By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of persons -- including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine -- that undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. I hereby order:

Section 1. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person (including any foreign branch) of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:

(i) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly, any of the following:

The fugitive leaker, appearing by video conference, attacked virtually every corner of the national security apparatus during a Q&A session at the festival

America's most high-profile fugitive visited one of the country's most popular entertainment festivals in Texas on Monday, drawing thunderous applause from a crowded room filled with his adoring fans.

Edward Snowden, appearing from Russia through a live video stream, told attendees of the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin that Congress had fundamentally failed to do its job as an overseer of the government's bulk surveillance programs, declaring that "we need a watchdog that watches Congress."

The former National Security Agency contractor, in a conversation with the American Civil Liberties Union's Christopher Soghoian and Ben Wizner, also charged the current and most recent chief of the NSA as the two people most responsible for jeopardizing the country's national security due to their preference for aggressive collection of data rather than protection of it after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Nato is to deploy reconnaissance planes in Poland and Romania to monitor the Ukrainian crisis. It gave the go-ahead for the flights on Monday, a Nato spokesman said. "All Awacs [Airborne Warning and Control System] reconnaissance flights will take place solely over alliance territory," the official said.

It comes as Russia cements its control of Ukraine's Crimea ahead of Sunday's referendum to join Russia. Ukraine and the West say this is illegal.

In the latest move on Monday, armed men - said to be Russian troops and local militias - seized a military hospital in Crimea.The attackers marched into the hospital in the regional capital Simferopol, threatening staff and some 30 patients.

Pro-Russian troops are also blockading Ukrainian troops across Crimea, which is an autonomous region.

Reading the Anglo-American press babble on about Crimea is painful, if you know anything at all about that part of the world.

Mark Ames tried to wipe away some of the slime a few weeks ago in his article, "Everything You Know about Ukraine Is Wrong," - and you can just assume that everything you know about Crimea is even wrong-er. Today I'll try to take apart the nonsense going around about the Crimean Referendum and impending union with Russia.

It's not easy diagnosing the psychotic episode brought on in the western media by Crimea, because anti-Russian stories are pushing two totally contradictory lines at the same time. Sometimes the party line is that Putin has gone crazy, and Russia is a joke, "a gas station masquerading as a country" that will pay a "big price" for grabbing the Crimean Peninsula.

Then there's the neocon version of Russophobia, peddled by shameless old Iraq-Invasion boosters like Eli Lake. According to Lake's latest in the Daily Beast, "Russia is invading Ukraine in the shadows." The proof? Eli don't need no stinkin' proof. He's been told that the dreaded SpetzNaz troops - Nazgul with black ski masks - are "spreading out" through the entire territory of Ukraine. His source? "U.S. officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity."

President Obama announced Monday that he is leveling new sanctions against seven Russian officials the White House says have contributed to the crisis in Ukraine.

Obama announced the sanctions one day after the Crimean region of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum that the U.S. and western allies vowed not to recognize.

In comments at the White House to formally announce the sanctions, Obama said he believes there is still a diplomatic solution to end the crisis. At the same time, he warned that if Russia continues to interfere with Ukraine's sovereignty he stands ready to push for even tougher sanctions.

"We are imposing sanctions on specific individuals for undermining the sovereignty, territorial integrity and government of Ukraine," Obama said."We are making it clear that there are consequences for their actions."

The high-level government officials named by the White House are: Vladislav Surkov, Sergey Glazyev, Leonid Slutsky, Andrei Klishas, Valentina Matviyenko, Dmitry Rogozin, and Yelena Mizulina.

I knew that the legal market was in bad shape last summer when I came across the story that top law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges announced its first mass layoffs in 82 years, but I had no idea it was this bad.

As most of you will be aware, U.S. News & World Report publishes a widely anticipated ranking of undergraduate as well as graduate schools. I recall how closely my peers scrutinized these rankings back when I was a high school senior and, apparently, a similar obsession continues to this day.

In fact, law schools are so consumed with performing well in these rankings that they are going to outrageous lengths to make it look like their students are performing better financially after graduation than they actually are. One of the most ridiculous ways they achieve this is by paying the salaries of their graduates upon graduation.

This way, students can take on employment at non-pofits and government agencies, positions they would never otherwise consider in light of their mountains of student debt. In return, their alma maters can pretend their graduates got real jobs. It is the academic equivalent of GM automobile channel stuffing.

