BREAKING NEWS

Petition urges to classify Westboro church as hate group

WASHINGTON - More than 475,000 people have signed petitions asking the White House to crack down on Westboro Baptist Church after the group, known for holding anti-gay demonstrations at funerals, threatened to picket in Newtown, Connecticut.
Newtown was the site of a school massacre on December 14 in which 20 young children and six adults were killed.
Five petitions posted on the White House website since the shootings have asked the government to name the church, based in Topeka, Kansas, as a hate group or end its tax-exempt status. The requests were among the most popular on the White House site on Thursday.