NEWS OF THE DAY
1 _ Contentious hearing: House Democrats on Thursday stepped up their complaints about the way that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, conducted a contentious hearing Wednesday on the Internal Revenue Service. After Lois Lerner, an IRS administrator at the center of an inquiry into the agency’s scrutiny of applications from nonprofit groups active in politics, asserted her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, Issa abruptly ended the hearing without allowing Democrats an opportunity to speak or question Lerner. As Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the senior Democrat on the panel, tried to speak, Issa ordered the committee microphones shut off.
2 _ Beard bias: The Philadelphia school district has been accused in a federal lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice of discriminating against an employee who said he couldn’t trim his beard for religious reasons. The complaint alleges the school district in October 2010 instituted a grooming policy preventing school police and security officers from having beards more than a quarter of an inch long and discriminated against Siddiq AbuBakr and other people by failing to accommodate their religious beliefs.
3Burned _ boy: In the years that followed the 1998 attack that horribly burned her then-8-year-old son, Colleen Middleton felt fear and frustration over the possibility that the person she believed was responsible would never be taken to trial. That fear and frustration was replaced by relief Thursday as a judge ruled that a Texas man accused of dousing the boy with gasoline and setting him on fire when he was a teenager can be tried as an adult for murder after the victim died from his burns 13 years later. Don Willburn Collins was 13 when authorities allege he attacked Robert Middleton on his eighth birthday near the younger boy’s home in Splendora, about 35 miles northeast of Houston. Middleton was burned across 99 percent of his body and endured years of physical therapy before he died in 2011 from skin cancer blamed on his burns.
4 _ Popular pope: A new Pew Research poll found an overwhelming embrace of Pope Francis, who has been trying to steer the Catholic Church toward a greater emphasis on compassion for the poor and marginalized. Eighty five percent of U.S. Catholics surveyed said they viewed the pontiff favorably. However, the poll found no change in the number of people who self-identify as Catholic or in the number sitting in church pews on Sundays. Twenty-two percent described themselves as Catholic, the same figure as in the year preceding Francis’ election. Forty percent said they attended Mass at least once a week, unchanged from just before the papal transition.
5Dalai _ Lama in Senate: The Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, delivered the opening invocation in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, praying “to Buddha and all” and suggesting that purity of thought will guide humanity’s actions.