Gee Thanks WaPo

Is this any way to begin my day? I think not.
Granted, the photograph is part of a good article by Julia Latynina "Open Season - Life in Putin's Russia," that is worth a moment of your time today. But really WaPo editors. This is not a picture I need hanging around in my brain.

And as much as I would love to interpret and blog on this article, I am going to leave it to our resident Russo-expert, upon the return of the esteemed Bucky. Suffice it to say the opening two paragraphs lets you know what is coming - a sad but needed glimpse into Putin-world.

MOSCOW On Nov. 9, 2007, during a special operation in the village of Chemulga, in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian special forces shot and killed an individual by the name of Rakhim Amriyev. Eyewitnesses said that they shot him in the head and placed an automatic rifle beside his body. Then, as dozens of villagers who had run out of their homes looked on, the troops used an armored personnel carrier to demolish a wall of the one-room house where Amriyev lived and announced that he had died in a shootout.

You may ask how I can be sure that things happened this way -- that Amriyev didn't fire back, that he wasn't a terrorist and that the automatic rifle was planted. I'm absolutely certain -- because Rakhim Amriyev was 6 years old.