In response to the ongoing foreign policy crisis in Crimea, President Obama has imposed sanctions on eleven individuals from Russia and Ukraine. Reuters reported...
Never mind what the West thinks -- the Kremlin says Ukraine's Crimea region is now part of Russia. A signing ceremony Tuesday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Crimea and the mayor of the city of Sevastopol made it official, the Kremlin said in a statement. The territory, ceded to Ukraine in the Soviet era, is now part of the Russian Federation, it said. The annexation -- which had not been expected to occur until Russian lawmakers met later this week -- was met with a howl of protest in Kiev, where Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called it "a robbery on an international scale."Additional details also at CBS News. Also Tuesday, a Ukrainian soldier was reported to have been killed on a base in Crimea and another wounded, though some of the details appeared to be unclear at the time of this writing. From AFP:
The President’s material falsehoods on health reform will make the difference in 2014 ...
Abrahams targeted young women he knew, and he identified other victims after hacking into Facebook pages. Using hacking software, Abrahams took control of victims’ email accounts, social media accounts and even their computers – which allowed him to remotely turn on web cameras and occasionally take pictures of naked victims. Abrahams used the nude photos to extort victims by threatening to publicly post the compromising photos or videos to the victims’ social media accounts – unless the victim either sent more nude photos or videos, or engaged in a Skype session with him and did what he said for five minutes. Several teens and women in their early 20s were victimized when Abrahams posted nude photos to their social media accounts. At least two victims consented to the Skype sessions proposed by Abrahams to keep their photos off the Internet.Cassidy Wolf said last year that the incident had terrified her – I wrote at the time about her harrowing ordeal, and she described the experience in several media interviews. Abrahams pleaded guilty in November to one count of computer hacking and three counts of extortion, after signing a plea agreement in October.
Off-duty “Road Rage” Cop lawyer: Grand Jury given “materially false and misleading testimony”
Shortly thereafter I received a call from Walker's lawyers offering to share with me their motion and the accompanying exhibits. These are not confidential documents, but rather are public documents having been submitted to the trial court. Nevertheless, having them provided directly by counsel was a great convenience in accessing them. Over the last few days I have been going through the attached exhibits, which consist mostly of transcripts of witness statements to police, as well as a brief report generated by the MD State Police themselves and a sketch of the shooting scene with the locations of the vehicles and other items. Today I wrap up this series of "exposés" with the actual motion itself, as well as the transcript of the actual MD State Trooper testimony presented to the Grand Jury.As millions of Americans scramble to fill out their March Madness brackets, we've got another big milestone coming up: the March 31st deadline to sign up for health insurance. If you need affordable coverage, head over to HealthCare.gov and #GetCoveredNow. If you've got insurance, help spread the word by voting for your favorite reason to get covered.I can't help but wonder what Vladimir Putin and his associates in Moscow must think of all this. Read on to see examples of the ridiculous images which are actually posted on the website for the United States White House.
When I discussed Cover Oregon ads, which were a study in hippie-oriented marketing appropriate in the 1970′s, I thought I had uncovered the worst Obamacare marketing scheme that could have been possibly concocted. I was wrong. Lonely Conservative reviews the new website developed by the Rhode Island...
A comment to our bumper sticker post, Guide to California Crazy, inspired a response from reader JoAnne: Just wanted to add this picture to prove Alex's hypothesis! And just another reason we left California! This pic is from 2006 but she changed the signs to go...
Witness describes responding officers as professional, Walker as compliant, Harvey on ground 25 feet from minivan....
Malaysian paper adds fuel to speculation that pilots rerouted the missing jetliner...
Things fall apart....
U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on 11 Russians and Ukrainians on Monday blamed for Moscow's military seizure of Crimea, including ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, and Vladislav Surkov and Sergei Glazyev, two aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin himself, suspected in the West of trying to reconstitute as much as possible of the former Soviet Union under Russian authority, was not on the blacklist. In Brussels, the EU's 28 foreign ministers agreed on a list of 21 Russian and Ukrainian officials to be subject to travel bans and asset freezes for their roles in the events. The EU did not immediately publish their names. Washington and Brussels said more measures could follow in the coming days if Russia does not back down and formally annexes Crimea. "Today's actions send a strong message to the Russian government that there are consequences for their actions that violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, including their actions supporting the illegal referendum for Crimean separation," the White House said. A senior Obama administration official said there was "concrete evidence" that some ballots in the Crimea referendum arrived in some Crimean cities pre-marked.Speaking from the White House this morning, President Obama said, “as I told President Putin yesterday, the referendum in Crimea was a clear violation of Ukrainian Constitutions and international law, and it will not be recognized by the international community.” Obama then went on to outline “a series of measures that will continue to increase the cost on Russia and on those responsible for what is happening in Ukraine.” Among those measures are sanctions on a number of specific individuals and entities, as well as continued consultations with European partners on additional measures. From Obama’s statement Monday (transcript from the Washington Post):
Democrats are starting to get nervous about the 2014 midterm elections and an increasing number of them don't want the president's help when it comes to campaigning. You know things are getting bad for Democrats when you read something like this in the New York Times...
Fireworks exploded and Russian flags fluttered above jubilant crowds... [as] the United States and Europe condemned the ballot as illegal and destabilizing.There is no question that many ethnic Russians live in that part of Ukraine. To find out why, take a look at some history of the area:
The chart shows a collapse in the population of native Crimean Tatars from 34.1% in 1897 to zero in 1959, marking brutal harassment leading up to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's forcible deportation of the entire population in 1944, with nearly half dying in the process. It took decades for the population to climb back to 12% by 2001. While the population of Ukrainians and especially Russians rose, the percentage of the population falling into an unlisted category also fell from more than 20% in 1921 to around 5% in 1959. This was a consequence of the deportation of Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and other groups.Here's the chart:
So when word started circulating that an anti-Israel, BDS hate group was preparing to pressure Neil Young into canceling his upcoming summer show in Tel Aviv with a petition of about 6,000 people...it was a piece of cake to call upon an already established base of people instead of having to start from scratch.
It took the BDS crowd almost two months to pull together 6,000 people; we blew past them in a week and are still growing, I support Neil Young against the haters.
The key thing is that we did this with no budget, no advertising and no infrastructure of any kind, while the BDS movement (the ubiquitous "haters") have an organization, a staff and allegedly an army of volunteers.
This may seem surprising, but it really shouldn't be.
Note: You may reprint this cartoon provided you link back to this source. To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here. Branco’s page is Cartoonist A.F.Branco...
"If you lose the Senate, turn out the lights because the party's over"...
