Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church.

Because we know embarrassment to the church is the main concern here. Way to keep your priorities straight, fellas. Hope you enjoy hell.

Shortly after his visit to Akron, Mr. Gingrich spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. He waded to the lectern across the ballroom floor to the throbbing beat of “Eye of the Tiger,” with lights flashing and thousands of well-wishers shrieking his name. No one else made such a rock-star entrance.

To say that decriminalizing drug use “poses a threat to the coherence and effectiveness of the international drug control system” is like saying that a malfunctioning Teleprompter poses a threat to the coherence and effectiveness of the Swedish Chef.

As opposed to the unapparent, not-immediately-noticeable variety of tsunami damage. Over at Lat/Am Daily I’ve posted a little roundup of good, relevant Chile earthquake stories, if anyone’s interested.

Please stop writing that fuel cell devices are an energy source. They are not. They do not generate energy. They need input from a conventional energy source to operate, be it natural gas, electricity produced by coal-fueled power plants, or magical pixie gas from your backyard compost pile. They may be damned efficient, and that’s great, but they’re basically fancy rechargeable batteries.

Thank you.

UPDATE: “Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking.”

And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector’s armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.

The blacks who are enraged by “Precious” have probably figured out that this film wasn’t meant for them. It was the enthusiastic response from white audiences and critics that culminated in the film being nominated for six Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an outfit whose 43 governors are all white and whose membership in terms of diversity is about 40 years behind Mississippi. In fact, the director, Lee Daniels, said that the honor would bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film.