Trump to sign Russia sanctions, Moscow retaliates

Russia hits back after U.S. Senate sanctions vote

Moscow tells U.S. to cut diplomatic staff by Sept. 1

Russia seizing two U.S. diplomatic properties

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/29/trump-to-sign-russia-sanctions-moscow-retaliates.html

U.S. President Donald Trump will sign legislation that imposes sanctions on Russia, the White House said on Friday, after Moscow ordered the United States to cut hundreds of diplomatic staff and said it would seize two U.S. diplomatic properties in retaliation for the bill.

The U.S. Senate had voted almost unanimously on Thursday to slap new sanctions on Russia, forcing Trump to choose between a tough position on Moscow and effectively dashing his stated hopes for warmer ties with the country or to veto the bill amid investigations in possible collusion between his campaign and Russia.

By signing the bill into law, Trump can not ease the sanctions against Russia unless he seeks congressional approval.

Moscow's retaliation, announced by the Foreign Ministry on Friday, had echoes of the Cold War. If confirmed that Russia's move would affect hundreds of staff at the U.S. embassy, it would far outweigh the Obama administration's expulsion of 35 Russians in December.

The legislation was in part a response to conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and to further punish Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Late on Friday, the White House issued a statement saying Trump would sign the bill after reviewing the final version. The statement made no reference to Russia's retaliatory measures.

Russia had been threatening retaliation for weeks. Its response suggests it has set aside initial hopes of better ties with Washington under Trump, something the U.S. leader, before he was elected, had said he wanted to achieve.

Relations were already languishing at a post-Cold War low because of the allegations that Russian cyber interference in the election was intended to boost Trump's chances, something Moscow flatly denies. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials.

The Russian Foreign Ministry complained of growing anti-Russian feeling in the United States, accusing "well-known circles" of seeking "open confrontation".

President Vladimir Putin had warned on Thursday that Russia would have to retaliate against what he called boorish U.S. behavior. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Friday that the Senate vote was the last straw.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by telephone that Russia was ready to normalize relations with the United States and to cooperate on major global issues.

Lavrov and Tillerson "agreed to maintain contact on a range of bilateral issues", the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry said the United States had until Sept. 1 to reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455 people, the number of Russian diplomats left in the United States after Washington expelled 35 Russians in December.

'Extreme aggression'

It was not immediately clear how many U.S. diplomats and other workers would be forced to leave either the country or their posts, but the Interfax news agency cited an informed source as saying "hundreds" of people would be affected.

A diplomatic source told Reuters that it would be for the United States to decide which posts to cut, whether occupied by U.S. or Russian nationals.

An official at the U.S. Embassy, who declined to be named because they were not allowed to speak to the media, said the Embassy employed around 1,100 diplomatic and support staff in Russia, including Russian and U.S. citizens.

Russian state television channel Rossiya 24 said over 700 staff would be affected but that was not confirmed by the foreign ministry or the U.S. embassy.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's statement said the passage of the bill confirmed "the extreme aggression of the United States in international affairs".

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov met outgoing U.S. ambassador John Tefft on Friday to inform him of the counter measures, Russian news agencies reported. The U.S. Embassy said Tefft had expressed his "strong disappointment and protest".

Most U.S. diplomatic staff, including around 300 U.S. citizens, work in the main embassy in Moscow, with others based in consulates in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was also seizing a Moscow dacha compound used by U.S. diplomats for recreation, from Aug. 1, as well as a U.S. diplomatic warehouse in Moscow.

In December, the outgoing Obama administration seized two Russian diplomatic compounds - one in New York and another in Maryland - at the same time as it expelled Russian diplomats.

Trump and Putin met for the first time at a G-20 summit in Germany this month in what both sides described as a productive encounter, but Russian officials have become increasingly convinced that Congress and Trump's political opponents will not allow him to mend ties, even if he wants to.

The European Union has also threatened to retaliate against new U.S. sanctions on Russia, saying they would harm the bloc's energy security by targeting projects including a planned new pipeline to bring Russian natural gas to northern Europe.

A European Commission spokesman in Brussels said the bloc would be following the sanctions process closely

Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequence

http://www.theonion.com/article/wealthy-teen-nearly-experiences-consequence-2551

SOMERSET, NJ—In what local authorities are calling a "near tragedy," Charles Wentworth, a 17-year-old Rutgers Preparatory senior and member of the affluent Wentworth family, came perilously close to suffering a consequence resulting from his own wrongdoing Saturday.

Wentworth made his senior photo shoot even after coming within inches of an actual repercussion from the accident.

Wentworth, reportedly ignoring the protests of his classmates, got behind the wheel of his turbocharged Supra 2000GT after consuming half the contents of a bottle of Goldschläger at a friend's party. While driving westbound on Route 27, a disoriented Wentworth drifted across two lanes of traffic and collided with a minivan carrying a family of four, bringing the teen face-to-face with a potentially life-altering lesson.

Wentworth escaped unscathed and unpunished, however, when his airbags deployed and a team of high-powered attorneys rushed to the scene and rescued him from the brink of personal responsibility.

"Amazingly, Mr. Wentworth did not experience a single repercussion for consuming alcohol under age or operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and is furthermore completely unaware that he did anything wrong," local police chief Marvin Taylor said. "He is a very lucky boy."

"If he had been driving just 5 mph faster, or if his parents hadn't had the influence to keep the matter out of court and the endless financial resources to lease a car of the exact same make and model to prevent him from having to face even the relatively trivial humiliation of being taunted by his peers for driving a slightly less expensive vehicle—my God, who knows what could have happened?" Taylor added. "He could have died or, worse, been held accountable for his actions."

