Shouldn't "Russia" be replaced with "Congress?" in the title of this piece? Russia is threatening to react in it's typical thin-skinned way, but they did not initiate this spat.

But in fact it goes deeper. Reporting on this Magnitsky bill should also go a bit deeper if one is to get a real picture. Magnitsky died in prison while working for a British-American hedge fund manager (I won't use his name here) who made hundreds of millions of dollars for himself in Russia; who did not exit Russia when Khodorovsky was arrested but kept talking Russia up; and in the end was the victim of a scam run by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs mafia. He fled the country for safety, but Magnitsky didn't have that option and kept fighting on his behalf -- and paid the price.

This hedge fund manager obviously feels sick about the Magnitsky case, and we should all feel sick. But should one megarich man, through lobbyists and PR firms, be able to fundamentally change the course of US-Russian relations because he feels angry/guilty or whatever, now that someone close to him has been killed by the Russian system?

I don't have the answer. But this is the question.

Hey BAKINETS, a sly untruth in your comment puts under a question mark your motives. In fact, Magnitsky had an ample opportunity to leave Russia, and was actually urged, repeatedly, by the "fund manager" you are alluding to to do so - with all the appropriate guarantees. M. refused to go ON PRINCIPLE. He did not want to leave the field for the mafia. What I am saying here is a fact well-known in Russia, not a speculation.

Øbambi sold us down the river by bargaining away Ballistic Missile Defense, for which we got nothing of worth in return, but what did you expect to happen when Affirmative Action meets the Peter Principle... A Radical Community Organizing Post Turtle.

How can you pass a law criticizing Russian human rights practices ? I dont get it.

WWRD?

Putin is America’s enemy, and the United States and the West must bring down his Stalinist regime that is increasingly focused on domination, and replace it with a democratic nation that lives at peace with the world,

At the same time that this fine article was published, it was reported that Putin's latest atrocities involve a Russian attack on America’s embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia.

The U.S. State Department is a joke, and this has been true for many years. The idea that “the embassy bombing and other alleged bombings . . . have been raised with the Russians at a high level” by the State Department is absurd. However, the State Department’s reaction gets even worse: “It’s not necessarily pointing a finger, but part of a dialogue expressing our deep concerns.”

The attack on our embassy was an act of war, and nothing less. The Pentagon and our intelligence agencies should be handling this matter. They know how to teach Putin’s Russians lessons that they will never forget.

There never should have been a “reset” in relations with Putin and the other thugs in his murderous regime. America’s “Hamlet on the Potomac” and “Jimmy Carter-lite,” Obama—who would do everything in his power to weaken our military if he could get away with it—must be held responsible for this and other policy changes since the presidency of George W. Bush.

At the very least, Russia’s membership in the World Trade Organization must be blocked by the United States; Jackson-Vanik must not be repealed; and the New START Treaty must become null and void no later than January of 2013, when Barack Obama’s failed presidency ends and the new Republican president is sworn into office. George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major advances in missile defense. The next GOP administration must withdraw from the New START Treaty as soon as it comes to power.

See http://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/russias-putin-is-a-killer/#comment-1748 (see also the article itself, as well as the footnotes and other comments beneath it)

Being familiar with Russian sense of humour I expect them to pass similar law denying visas to all US citizens who profited from or participated in crimes against the civilians in Balkans, Iraq, and Libya. Could be a very very long list.

“But the button was mislabeled; in a glaring error of translation, it boasted the label peregruzka (overload), rather than perezagruzka (reload).”

We've sunk to the level of "pretense of compassion" in the United States.

Presumably, "feel good" jollies for display in front of Americans that still don't know we have become a police state at home and abroad, and governments, state and local and federal, as well as corporations, are rotten to the core.

FWIW... I'm very conservative... AND capable of critical thought

Unlike the ideologue cheerleaders on the side of the red and blue teams

The USA violate human rights in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. Subjects people to tortures in Guantanamo. Simply kill people for the sake of oil. The USA don't have moral right to speak about human rights. Russia it not Iraq or Afghanistan, Russia can erase the USA in a powder.

Life is life. There is time for the beautiful philosophy, and there is time for doing the things. In Russia many things were done in the last twenty years, but still without any account. This is against common sense. We go ahead driven by necessity, and the necessity is best of all understood from the accounts and the balances. It's maybe not pleasant assignment to look into that dark case, but.. If Rogozin came to America to fight against Magnitsky's case, he should have been linked somehow to this case, shouldn't he?

eva angelina
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According to a report published yesterday by Eli Lake, even that may soon become untenable. Lake reports the Georgian Interior Ministry has investigated a bombing that occurred near the U.S. Embassy in Tblisi last September, and that it’s traced the plot to a Russian military intelligence officer. September was just a few months before the Senate voted to ratify Start II, which adds extra salience to the allegations. Lake quotes Sen. Kirk describing the potential fallout as “the most serious crisis in U.S.-Russian relations since the Cold War” which would “put to lie any ‘reset’ in bilateral relations.”That won’t happen. This administration will go to remarkable lengths to avoid having their badly conceived diplomatic schemes finally – publicly, undeniably – collapse. A Syrian-sponsored attack on our abella anderson embassy wasn’t enough to push them into calling for Assad’s ouster, lest their hopelessly naive Syrian policy be exposed as hopelessly naive. In the same region of the world, the justifications they’ve invented for pouring money into Hamas and Hezbollah-controlled territories have been genuinely creative. Those “bolster the moderates” engagement policies are badly destabilizing the region and endangering our Israeli allies, of course, but that doesn’t make the administration’s pretexts any less creative.

No, not many valid arguments have been established against him in politics as not being conservative enough. He is a constitutionalist. RIO Support the constitution or be labelled as a domestic enemy, simple as that..