It’s the seventh straight day of protests that have wracked the city of Cairo. Protesters are maintaining around-the-clock vigil in Tahrir Square as organizers hold forth with speeches, prayers and anti-government chants. They’re calling for a million people to flood the square tomorrow. Police are returning to their posts, being careful to avoid the crowds of protestors in the square. Citizens are hunkered down in their homes to avoid looting or taking to the streets with clubs to defend their shops and neighborhoods, while foreigners are mobbing the airports to try to escape the country. President Hosni Mubarak may be reconsidering his adamant refusal to give in and step down. Is this the dawn of a new era for Egypt’s government? What impact would a liberalized democracy in Egypt have on the country and the region? What role might the Muslim Brotherhood play?
Republican lawmakers want to amp up workplace raids in order to deport more illegal workers. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants than any other recent president. But he has focused on deporting people with criminal records and fining employers who hire undocumented workers. Deportation isn’t cheap: Last year the US spent 5 billion dollars to deport nearly 4-hundred thousand people. Should the government spend more to deport workers without criminal records? Would the tactic make a dent in illegal immigration? Would it help unemployed citizens get jobs?
When it started, the comic strip Peanuts only appeared in seven newspapers. 60 years later it can be found in 2600. How did the comic strip reach iconic status? A new book chronicles the evolution of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts column and its spinoff products. From Snoopy before he was Joe Cool to the Great Pumpkin TV special and Peanuts lunchboxes, author Nat Gertler documents all-things-Peanuts in his colorful, interactive book, The Peanuts Collection. The book also features materials from the Schultz family archives. How did Peanuts become so much more than a comic strip?
