By The Center For Cartoon Studies and Mikva Challenge​

The annual Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey finds that only 26% of Americans can name all three branches of government. The Mikva Challenge and The Center for Cartoon Studies, two non-profit organizations, are teaming up to increase that number.
This is What Democracy Looks Like​: ​A Graphic Guide to Governance​ is a 32-page comic book that will be distributed to classrooms in Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee and more this fall. This comic book is the result of a collaboration of educators and word-class cartoonists, and is designed to help teachers who are working hard to prepare students to be empowered, informed, and civic-minded.

At each school, CCS instructors will give away comics and work with teachers to help students gain a deeper understanding of how their government works (and doesn’t work) and how they can make a difference in their communities and beyond.

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Posted on September 24, 2019

By The ACLU

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden over his new book, Permanent Record. The lawsuit alleges that Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, a process that prohibits millions of former intelligence agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.
“This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations,” says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and attorney for Snowden.
“Had Mr. Snowden believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow classified.

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Posted on September 23, 2019

By Jerome M. O’Connor

Four decades after the launch of World War II, a new book journeys us to places few have been.
In The Hidden Places of World War II: The Extraordinary Sites Where History Was Made During The War That Saved Civilization (Lyons Press/Rowman & Littlefield), Navy veteran, award-winning journalist, and recognized historian Jerome M. O’Connor takes readers back to the world’s biggest and most significant war, to the overlooked places to describe little-known events where history was made.
Many of the sites were thought to be closed or locked away forever or believed to never have existed. Some of the war-changing events described here were ignored for decades by military historians. With historical and contemporary photos, the book opens the eyes of both a new and older generation of readers, in an exploration of the actual locations that changed history.

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Posted on September 13, 2019