Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday grilled a pastor who supports the separation of church and state, asking him why he did not share the "good news" that non-Christians were going to Hell.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing about religious freedom on Tuesday, Gohmert told the Rev. Barry Lynn, who serves as the executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, that the Founders of the country - and Franklin Roosevelt - had often mentioned religion in their writings.

Lynn pointed out that he had received the Medal of Freedom from the Roosevelt Institute for his work supporting the freedom to worship.

"But that wasn't awarded by Roosevelt himself?" Gohmert interrupted, before asking if the pastor understood that the "meaning" of being a Christian was to evangelize.

"Do you believe in sharing the good news that will keep people from going to Hell, consistent with Christian beliefs?" the Texas Republican wondered.

Lynn, however, disagreed with the congressman's "construction of what Hell is like or why one gets there."

"So, you do not believe somebody would go to Hell if they do not believe Jesus is the way, the truth, the life?" Gohmert pressed.

Justina Pelletier, a teenager from Connecticut, has been kept from her family by the Massachusetts government for 16 months as a battle raged over care for the ill girl. Now she may finally be able to go home.

Justina's family posted a video of her pleas to return to Connecticut. "All I want is to be with my family and my friends back home right now. ... I need to be home with my family. Please let me go home right now," the 16-year-old said from a wheelchair.

"Through the entire 16 months of this tragedy, the one person we've not heard from publicly is Justina herself. Now we can see her in her own words asking Judge [Johnston] and Governor Patrick for her release," Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a spokesman for the Pelletier family, said in a statement.

Justina's case gained national prominence in the US over issues of medical child abuse - a syndrome in which parents fake illnesses in children to gain attention - and parental rights, the Boston Globe reported.

Justina's parents say their daughter suffers from mitochondrial disorder, a rare genetic illness that can cause severe fatigue and intestinal issues. She was being treated by Mark Korson, a metabolic disorders specialist at Tufts Medical Center outside Boston, Mass. She had been a patient there for several years when Dr. Korson told her parents to take Justina to a gastroenterologist at Boston Children's Hospital in February 2013, Slate reported.

But Justina never saw the gastroenterologist, and she never returned home.

While this story is not new, I must have missed it back in April when it first broke and it is absolutely incredible. The reason I am posting on it today is because we have new information which turns an already shocking story into something far more terrifying.So let's get into some background first.

This is the story of Ethan Chaplin, who back in April was twirling a pencil in his seventh grade classroom in Vernon, NJ. One of the class bullies saw an opportunity to be a jerk and yelled: "He's making gun motions, send him to juvie."

Rather than demonstrating any sort of common sense, the teacher apparently had a panic attack and reported him, which resulted in a two-day suspension. Here's what Vernon Superintendent Charles Maranzano had to say about it:

"We're responsible for their mental and physical health and safety and security. When a student misbehaves or displays actions that are non-conforming or don't meet our expectations, it causes us some concerns."

I guess I don't understand what schools are like these days, but the classes I grew up in were filled to the brim with misbehavior to the extent that a twirling pencil would be seen as a positive indicator of student interaction. Somehow, we all survived.

As if that part of the story isn't bizarre enough, Ethan wasn't allowed to return to class until he underwent a psychological evaluation in which he was forced to strip and give blood samples that caused him to pass out (sounds a lot like how police in New Mexico force anal probes on citizens for no reason).

Nervous about the rash of school shootings that have taken place over the past decade, an Oklahoma company has launched a new product that, with a lack of effective gun control laws, promises to protect schoolchildren will bulletproof blankets.

The Bodyguard Blanket, designed and manufactured by ProTecht, is advertised as a 5/16-inch thick bulletproof rectangle that students can wear over their back in the event of a tragedy at school. The product comes adorned with a backpack straps and is reportedly able to protect against nails and shards of metal as well as bullets.

Police: Woman was naked with boys when she was discovered by boyfriend
A 30-year old Sioux Falls woman has been charged with rape, sexual contact with a child, and sexual exploitation of a minor after her boyfriend discovered her naked in their apartment Wednesday night with at least three boys between age 7 and 10.

Sioux Falls police spokesman Sam Clemens said Anne Elizabeth Doubler's boyfriend returned home with the couple's 4-year-old son and caught her with the boys. The incident took place in their apartment in the 600 block of North Lewis Avenue.

A man who gunned down two police officers and a woman Sunday in Las Vegas left behind social media postings that show his concerns over Benghazi, chemtrails, gun control laws, and the government's treatment of rancher Cliven Bundy.

