It was signed by Clinton and John Major in 1994. The reason we signed this treaty was to give the Ukraine a guarantee that we wouldn't let Russia invade them -- and we had to do that because we were asking them to give up their nuclear weapons.

They did give up their nukes. The one thing that could have guaranteed their freedom from Russia. And we in turn promised to help protect them.

And here we are.

I call it a "treaty" so you understand what I'm talking about, but I don't know if it's actually a treaty. It is called the "Budapest Memorandum," and I don't know if it was ever submitted to Congress.

he U.S. and Britain have both made crisis phone calls to President Putin to urge him not to intervene in Ukraine's Crimea, with the White House warning him it would be a 'grave mistake'.

NATO also asked Russia not to take action that could escalate tension. However Moscow responded by telling the organization to 'refrain' from provocative statements on Ukraine and respect its 'non-bloc' status.

Sir Tony Brenton, who served as British Ambassador from 2004 to 2008, said that war could be an option 'if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding.'
It promises to protect Ukraine's borders, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

Today Kiev has demanded the agreement is activated after insisting their borders had been violated.

In response Mr Brenton said in a BBC radio interview: 'If indeed this is a Russian invasion of Crimea and if we do conclude the [Budapest] Memorandum is legally binding then it's very difficult to avoid the conclusion that we're going to go to war with Russia'.
Ukraine accused Russia of a 'military invasion and occupation', saying Russian troops have taken up positions around a coast guard base and two airports on its strategic Crimea peninsula.

And maybe this is why they are claiming that Ukraine hasn't been invaded at all: Why, the thousands of Russian troops coming into the Ukraine in APCs and military planes don't represent an invasion that would trigger our treaty obligations. No no no, foolish boy. It's not an invasion -- it's an "uncontested arrival" of troops, according to Obama.

Much like someone might arrive uncontestedly in your mouth, after promising not to.

And, as JohnE says, here we are:

And here we are: more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (428)
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Good luck stomaching this.

5:37 PM ET:

JUST IN: David Martin reports Russia flying "hundreds" of troops into Crimea

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 28, 2014

5:39 PM ET:

Obama: This is now officially happy hour with the Democratic Party

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 28, 2014

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Posted by: JohnE. at 01:51 PM | Comments (215)
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You will think what I'm about to post is a joke, or a p-shop.

It's not. It's real. What I'm posting is MSNBC's actual homepage today.

Remember: This is real.

This is happening.

JohnE. attempted to interest MSNBC in other stories. He was unsuccessful.

Walter Cronkite Award Winner for Excellence in Journalism Ronan Farrow covers today's biggest story -- the mostly-white make-up of Academy Awards voters.

Oh: MSNBC will cover the Ukrainian situation, but for only one reason: Obama's giving a statement on it at 4:45 pm, or, as the rest of us call it, 5:22 pm.

Posted by: Ace at 12:29 PM | Comments (352)
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I don't really want to rip on Kerry too much for this (and do not mistake my reluctance to criticize him on this for some kind of general approval of his horrible leadership), because the US isn't going to war for the Crimea, and it would be silly to even suggest that we would.

One of the most famous poems in the English language is about a futile and pointless military action in the Crimea ending in gloriously bloody disaster, after all.

No one would believe it, and this would become yet another of Obama's many red lines which must not be crossed which are nevertheless crossed.

But, as Allah says, the Administration is still warning Russia not to cross "the intervention line."

What does that mean? Does the line refer to Russia's intervention, or a line that would trigger our intervention?

Either way, that line has been crossed. With Armored Personnel Carriers.

brb, crossin' an intervention line

Russia has taken over a couple of airports, a sea port, and of course the major Crimean port of Svestapol. They're also blocking telephone hubs and canceling air travel. And they're issuing Russian passports to Russian-speaking Crimeans, something they did when they invaded Georgia, too. I guess the idea is that they make them officially Russian, as some part of their "We're just intervening to defend our native Russian comrades" justification.

In short, it looks like they're taking over Crimea, as expected. The only question now is whether they will be emboldened enough to move on the rest of the Ukraine, or perhaps just part of it (the Russian-speaking half to the east).

