CLEVELAND — The preacher’s voice rises to a booming pitch. Near the end of his sermon, the Rev. David Cobb Jr. runs down a list of politicians in mesmerizing, rapid-fire rhythm: “You don’t really need Bush. You don’t really need Cheney. You don’t really need Palin. You don’t really need Biden,” he thunders to his…

WASHINGTON (RNS) Democrat Kay Hagan filed a defamation suit Thursday (Oct. 30) against Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s re-election campaign, saying her opponent for a Senate seat from North Carolina inaccurately accused her of having ties to an atheist political action committee. “A leader of the Godless Americans PAC recently held a secret fundraiser in Kay Hagan’s…

NEW ORLEANS – It’s Halloween, and Anne Rice has a new book – a memoir in fact – that’s climbing best-seller lists. Everything is normal, then. Normal if it were 1994 – the height of Rice’s megaselling fame as a queen of Southern Gothic pulp. For those who haven’t been paying attention lately to vampire…

HIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel – An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he believes is the oldest known Hebrew inscription on a 3,000-year-old pottery shard – a find that suggests Biblical accounts of the ancient Israelite kingdom of David could have been based on written texts. A teenage volunteer discovered the curved shard bearing five lines of…

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