 pounds): Sgt. Jacob Trigleth of Effingham, Ill., with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry Regiment in Marion, Ill.

Welterweight division (140.1 to 155 pounds): Sgt. 1st Class Joshua Lipa of Decatur, Ill., with the Recruiting and Retention Battalion

Middleweight division (155.1 to 170 pounds): Sgt. Allen Simmerman of Chillicothe, Ill., with Company A, 33rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion in Marseilles, Ill.

Cruiserweight division (170.1 to 185 pounds): Spc. Logan Weir of Monmouth, Ill., with the 444th Chemical Company in Galesburg, Ill.

Light heavyweight division (185.1 to 205 pounds): Sgt. Thomas Luca of Springfield, Ill., with Company B, 935th Aviation Support Battalion at Chicago Midway

Heavyweight division (over 205.1 pounds): Pfc. Steven McMahon of Streamwood, Ill., with Troop C, 2nd Squadron, 106th Cavalry Regiment in Aurora, Ill.

The Modern Army Combative Program (MACP) uses competitions as a tool to motivate Soldiers to train, build esprit de corps and to build confidence by testing techniques against a fully resistant opponent. MACP Instructors with the Illinois Army National Guard administered this year's tournament.

During the tournament, MACP Instructors gave a tactical demonstration to present several techniques and training methods recently added to the MACP course curriculum. The demonstration included close quarters fighting in full combat equipment, detainee handling and hand-cuffing, as well as extraction of a non-compliant subject from a vehicle.

For more information on Illinois' Combatives Program and updates on future competitions, please visit the Illinois Army National Guard Combatives Team's Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Illinois-Army-National-Guard-Combatives-Team/224254734272195

Danville, Va. – Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead will speak to students and faculty at 11a.m. on September 17, Constitution Day, in Oliver Hall at Danville Community College in Danville, Va. in order to emphasize the importance of the Constitution in the era of the emerging American police state. Described by one historian as "the owners' manual to the greatest form of government the world has ever known," the Constitution has come under increasing attack by government agents in recent years, a phenomenon which is thoroughly documented in Whitehead's new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (SelectBooks, 2013).

"The Constitution provides us with the blueprint for maintaining a balanced republic, and it must always be the starting point. Each of us, from public officials to citizens, has an affirmative duty to hold our government accountable," said Whitehead. "However, in the end, it is still the people who hold the ultimate power, and with it the concomitant responsibility, to maintain our freedoms."

Hailed by those at all points along the political spectrum for its masterful chronicling of America's shift away from the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, which historically shielded the citizenry from government abuses, A Government of Wolves paints a chilling portrait of a nation in the final stages of transformation into a police state, complete with surveillance cameras, drug-sniffing dogs, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, blood draws at DUI checkpoints, mosquito drones, tasers, privatized prisons, GPS tracking devices, zero tolerance policies, overcriminalization, and free speech zones. Drawing on his vast knowledge of history, culture, and law, John W. Whitehead compellingly argues that fiction has now become fact. Indeed, with sci fi movies such as Minority Report, 1984, The Matrix, They Live, and V for Vendetta pointing the way, America has become that futuristic society of celluloid fantasies in which a passive, uninformed populace gives rise to an overbearing, out-of-control government. This is the future Aldous Huxley and George Orwell warned against. This is the present that Whitehead cautions could become an endless nightmare from which there is no awakening unless we act now. As American historian and nationally syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff notes in his special introduction to A Government of Wolves: "We have been through some troubling times before in our nation's history. There were the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 . . . the Red Raids in the early 1920s . . . the Japanese internment camps of World War Two . . . What we have now may be more insidious. Indeed, I believe we are in a worse state now than ever before in this country. With the surveillance state closing in on us, we are fighting to keep our country free from our own government."

John Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated, and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law. A prominent leader in the national dialogue on civil liberties and human rights and a formidable champion of the Constitution, Whitehead's concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him in 1982 to establish The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and human rights. "John Whitehead is one of the most eloquent and knowledgeable defenders of liberty, and opponents of the growing American police state, writing today," declared Ron Paul, twelve-term US congressman and former presidential candidate. "I am pleased to recommend A Government of Wolves to anyone interested in learning how modern America increasingly resembles a dystopian science fiction film instead of a Constitutional Republic."

A Government of Wolves is available in bookstores and online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.