They're Russian To Judgment

First, Russian President Vladimir Putin puffed himself up as a truer democrat than American President George W. Bush...

In the United States, you first elect the electors and then they vote for the presidential candidates. In Russia, the president is elected through the direct vote of the whole population. That might be even more democratic.

If you define democracy as strict majority rule with fewer checks & balances against fraud, yes. Following up on Putin's ignorance of America, I must remind him that the United States is a democratic republic, which means the heart of the election (and government as a whole) is supposed to be Constitutional law, not mob rule. Which leads us to...

Four years ago, your presidential election was decided by the court.

The Supreme Court ruled that the pivotal Florida vote was unfair to everyone, but that there was not enough time to sufficiently study and legally correct the voting process in Florida. A joint Miami Herald/USA Today study later found that only one scenario could allow a Gore win: a state-wide recount using the loosest standards possible. The biggest study, by the National Opinion Research Center, confirmed that only the most fraud-friendly standards would have provided a Gore victory. The problem is America's lack of uniformity on voting, but that clearly can't be worse than in Russia. Given the legal concerns regarding democratic failure in three counties of one state, the parties made the logical step of advancing to those who know the law. This beats going to the chief executive and/or his cronies for arbitration, as seems to occur in certain backsliding democracies. Which then leads us to...

Democracy cannot be exported to some other place.

Yeah, it would be like dropping bombs on (and then occupying!) Japan and Germany in order to foster democracy in places that, at best, hadn't had it in awhile. Or like an international organization meddling to such an extent that it can impose borders, send people to keep the peace against the wishes of the local government, issue mandates against sovereign nations, and commit gross acts of interventionism. But what if there is already a democratic movement in a country, and it needs help from outside in order to rise to the occasion?

The day that Putin's silliness made headlines, a Russian astrologer received the all-clear to sue the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for $300 million over a plan to crush a probe into a comet:

In a 279-million-dollar (215-million-euro) project, NASA in January launched the Deep Impact spacecraft which will travel to the comet and release an "impactor" -- a 370-kilogram (820-pound) self-guided mass -- on US Independence Day (July 4) which is expected to create a crater that could be as large as a football stadium.

Scientists believe that the exposed material from the resulting crater will yield clues to the formation of the solar system and provide important information on altering the course of comets or asteroids on a collision course with earth.

In other words, they are looking for data that could save our lives in the event that a giant rock is about to slam into Earth. So how does she justify potentially sending humanity to an early grave?

"My client believes that the NASA project infringes upon her spiritual and life values as well as the natural life of the cosmos and would disrupt the natural balance of forces in the universe," Molokhova was quoted as saying.

The lawyer said Tempel 1 had sentimental value to Bai because her grandparents met when her grandfather pointed the comet out to his future wife.

So 1) the big ball of ice gives her warm fuzzies, and 2) she predicts that the universe will go wobbly if the rocket roadsters make a comet crater. See what too much vodka does to people?

But wait! America is the root of all that is tragic, as a Russian community now knows!

A Russian village was left baffled Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us,” said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

Exactly, and this man helped us do it.