Political Issues

MP3s, dishwashers, can openers, and Twitter are examples of "good enough" technologies.

The Federal Trade Commission's Spam Summit was an occasion to celebrate the (limited) success of the CAN-SPAM Act and to discuss the latest criminal threats online.

Few Palestinian families have deeper roots in Jerusalem than Sari Nusseibeh’s. In the 7th century, immediately after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Omar the Great entrusted one of Nusseibeh’s ancestors with the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From childhood onward, Nusseibeh, who was educated as a philosopher at Oxford and […]

In many countries around the globe, gay and lesbian couples are seeking the right to marry or enter into other legally recognized forms of domestic partnerships. The legal definition of marriage is in flux, particularly in the developed world.

Summary of Findings Dramatic events in London and Scotland last week attracted a large news audience. Roughly a third of the public paid very close attention to news that British police had found and defused two car bombs in London, and another 31% followed the story fairly closely. Fully 21% said this was the single […]

Before a predominantly black audience at Howard University, the eight candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination focused on issues of special interests to minorities including health care, education, taxes and racial discrimination.

Summary of Findings In the first six months of 2007, the Iraq war has captivated the public’s interest and eclipsed most of the year’s other major news stories, including the 2008 presidential election, two major Washington political scandals, and news from other international trouble spots. Iraq has been the most closely followed news story in […]

A 47-nation survey finds global public opinion increasingly wary of the world’s dominant nations and disapproving of their leaders. Anti-Americanism is extensive, as it has been for the past five years. At the same time, the image of China has slipped significantly among the publics of other major nations.

(For more recent public opinion data on the death penalty, see a 2011 analysis.) by Robert Ruby, Senior Editor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life In the last 35 years, beginning with its temporary moratorium on the death penalty, the Supreme Court has changed its view of capital punishment and done so more than […]

For most of the nation’s history, public religious displays were not controversial. But in recent decades, a growing number of citizens and civil liberties groups have sued towns, cities and states over religious symbols in the public square, arguing that these displays should be removed because they violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment […]