Name: Vladimir Putin

Age: 59

Title: President of Russia

Inauguration Date: May 7, 2012

Term Length: Six years per term; up to two consecutive terms

Party: United Russia

Every Thursday our newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, publishes a column by local writer Colleen Carroll Campbell, a traditionalist Catholic who also hosts a program on the Catholic television network EWTN.

While I often find her concerns valid, I also don't wish to oversimplify Ms. Campbell's writings, but they do often come off as a list of reasons why Catholics should vote Republican.

The California Institute of Technology has been awarded $100,000 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a solar-powered toilet that recycles water and produces energy. A primary focus of the Gates Foundation and their Reinvent The Toilet Challenge is sanitation in Third World countries.

The victory dance by some this week when Pennsylvania’s controversial voter ID law survived its first court test may prove premature, since the law still faces at least three other likely legal challenges.

This morning, I posted this week's social slipup, highlighting the increasing trend in politics of buying fake Twitter followers.

Moody's says more California municipal bankruptcies are coming, as well as bond defaults.