When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

The opening prayer by Democrat Juan Mendez included a call to work to help the state and its residents flourish and to “honor the Constitution and the secular equality it brings.” But he didn’t pray to any deity, which infuriated some Republicans who are Christians. After his prayer, House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro said Mendez’s decision not to pray to God didn’t meet House rules. Speaker David Gowan then called on a Baptist minister on hand in an apparently planned response.   read more

A man who spent 20 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit cannot put San Francisco on trial for violating his due-process rights, a federal magistrate judge ruled Wednesday. Although Maurice “Twone” Caldwell raised legitimate questions about a police officer’s motive to frame him for murder, a prosecutor “broke the chain of causation” by reviewing all the evidence before he brought the case to trial, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte found.   read more

A right-wing conspiracy theorist who claims President Obama worked as a gay prostitute in his twenties is the favorite for a spot on the Texas Board of Education, which approves curriculum and textbooks. Mary Lou Bruner, a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher, has said climate change is a Marxist hoax, evolution is atheist propaganda, and that baby dinosaurs rode on Noah’s Ark and became extinct after the flood cleared out their vegetation.   read more

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canadians would appreciate it if Americans paid more attention to what's going on around the globe.“Having a little more of an awareness of what’s going on in the rest of the world, I think is, is what many Canadians would hope for Americans,” he said.   read more

Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday refused to block an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal-fired power plants. Roberts rejected an application from 20 states that said a federal appeals court in Washington had effectively thwarted their victory in the Supreme Court in June, when the high court ruled that the EPA had failed to take into account the punishing costs its mercury regulation would impose.   read more

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter assured an audience of computer security experts Wednesday that he was not in favor of a “back door” that would give the government access to data that is protected by encryption. “Just to cut to the chase, I’m not a believer in back doors or a single technical approach,” Carter said to loud applause during a panel discussion at the conference. “I don’t think it’s realistic. I don’t think that’s technically accurate.”   read more

While GOP task forces are talking about national security, jobs and health care, the House floor has largely been turned over to the obscure and the arcane. Instead of wrapping up a typical day’s work at suppertime, early afternoon getaways are the norm. And it could remain that way for much of the year. “There’s not a single priority issue,” said No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland, citing issues such as aid to Flint, Michigan, as it grapples with tainted drinking water.   read more

When South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill this week that would have required transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their sex at birth, it wasn’t his first break with members of his Republican Party. Daugaard — who says he has no aspirations to remain in politics once his second term expires — said he waited until after the vote on the tax bill before revealing his decision to veto the transgender bathroom measure, so that it wouldn’t affect the outcome.   read more

A woman found out the hard way at the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that you can't dress to kill while going through airport security. Officials say she was stopped Sunday at a security checkpoint with a pair of gun-shaped stiletto heels. The woman was told she had to put the shoes in her checked baggage.   read more

Almost 1 million U.S. physicians can write a prescription for opioid painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin — one pathway to opioid addiction. But, because of regulatory hurdles and other factors, fewer than 32,000 doctors are permitted to prescribe buprenorphine, a medication to treat such addiction. Less than half of the 2.5 million Americans who could benefit from medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction receive it.   read more

The Seventh Circuit denied immunity to a police officer accused of siccing his dog on a burglary suspect trapped in an empty pool, yelling, “You like to rob houses, punk?” The officer yelling “you like to rob houses, punk?” before commanding his dog to attack casts doubt on his assertion that he made a split-second safety calculation,” the judge ruled.   read more

The state of Michigan restricted Flint from switching water sources last April unless it got approval from Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration under the terms of a $7 million loan needed to help the city emerge from state management, according to a document released Wednesday. By the time the loan agreement was in place, complaints about Flint’s water quality were growing louder, but officials had not yet discovered that improperly treated Flint River water had caused lead to leach from pipes.   read more

Indiana cannot withhold federal funds from relief organizations that help refugee families from Syria settle in the state, a federal judge ruled. Gov. Mike Pence (R) was among 31 governors who vowed not to let any of the millions of refugees fleeing slaughter in Syria resettle in their states. Marion County-based Exodus Refugee Immigration sued the governor, claiming that Pence’s decision hampers its efforts to place about 19 Syrians who had already received federal refugee status.   read more

Screened high-tech specialists will be brought in to try to breach the Defense Department’s public Internet pages in a pilot program aimed at finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Defense officials laid out the broad outlines of the plan Wednesday, but had few details on how it will work, what Pentagon systems would be tested and how the hackers would be compensated. Called “Hack the Pentagon,” the program will begin next month.   read more

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a Democratic effort to add $600 million to a bipartisan bill targeting heroin and opioid abuse. Supporters of the immediate funding won a majority of the Senate votes. But the 48-47 tally fell short of the 60 votes required for an attempt by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to add the money. Shaheen said “the reality is unless we provide the resources to make these programs work it’s like giving a drowning person a life preserver that has no air in it.”   read more

Utah senators on Wednesday voted to abolish the death penalty, advancing what had been considered a longshot proposal in the conservative state. The measure marks a stunning turn in Utah, where a year ago lawmakers voted to reinstate the use of the firing squad as a backup execution method. Lawmakers argued that if the state has a shortage of lethal injection drugs, it must still find a way to kill death row inmates.   read more