The accident

According to police reports that have since been shredded and stricken from Wentworth's permanent record, when briefly taken into custody, the privileged teenager began swearing, vomiting, and kicking at the windows of the squad car in which he was momentarily placed following the collision. Wentworth later said the only thing that got him through that dark time was thinking of his rich, well-connected loved ones. With them in mind, he repeatedly shouted, "Don't you know who I am?" and summoned the strength to refuse a field sobriety test.

"A lot of kids in Charles' situation would have confessed and accepted punishment for their mistake, but my son is strong," said Wentworth's father, aluminum magnate Herman Wentworth, who after arriving at the crash site told his son that "everything is taken care of," and while Charles sat in his father's BMW texting his friends, loudly threatened to call the police commissioner if any charges were pressed. "Charles would never allow himself to give up and gain valuable insight into the way things work in the real world without a fight."

District Judge and close friend of the Wentworth family Donald Lamb agreed.

"Charles is very lucky to be alive and well-off," Lamb told reporters. "The fact that he was able to walk away from this crash with no injuries, zero remorse, and his skewed priorities in one piece is a miracle."

Despite returning to the safety of his $2.3 million home, Wentworth's harrowing brush with consequence was not over.

A week after the near ordeal, Wentworth was again put in jeopardy of learning a lesson when he was nearly sentenced to 50 hours of community service. Tragedy was averted, however, when his mother paid a consultant to testify before the judge that Wentworth had suffered emotional trauma. Further, during this time, Wentworth was forced to put his video game on pause for several seconds in order to sign affidavits stating that the Breathalyzer was administered improperly.

"To think that I was that close to seeing that there is an entire society with its own laws and standards outside my protected sphere of wealth and privilege—it's frightening," Wentworth said. "It almost makes you consider your actions and their impact on others. Almost."

"I'm just grateful I can finally get back to my life as a self-centered prick who believes the entire world revolves around him," Wentworth added. "After all, I was just admitted to Columbia despite almost failing out of high school because I rarely attended class, and it would have been a shame to have had to defer for a semester just because of some legal...unpleasantry."

At press time, Wentworth is resting comfortably on a six-figure inheritance in a chaise lounge by his backyard pool. The other four victims of the crash remain in intensive care at St. Peter's University Hospital, suffering from conditions ranging from poor to lower-class.

ACLU Defends Nazis' Right To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters

http://www.theonion.com/article/aclu-defends-nazis-right-to-burn-down-aclu-headqua-1648

NEW YORK—At a press conference Monday, American Civil Liberties Union officials announced that the organization will go to court to defend a neo-Nazi group's right to burn down ACLU headquarters.

ACLU president Nadine Strossen told reporters that her organization intends to "vigorously and passionately defend" the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party's First Amendment right to freely express its hatred of the ACLU by setting its New York office ablaze on Nov. 25.

"I am reminded of the words of Voltaire: 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'" Strossen said. "While the ACLU vehemently disagrees with the idea of Nazis torching this building, the principle of freedom of expression must be supported in all cases. If we take away these Nazis' right to burn down our headquarters, we take away everyone's right to burn down our headquarters."

Buddy Carver, president of the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party, praised the ACLU for taking on his case. "I would like to thank Ms. Strossen and all the other nigger-loving bleeding-heart liberals at the 'ACL-Jew' for defending my constitutional right to express my loathing of them with hundred-foot-high flames," said Carver, sporting a tan uniform and swastika arm band. "We must finish the job Hitler was unable to."

ACLU associate director Mel Rosenblatt agreed. "The real danger here is not the American Nazi Party," he said. "The real danger here is what would happen to the rest of us if the Buddy Carvers of this world were not allowed to commit arson against nigger-loving, bleeding-heart-liberal Jew attorneys."

Making the case all the more controversial is the neo-Nazis' demand that the ACLU's entire 315-person staff be in the building at the time of the blaze. Strongly opposing the request are New York City police commissioner William Bratton, fire chief Ed Holm and mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who said that all 315 will die if trapped in the 47-story building during the blaze. ACLU attorneys responded that they will request a federal appeals hearing if the City of New York attempts to stop them and their fellow ACLU employees from perishing in the Nov. 25 blaze.

"Yes, my loving wife Linda and three wonderful children, Ben, Robby and Stephanie, will be devastated when I am killed next month," ACLU attorney Harvey Gross said. "But I recognize that, in a very real sense, it would be a victory for Mr. Carver and his fellow hatemongers if I did not burn to death, because their terrible message of bigotry and intolerance would be all the more effective if suppressed."

The Carver case is one of several controversial legal battles with which the ACLU has been involved this judicial year. In State of California v. Tubbs, the organization defended the right of a San Francisco art gallery to display a piece of performance art in which innocent passersby are shot to death by gunmen. In February, the ACLU went to U.S. Appeals Court to defend the Grand Wizard of the Coahoma County, Mississippi, chapter of the Ku Klux Klan's right to beat a black man to death and spray-paint 'White Pride' across his chest.

"We can have no arbitrary setting of limits when it comes to the Bill of Rights," Strossen said. "The Constitution does not say, 'You have the right to express these opinions, but not those opinions.' Nor does it say, 'You can express these opinions by word, but not by violence.' For a free society to work, hatred, in all its forms, must be encouraged."

misheard song lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI5fj8vmc44&list=RDiefStFNywPE&index=2