Haiti

Many thanks to Brother Bob Hockett.  In disaster situations especially, it is important to make sure one is giving to reliable charities.  If anyone entertained doubts about human fallenness (our Calvinist friends would call it "depravity"), they would be erased by the knowledge that there are people our there who seize opportunities afforded by tragedies such as the one that has befallen the people of Haiti to set up what are essentially phony relief organizations.  Typically, they use shell 501(c)(3) organizations, collect money in the name of the cause, then pay themselves huge "salaries" that exhaust most of what they take in.  A trivial amount actually makes its way to the victims.  I learned about this when a friend of mine from law school discovered that a client he was representing was engaged in precisely this kind of fraud.  Surely there is a special place in hell . . . .