EthixBytes
(A Collection of Quotes, Comments, Statistics, and News Items)
"Religious people," said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "should not be the servant of the state, nor the master of the state, but the conscience of the state."
"If you buy 50 mega-lottery tickets a week, you would win the jackpot once every 30,000 years. Or if you purchase one ticket every mile your drive, you would make 167 trips to the moon and back before winning." Odds expert and author Professor Mike Orkin.
According to Amnesty International, in 2000, four countries around the world accounted for 88 percent of all the executions-the United States, Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. One U.S. state alone, Texas, accounted for 47 percent of executions in America.
"Statistics show that in Texas, which has more convicted murderers than any other state, capital defendants with appointed counsel were 28 per cent more likely to be convicted than those who can hire their own attorneys, and 44 per cent more likely to receive a death sentence if convicted." Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O`Connor in a speech suggesting that innocent people have been put to death in the U.S.
"About 850 million people in the world go hungry every day. In 2001, each American farmer feeds 130 people, one-third of them outside the U.S. By the year 2010 the American farmer will need to feed 200 people, one-half of them outside the U.S." NBC Today
"You mean creating surplus embryos is fine, discarding embryos is fine, keeping them in the freezer in perpetuity is fine, the only thing that is not fine is using them for medical research." Bioethicist Bonnie Steinbock of the University of Albany in response to Roman Catholic opposition to using stem cells for potentially life-saving research.
"The U.S. national debt is $5.8 trillon, of which $2.4 trillion is government obligations. The other $3.4 trillion is money the government owes to banks and investors, for which the government will pay $204 billion in interest payments, about 10% of the entire federal budget." News article by Bob Deans, Austin American Statesman
"Present research and numerous studies indicate the incidence of sexual abuse by clergy has reached horrific proportions-about 12 percent of ministers have engaged in sexual intercourse with members and 30-35 percent acknowledge sexually inappropriate behavior." Joe E. Trull in a speech to Austin Baptist ministers and in Broken Trust: Confronting Clergy Sexual Abuse, Baptist General Convention of Texas.
"The problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution." Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun near the end of his tenure in 1984, who played a significant role in restoring capital punishment in the U.S. in 1976.
"The SBC resolution(on campaign finance reform) against limiting `divinely granted` free speech contains code phrases for allowing rich special interests to continue using their money to corrupt America`s political process. Because we don`t have fair and effective laws limiting the influence of money, America has the most corrupt government in the industrial world." Charles Reed, Waco, Baptist Standard Letter
"International arms sales grew 8 percent last year, reaching $36.9 billion, the highest figure since 1994. The U.S.A. remained the world`s leading arms merchant with almost $18.6 billion in sales-Russia was second with $7.7 billion, followed by France with $4.1 billion, Germany with $1.1 billion, Britain with $600 million, China with $400 million, and Italy with $100 million." Congressional Research Service and AP