Here's another question: Will they formally annex Crimea? Or just make it an unofficial territory?

Here's why that's important: They can claim Crimea is still officially part of Ukraine, so that the Crimean Russian population can still vote in Ukraine's elections, despite being, essentially, now part of Mother Russia.

Think they wouldn't? They'd call it a "compromise" to leave Crimean nominally in the Ukraine, when in fact it would be another move to control Ukraine.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (431)
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I don't even want to link things like this. It's too maddening.

There is political agitation, and then there is stuff that really agitates you, and sends your blood pressure shooting up.

Officials in two Treasury Department bureaus fraudulently enriched themselves at taxpayer expense, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Public Debt who supervised 108 employees in the bureau's West Virginia office “was committing egregious time and attendance fraud," depriving taxpayers of nearly $100,000 in salary for hours she did not work, according to one of several Treasury Department inspector general documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, most of which had previously gone unreported.

The official, despite being paid an average yearly salary of nearly $170,000, "arrives at work approximately two hours late and/or takes two-hour lunch breaks and departs work at approximately 4:00 P.M. and does not take leave," and "consistently conducts personal business involving the Humane Society during work hours," IG investigators found after verifying a tip from an employee who said the top official "abuses her power by being absent whenever desired."

Her supervisor, the deputy commissioner, knew about the absences but did nothing, the investigators said.

...

Another inspector general investigation found that at the Office of Thrift Supervision, a GS-15 employee -- one of the highest ranks a federal career civil servant can obtain -- agreed to be transferred from an office near Los Angeles to an office near San Francisco and took $10,000 in relocation expense reimbursement, but then never moved.

She also submitted massive travel bills for routine travel to her new office, including hotel stays, to the OTS, which approved them.

She “submitted travel vouchers costing the OTS ... $87,047 in travel that would not have incurred if she had relocated," investigators wrote.

As with the Hines case, supervisors were aware of the wrongdoing, but did nothing to correct it.

There's more at the link.

Each of these ladies seemed to think they could get away with fairly brazen actions.

That doesn't bother me so much: You know my basic philosophy-- People Are Awful.

Here's what does bother me: They were right to believe that they could get away with brazen actions.

How did they know they could get away with this? What is so wrong with this system that federal workers know they can do whatever they like without having to worry about losing their jobs?

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (268)
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Jim Lakely, Kommunications Direktor of the eeeevilll reich-wing think tank The Heartland Institute joins Ace, Gabe, Drew and John to discuss Heartland's work debunking catastrophic manmade global warming. They move on to the Arizona religious freedom bill, the proposed 2015 DoD budget, quick hits and questions from the Moron Mailbag.

Mentioned in the podcast:

• The Thought Experiment That First Made Me A Climate Skeptic


• Climate Change Reconsidered.org

Questions & comments here: Ask the Blog

Intro/outro in memory of Harold Ramis. Thanks for the laughs.

[MP3 Download] | Subscribe: [RSS] | [iTunes]

Follow on Twitter:
AoSHQ Podcast (@AoSHQPodcast)
Ace (@AceofSpadesHQ)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabriel Malor (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

Open thread in the comments.

Posted by: andy at 01:15 PM | Comments (116)
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True. Obviously true. We've seen a level of protectiveness towards Obama that exceeds all previous media flacking for Democratic presidents -- even ones they loved, like Bill Clinton.

Why are supposed truth-tellers so reluctant to tell the truth? Why is Don Lemon's admission of the glaringly obvious only news now, five years into Obama's term?

Video at the link. Here's the key quote:

LEMON: Everyone is being looking to hit him and everyone is looking to punch him, and I understand that, and as a journalist you weigh how much you should criticize the president, because he's black, what have you, but then you have to do it because ultimately you're a journalist. Journalists have to, black people have to, white people, Hispanic. We all must hold him to this because, as he said, it is an issue for the country, not just for one demographic.

He said this in a long (longer than this) response to Jake Tapper. I don't know what Jake Tapper's question actually was, as it's not on the video.

Open Thread and happy weekend.

