Wiretap: Pray, is this a First Folio which I see before me?

A librarian in the tiny French town of Saint Omer (pop: 16,000) discovered one of the most valuable books in the world sitting in a back room, miscatalogued. It is a First Folio 1623 edition of Shakespeare’s works, published just seven years after the bard died and one of only 230 existing copies in the world. Rémy Cordonnier said he knew the minute he picked up the worn tome that it wasn’t what the library card said it was. He also said there are scribbled director’s notes in the margins of “Henry IV.” Most experts believe roughly 800 copies of the first folio were printed. It was available to 17th century theater lovers for £1. In 2001, a copy sold at a Christie’s auction for $6.16 million. Via The Guardian.

“Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Something very strange is happening in the nation’s capital. Here’s not the strange part: Lawmakers are back in town and GOP efforts are underway to “defund” the president’s executive action on immigration. Here’s the strange part, as Greg Sargent at the Washington Post puts it: “Some Republicans have begun suggesting another, even more novel, response to Obama’s move: Legislating.”

Sargent is riffing on reporting by Mike Lillis at The Hill.

Sargent also does a great job rounding up the latest on yes-or-no Republican government-shutdown politics.

Gawker on Republican congressional aide Elizabeth Lauten’s odd scolding of the First Daughters on Facebook.

The Borowitz version: “Lauten said on Sunday morning that she ‘deeply regretted’ her attack on Sasha and Malia Obama because it ‘completely overshadowed the vicious insults I hurled at their parents.’”

The New Yorker on the vote in Europe to break up Google.