Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Publications

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    Turkey and Its (Many) Discontents

    by Brian J. Grim, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and Richard Wike, Pew Global Attitudes Project Earlier this month, Turkey threatened to curtail U.S. military access to Turkish bases and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations. These actions came in response to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s approval of a resolution […]

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    The Talk Hosts Get Personal

    Three of the top-10 topics on the cable and radio talk shows last week directly involved the hosts themselves. They included an argument over the SCHIP health care program, the debate over U.S. policy in Iraq, and the strange case of Randi Rhodes.

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    The Free Exercise Clause and the Parameters of Religious Liberty

    The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that the federal government will respect the “free exercise” of religion. But the precise meaning of “free exercise” and exactly what constitutes an infringement of this right are not clear-cut. At the heart of the debate is one basic question: Do individuals or groups professing sincerely held […]

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    Modest Interest in 2008 Campaign News

    Summary of Findings The 2008 presidential campaign began much earlier than usual, but public interest in the campaign is at most only modestly higher than in previous campaigns. While Democrats are following the campaign more closely than at the same stage in previous primary contests, Republicans are no more engaged than in the past, resulting […]

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    Web Sites Key on Pakistan, Networks Focus on Germs

    What did last week’s flare up of violence in Pakistan, the scary news about a deadly “superbug,” and the ideological skirmishes among presidential hopefuls have in common? They were all top stories, but each seemed more suited for a different media sector.

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    Moderators, Movie Stars, and Marital Morality Fuel Campaign Talk

    The debut of Fred Thompson as a GOP debater helped make last week the second-biggest week of the year in the talk show universe for the 2008 presidential campaign. But so did a talk brouhaha over a more tangential topic involving the debate. Also, conservative Michael Savage lets a conservative pundit have it.