The case of a Michigan couple charged in the death of their 10-month-old daughter is bringing to light a debate about withholding medical care because of religious beliefs.

Seth Welch and his wife, Tatiana Fusari, both 27, were charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse after their daughter, Mary, died earlier this month from malnutrition and dehydration, an autopsy revealed. The parents said they didn't seek medical help for their daughter because of their religious beliefs, though they declined to define their religion.

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Every state in the U.S. has laws protecting children from abuse and neglect, but in 34 states and the District of Columbia, there are religious exemptions that allow parents to forgo medical treatment for a child if it conflicts with their religious beliefs, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

There are also religious exemptions to manslaughter laws in at least six states, Pew reported. However, in many states, including Michigan, these exceptions are not absolute.

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Because he was against Ken Starr, Penn’s logic is that he has a unique perspective on why Robert Mueller is harming the country, too. And as a Democrat bashing the Mueller investigation and making arguments that are useful to President Donald Trump, Penn has found a prominent new perch in the Washington ecosystem. Our interview was the first time he’s explained his Trumpian turn, which has earned him fresh enmity on the left.

Penn has now become a regular face on Fox News — CNN and MSNBC won’t book him — and a contributor to The Hill’s right-leaning editorial pages. There, he has repeatedly bashed the Mueller investigation as a “partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again” — followed up by more TV hits on Fox.

And despite the photos that decorate his office walls, he has willingly torched the Clintons, saying the Justice Department “broke their own rules” by ending an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, and noting that “Clinton Foundation operatives” urged the FBI to investigate Trump.
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In a sign of the Catholic Church's struggles with one of its most faithful followers, fewer than a quarter of an expected crowd of half a million people last weekend attended Pope Francis' public Mass in Dublin, Ireland.

The pope's Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on Sunday drew 135,000 people, far short of the estimated 500,000 people forecast to attend, according to official estimates published by Irish Central, The Journal and other Irish news sites. During the last papal visit to Ireland – in 1979 – Pope John Paul II attracted more than 1 million for a public Mass. That's a drop-off rate of almost 90 percent.

Florida's high-stakes gubernatorial race will be fought between a progressive Democrat vying to become the state's first black chief executive and a Republican congressman closely allied with President Donald Trump.

In a late primary season shocker, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum defeated the front runner, former Rep. Gwen Graham, who had led in the polls for most of the campaign. He emerged from a field of five competitive candidates, in which he was the only non-millionaire and only supporter of "Medicare for all" single-payer health care, to become the state's first black gubernatorial nominee.

"The point has never been lost on me that my name on the ballot is simply a vessel, is simply the name,' Gillum told a raucous crowd of supporters in Tallahassee on Tuesday night. "But what is underneath that name are all the issues that we care so deeply about."

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and police officers not to investigate it, according to a report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. There have been ten previous reports by grand juries and attorneys general in the United States, according to the research and advocacy group BishopAccountability.org, but those examined single dioceses or counties.

The report catalogs horrific instances of abuse, including a priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils out, and another priest who was allowed to stay in ministry after impregnating a 17-year-old girl, forging a signature on a marriage certificate and then divorcing the girl.

“Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,” the grand jury wrote. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.”