Greg Mitchell | The Nation

When Pope Benedict suddenly announced yesterday that he was stepping down—charmingly, he gave the classic “two weeks notice”—few major media account gave much play, in their accounts, to Benedict’s role the tragic sex abuse scandals that have swept the Catholic Church in recent years, and may have been a factor in his shocking abdication.

Yes, he had been ill, and at age 85, certainly past retirement for most professions—but many previous popes were in the same straits and none have resigned over the past, oh, several centuries.

Just last week, HBO aired the excellent new Alex Gibney documentary Mea Maxima Culpa, which focused on priestly abuse and cover-up at a Wisconsin school for the deaf, but also exposed the former Cardinal Ratzinger as the man in charge of the abuse files for years (and other failures of omission or commission). I joked yesterday that the pope had announced that he was resigning “to spend more time with his family… of priestly abuse documents.”

A drone flies above Afghanistan in 2010. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File.)

So John Brennan has testified at his confirmation hearings, the Senators had their crack at him, apparently to little avail, many in the media now assess. Various outlets are drawing up questions he dodged (he wouldn’t even say if waterboarding was torture) or decrying the usual lack of guts or focus on the part of most committee members. Senator Dianne Feinstein was so bent on helping the president get Brennan through the gate, she claimed that civilian casualties from drone strikes had remained in the “single digits” the past few years.

[UPDATE late Wednesday: President Obama suddenly orders release of key classified memos  on justification for use of drones on eve Brennan confirmation hearings.]]

On Monday night, NBC News revealed that leaked sixteen-page memo outlining (at last) the administration’s rules for drone strikes against US citizens abroad. Ever since, the chorus of criticism—mainly from progressives and media outlets long accused by conservatives of being “in the tank” for Obama—has grown to a deafening level.

David Carr, The New York Times’s ace media reporter who does not often venture into these realms, put it this way this morning in a succinct (even for Twitter) comment: “Drones very effective at targeting and wiping out… Rule of law.”

That Dodge commercial from Chrysler for the Super Bowl, much heralded last night, is actually a kind of re-make, complete with famed radio news host Paul Harvey, of a popular YouTube video, which had over a million views.

Chrysler did assign a team of top photogs to take pictures and is aiding Future Farmers of America.  See their background at Ram site and how they are offering aid. Visit the Farms.com site. Here is commercial followed by the “original.”