Russia

Just because I've criticized Americas policies re: Russia, it doesn't mean that this kind of stuff is acceptable:

The Russian security officers, in plain clothes, arrived in the late afternoon at a hotel where a pro-democracy conference was being held, the witnesses said.

The officers swiftly seized four members of a political movement opposed to President Vladimir Putin, handcuffed them, and rushed them away. Then they turned on a German magazine correspondent who tried to photograph the arrests. One officer snatched his camera and left with it.

Hundreds of civil society advocates and opposition figures opened a two- day conference here on Tuesday, protesting the authoritarian streak that they say defines Putin's Kremlin and its hold on the Russian state. The Russian state, the participants said, demonstrated precisely some of the behavior that the opposition had assembled to protest.

Remember: Bush looked in Putin's eyes and saw his soul.

Putin looked in Bush's eyes and saw the back of Dubya's skull.