Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. May 7, 2013.
The public’s views of whether Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence have changed little in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. Currently, 42% say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers, while 46% say Islam does not encourage violence more than other religions. These are similar to opinions about Islam and violence for most of the past decade. But in March 2002, six months after the 9/11 attacks, just 25% said Islam was more likely to encourage violence while 51% disagreed. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/5-7-13%20Islam%20Release.pdf [PDF format, 10 pages].
Congressional Research Service. May 3, 2013.
This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past U.S. military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. The listing often contains references, especially from 1980 forward, to continuing military deployments, especially U.S. military participation in multinational operations associated with NATO or the United Nations. Most of these post-1980 instances are summaries based on presidential reports to Congress related to the War Powers Resolution. A comprehensive commentary regarding any of the instances listed is not undertaken here.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/209263.pdf [PDF format, 39 pages].
United States Department of Defense. April 2013.
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 requests $526.6 billion to protect and advance security interests at home and abroad during the coming fiscal year and into the future. This budget reflects the difficult choices involved with protecting America’s security interests and role as a global power at a time of declining budgets and ongoing fiscal uncertainty about the future. This paper highlights the Department’s ongoing efforts to achieve an agile and ready force while maintaining the right capabilities and capacity to rapidly deal with contingencies across the globe.
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/DefenseBudgetPrioritiesChoicesFiscalYear2014.pdf [PDF format, 33 pages].
U.S. Census Bureau. May 8, 2013.
About two in three eligible blacks (66.2 percent) voted in the 2012 presidential election, higher than the 64.1 percent of non-Hispanic whites who did so, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. This marks the first time that blacks have voted at a higher rate than whites since the Census Bureau started publishing statistics on voting by the eligible citizen population in 1996. The report provides analysis of the likelihood of voting by demographic factors, such as race, Hispanic origin, sex, age and geography (specifically, census divisions). It draws upon data from the November 2012 Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement and looks at presidential elections back to 1996. Using the race definitions from 1968 and the total voting-age population, whites voted at higher rates than blacks in every presidential election between 1968, when the Census Bureau began publishing voting data by race, and 1992.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-568.pdf [PDF format, 13 pages].
Migration Policy Institute. May 2nd, 2013.
This article focuses on South American immigrants residing in the United States, examining the population’s size, geographic distribution, admission categories, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. [Note: contains copyrighted material].
http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?ID=949 [HTML format].
