1/19/2014::Some of yesterday's leftovers

Idaho rep tackles faith healing after child deaths

After several recent child deaths, an Idaho lawmaker wants to follow Oregon's lead and require parents to seek medical help for kids suffering from potentially fatal conditions — even if their religion frowns on it.

Since 2009, numerous children of members of the Followers of Christ in Marsing, Idaho, have died of treatable causes, according to their autopsy reports. Many children are buried at a cemetery overlooking the Snake River that is favored by the church.

The church, with locations in Idaho, California and Oregon, relies on faith healing, not medicine, to help sick members.

Democratic Rep. John Gannon of Boise says Idaho's existing faith-healing exemptions for injury-to-a-child crimes should be updated. He has support from Linda Martin, an Oregon woman who left the church in Idaho decades ago and has returned this week to champion the changes.

Hiroo Onoda, Soldier Who Hid in Jungle for Decades, Dies at 91

Hiroo Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army officer who remained at his jungle post on an island in the Philippines for 29 years, refusing to believe that World War II was over, and returned to a hero’s welcome in the all but unrecognizable Japan of 1974, died on Thursday in Tokyo. He was 91.

His death, at a hospital there, was announced by the Japanese government.

Caught in a time warp, Mr. Onoda, a second lieutenant, was one of the war’s last holdouts: a soldier who believed that the emperor was a deity and the war a sacred mission; who survived on bananas and coconuts and sometimes killed villagers he assumed were enemies; who finally went home to the lotus land of paper and wood which turned out to be a futuristic world of skyscrapers, television, jet planes and pollution and atomic destruction.

Wisconsin school suspends black players because ’3-point’ signals ‘looked’ gang related

A Wisconsin school district said this week that it followed proper procedure when it suspended two African-American basketball players because they had made hand gestures that “looked like” gang signs.

On Jan. 1, the Sheboygan Falls News ran what they hoped would be a feel-good story about Jordan, Jamal and Juwaun Jackson moving to the district and playing basketball for Sheboygan Falls High School. The paper took several photos for the article, but decided to publish the “goofy” photo of the boys joking around in Falcons’ basketball uniforms.

But the school suspended two of the brothers after story ran in the sports section of the paper because parents suspected that the boys were making gang-related hand signs in the photo. The school even had the police department investigate.

“I had no idea,” Jordan Jackson told TMJ News. “They told us it meant blood.”

North Carolina Just Gave Millionaires A Tax Cut, Raised Taxes On The Poorest 900,000 Working Families

The change took effect at the beginning of 2014, meaning that the taxes those families file this spring will be the last to feature the state’s tax break for the working poor. The provision, known as the Earned Income Tax Credit or EITC, will also be 10 percent less generous in its final year. State-level EITCs work by tacking on an additional benefit to the federal EITC, and the law repealing North Carolina’s EITC for 2014 also cut the credit from 5 percent to 4.5 percent of the federal benefit.

In order to qualify for the federal or state-level tax credit, tax filers must earn less than about $50,000. The goal of the credit is to buoy the incomes of working people whose employers pay them too little to provide the economic stability that having a job is supposed to ensure. Many conservatives who oppose other policies to boost poor peoples’ income, such as minimum wage hikes, support the EITC as an alternative way of keeping working people out of poverty without interfering with how private businesses operate.

WATCH: Fox News Host Says Americans Don’t Know Their History, Then Makes Up Some American History

Andrea Tantaros — host of Fox News’ The Five — claimed on Wednesday that Americans are less free because they don’t know their history. Then she helpfully gave a perfect example of how Americans don’t know their history.

“If you ask most people, they don’t even know why we left England,” she said. “They don’t even know why some guy in Boston got his head blown off because he tried to secretly raise the tax on tea. Most people don’t know that.”

BREAKING: Pennsylvania Judge Strikes Down New Voter ID Law

More than a year later, Judge Bernard L. McGinley ruled on Friday against proponents of the law, issuing a permanent injunction against the voter ID requirement. In his opinion, McGinley noted that “In Pennsylvania, the right of qualified electors to vote is a fundamental one.” Therefore, “Pennsylvania precedent does not permit regulation of the right to vote when such regulation denies the franchise, or ‘make[s] it so difficult as to amount to a denial.’” McGinley also found no compelling state interest was present that could override this right, noting that no in-person voter fraud is “exceedingly rare” and that “a vague concern about voter fraud does not rise to a level that justifies the burdens constructed here.”