Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Political Issues

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    An Impassioned Debate: An Overview of the Death Penalty in America

    (Updated June 26, 2008) In this article: The role of the courts Lethal injection and the Baze case Child rape and the Kennedy case The history of the death penalty The death penalty worldwide Few public policy issues have inflamed passions as consistently and as strongly as the debate over capital punishment. Religious communities have […]

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    Death Penalty Timeline

    Timeline provided by Stateline.org Return to the death penalty issue page  The Death Penalty Since 1972 (Links to U.S. Supreme Court decisions provided by oyez.org and the Web site of the U.S. Supreme Court)  1972 Furman v. Georgia: The U.S. Supreme Court effectively voids 40 state death penalty statutes and suspends capital punishment, ruling that […]

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    2007 National Survey of Latinos

    The 2007 National Survey of Latinos (NSL) coincided with a period of increased local- and state-level legislative actions, and stepped-up enforcement measures that accompanied the growing national debate over illegal immigration.

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    Terrorism, Tight Credit, and Tragedies Emerge in the News in Third Quarter

    The Iraq policy debate re-emerged as the No. 1 story, replacing the campaign, in the third quarter, according to a detailed analysis of PEJ’s News Coverage Index. But terror fears, a troubled economy, and man-made disasters also grabbed the media’s attention. So too, did the three top newsmakers who ran afoul of the law.