What in the hell is going on over there in Italy? It's not the normal craziness surrounding scandal-plagued Premier Silvio Berlusconi today; no, this time it's a couple of things that seem to be the acts of a man who knows he's in jeopardy.

First, Berlusconi's lawyer announced that he was suing media organizations in Italy, France, Spain, and Britain for libel, which the lawyer estimated could result in damages of $1.6 million but almost certainly won't because many of those cases will not be won, if they are actually filed in the first place.

Berlusconi also canceled plans to attend a mass in earthquake-ravaged L'Aquila after an uproar in which a paper owned by the Prime Minister's brother published an article accusing Dino Boffo, the editor of Catholic newspaper Avvenire, of homosexuality and hypocrisy. The Church announced its full support of Boffo, and Berlusconi has disassociated himself from the article, but the two very blatant and clumsy attempts at intimidating his detractors-particularly the Church, which has been a driving force in the reporting of recent scandals-make Berlusconi look desperate in a way that close observers have never quite seen before.