This isn't just a minor trend of one-offs being exaggerated by the media either. For example, George Washington University paid the starting salaries of 22% of its graduates in 2012, while the University of Virginia paid for 15%.

These programs even have a name that reminds me of a financial derivative packed full of worthless securities. These programs are being called "bridge to practice" schemes and according to The Economist "in a recent survey by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), 45 of the 94 schools that responded now run such programs."

How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines - particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin - is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or "expert" views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington's narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a "transition from communism to democracy" and thus in America's best interests. This included his economic "shock therapy" and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a "presidential" Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia's North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.

Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin's Russia has none at all, at home or abroad - even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Russia today has serious problems and many repugnant Kremlin policies. But anyone relying on mainstream American media will not find there any of their origins or influences in Yeltsin's Russia or in provocative US policies since the 1990s - only in the "autocrat" Putin who, however authoritarian, in reality lacks such power. Nor is he credited with stabilizing a disintegrating nuclear-armed country, assisting US security pursuits from Afghanistan and Syria to Iran or even with granting amnesty, in December, to more than 1,000 jailed prisoners, including mothers of young children.

The Hacktivist Group Anonymous Ukraine has been able to hack the e-mail accounts of the Udar Party as well as the electronic correspondence of the deputy head of the Ukrainian nationalist party, The Stepan Bandera Trident, one Andrey Tarasenko.

Anonymous Ukraine released an e-mail between Tarasenko and the Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Aslan Omer Qirimli in which he asks for more powerful weapons, information on the location weapons caches in Kerch, Feodosia, Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta. The e-mail released by Anonymous Ukraine is dated January 28, 2014 so its operational value is questionable but it does show the true nature of the "peaceful demonstrators" on the Maidan and in Ukraine. Anonymous Ukraine has also hacked the e-mails of NATO offices and bodies in Ukraine and those of several US officials operating in Ukraine with more releases soon to appear on the internet, according to sources in Anonymous.

The e-mail between Tarasenko has been independently verified and appears authentic. It has not been translated into English as of publication so this is the first. The original was in Russian with some grammar errors. Unlike Klitschko who speaks English and German as well as Ukrainian and Russia, Tarasenko appears to speak only Russian and Ukrainian.

Russia broadened its war of words with the United States over Ukraine on Saturday when the Ministry of Defense said it would consider stopping international inspections of its nuclear weapons in response to threatened sanctions from the West.

"The unfounded threats towards Russia from the United States and NATO over its policy on Ukraine are seen by us as an unfriendly gesture," the ministry said in a statement distributed to Russian news agencies.

Those threats, the statement said, have created new circumstances, giving Russia the right to pull out of the inspections required under the START treaty with the United States and a separate agreement with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Russia, infuriated at the prospect of Western sanctions in response to its intervention in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, has been making one threat after another in recent days, and it has been difficult to distinguish bluster from serious intent. The United States has been urging Russia to pull its troops back to its existing bases for the Black Sea Fleet, and not to annex Crimea.


State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the Russian government had not yet notified the United States of a decision but was expected to uphold its treaty obligations. "We would take very seriously and strongly discourage any Russian decision to cease implementation of its legally binding arms control treaty obligations and other military transparency commitments," she said.

Attempts to whitewash the backgrounds of Ukrainian nationalists who openly cooperated with the Nazis and committed mass murders in WWII are "morally repulsive," and encourage "nationalist ideology, extremism and intolerance," Russia's UN envoy says.

"It is deeply disturbing that the followers of [Stepan] Bandera are openly marching these days in Ukraine, displaying his portraits and fascist insignia, and are wielding considerable political power in Kiev," Vitaly Churkin said after Thursday's Security Council meeting in response to response to comments made earlier by Ukrainian Ambassador to the UN Yury Sergeyev.

Attempts to whitewash them "are not only morally repulsive, they amount to encouraging nationalist ideology, extremism and intolerance," Churkin stated.

Churkin quoted Sergeyev as saying earlier that Soviet Union "tried to press Western allies to recognize what you called 'Banderas' and others as killers." And the reason the Nurnberg process didn't recognize that was "because it was falsified."

In response to that claim, Churkin said that there are "massive documentary evidence" that proves otherwise, pointing to the fact that the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) "collaborated with the Nazis."