Neighbors identified Jerad and Amanda Miller as the suspects who shot the officers execution-style as they ate lunch at a pizza restaurant, and then shot a woman outside a Walmart in the same plaza.

The couple's apartment was searched Monday morning, and authorities in Lafayette, Indiana, confirmed that Las Vegas police had contacted them about the case.

[Updates added below, showing the couple's postings on right-wing websites such as InfoWars and Breitbart.]

Witnesses said the couple announced the shootings were the start of a revolution and draped the victims' bodies with American Revolution-era Gadsden flags - bearing the slogan "Don't tread on me" - that have become symbols of the Tea Party movement.

The couple exchanged gunfire with police as they pursued them into the store, but Amanda Miller apparently shot her husband to death before turning the gun on herself.

Combat SITREP by Juan

1. Nats Army offer of civilian evacuation corridors rejected. Corridors led only west in to national guard/right sector unit areas and demanded self defense units disarm and surrender.

2. Continuing heavy bombardment of Slavyansk and outlying areas. Confirmed 4 children under age 10 killed last 3 days. Living areas and industry areas targeted including 15.2 cm howitzers and Grad.

3. краснолиманскому area confirmed 2 Grad units destroyed with crews and support vehicles 09 June 03:00 attack of Novorossiya Army units.

4. Nats suffer heavy losses last 4 days. Nats removing destroyed vehicles and armor when possible. Reason unknown. Ural tank transporters used for removal. One photo destroyed/burned T64 turret in transporter. T64 hull not seen.

5. Strong explosion and short fire area Karachun Mountains 03:15 11 June.

6. Unconfirmed reports of large number bodies found in deep lake краснолиманскому area, bodies weighted.

There has been a dramatic increase in demand for food banks and charitable help in the UK, with more than 20m meals provided in 2013 - a 54% increase on the previous year.

A joint report Monday from Oxfam, Church Action on Poverty and the largest operator of food banks, the Trussell Trust, says that much of the increased demand is coming from poor people in affluent areas including Cheltenham, Welwyn Garden City and the northern part of the Lake District, where some food banks report user numbers doubling or even trebling. The Trussell Trust said it was helping to feed 300,000 children, a situation it described as a national disgrace. The report's authors said the poor were caught in a perfect storm of food prices soaring 43.5 % in the past eight years, while over the same period the disposable annual income of the poorest 20% fell by an average of £936.

Low and stagnant wages, zero-hours contracts, benefit sanctions and energy costs are among the factors driving people into food poverty.

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson testified last month that he wasn't sure whether it was illegal for priests to have sex with children while he served as chancellor of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese.

The former chancellor gave a deposition last month in a lawsuit that claims the Minnesota archdiocese and the Diocese of Winona created a public nuisance by keeping information on abusive priests secret, reported Minnesota Public Radio.

The 69-year-old Carlson also faces a massive clergy abuse lawsuit in the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he's served as archbishop since 2009.

One document made public in that case shows more than 100 priests and church employees have been accused of sexual abuse, and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the archdiocese to turn over their names under seal.

A group called Breaking the Silence has spent 10 years collecting accounts from Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories. To mark the milestone, 10 hours' worth of testimony was read to an audience in Tel Aviv. Here we print some extracts.

The young soldier stopped to listen to the man reading on the stage in Tel Aviv's Habima Square, outside the tall façade of Charles Bronfman Auditorium. The reader was Yossi Sarid, a former education and environment minister. His text is the testimony of a soldier in the Israel Defence Forces, one of 350 soldiers, politicians, journalists and activists who on Friday - the anniversary of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land in 1967 - recited first-hand soldiers' accounts for 10 hours straight in Habima Square, all of them collected by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence.

When one of the group's researchers approached the soldier, they chatted politely out of earshot and then phone numbers were exchanged. Perhaps in the future this young man will give his own account to join the 950 testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence since it was founded 10 years ago.

In that decade, Breaking the Silence has collected a formidable oral history of Israeli soldiers' highly critical assessments of the world of conflict and occupation. The stories may be specific to Israel and its occupation of the Palestinian territories but they have a wider meaning, providing an invaluable resource that describes not just the nature of Israel's occupation but of how occupying soldiers behave more generally. They describe how abuses come from boredom; from the orders of ambitious officers keen to advance in their careers; or from the institutional demands of occupation itself, which desensitises and dehumanises as it creates a distance from the "other".