Posted by: Ace at 03:51 PM | Comments (307)
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Of course we knew this chatter was coming since Hillary's health scare a couple of years ago.

There's not much in this story except for speculations and reports on the rumors. The rumors, of course, speculate that she won't run for president, due to health problems. There are reports in the National Enquirer and Globe, but their reliability is, of course, shaky.*

Asked about her health on Thursday, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an email to The Daily Caller: ”To your question, very caring of you to ask. She’s 100%.”

But the rumors suggesting otherwise date back to the end of 2012, when ClintonÂ’s health made headlines as she finished her term as secretary of state: aides explained then that she developed a stomach virus, hit her head, suffered a concussion and subsequently developed a blood clot in her brain but was being medicated and was expected to recover.

Obviously, I have no idea. Without evidence, I take this to be the normal sort of chatter you hear about every presidential candidate.

* I know people will point out, accurately, that the National Enquirer has nailed some stories (such as John Edwards' love child) that the media would not touch. And of course that's true.

However, the National Enquirer's claim that Hillary has "brain cancer" or an "inoperable brain tumor" date back to 2012, and the story said that details were leaking out. The suggestion, it seems to me, was that the secret wouldn't hold, and general reportage would soon be catching up with the National Enquirer.

But here we are, more than a year later, and the secret, if it exists, still holds. And if she does have a secret, it looks like she's going to be able to keep it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (367)
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Big piece.

One of the cherished vanities of the media class is that they are sophisticated thinkers who see deeply into stories -- unlike brutish conservatives, whose primitive minds can only detect the crudest outlines of things.

Oh?

The media seems entirely unwilling to even confess the possibility that being dragooned into actual participation in a gay marriage might be fairly characterized as impinging on someone's religious faith.

The Washington Post has it all figured out:

Let's be honest: The media likes gays and hates religious people, and they're eager to frame their reportage based on these preferences.

And then they'll mock the religious for believing themselves to be under siege and attacked and demeaned by the media and other important transmitters of cultural power (including, firstly, the government).

They'll call them paranoid for believing such a crazy thing.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (291)
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Wow. But See Caveat/Caution, Below.

The reason offered is that there has been a "rash" of vandalism on campus, some break-ins, and a recent shooting on school grounds. (The victim was not himself a student.)

The chip, I think, will not actually track everyone at all times. That is, I don't think it contains a strong radio signal that would allow a general second-by-second tracking of movement. I think the idea of the "proximity chip" is that it will only register a signal when it's brought close to specific locations which will detect proximity. So I'm guessing that mostly it will track people coming in and out of buildings, and perhaps their presence in major outdoor locations like the middle of a quad.

Though one could, of course, build so many such proximity-detection stations as to achieve that moment-by-moment tracking. Thus, in principle, they've established the principle of second-by-second location tracking. The only thing restraining them is budget -- how many position locators can you afford?

This is creepy, and it seems once again to be government/institutional overreach. The school, being a state school, is part of the government. The "problem" being solved here is... vandalism, which is a crime, and destructive, and annoying, but does that justify second-by-second monitoring of every student, as if he were a prisoner?

The shooting seems to be a one-off thing -- their press release speaks of a "rash" of vandalism but just the one shooting. Break-ins are ominous, but... isn't that why dorms have locked doors?

Every creepy, monitoring, controlling move is and will be justified by "safety" and "health" concerns.

I'm very curious about how all this happened. I'm curious about how people just decided that this was a perfectly reasonable response to vandalism.

Caveat/Caution: Commenters question whether or not this is simply the well-known sort of swipe card -- or touch card -- that are in common and widespread use in office buildings.

The news release makes it sound like it's more than that -- but perhaps they want to make it sound like it's more than it is to show they're really doing everything possible to crack down on vandalism. Maybe they're using terms like "proximity chip" when they really should just say: "We've now got swipe card readers on all exterior doors."

I don't know. But commenters make a good case that I'm blowing this out of proportion without knowing what is actually going on.

More:

Okay, well, if that's true, I'm not sure what's left of this post. Wearing an ID badge on campus is annoying, and not usually done, but I'm not sure I can pitch a proper bitch about that.

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 AM | Comments (266)
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