Read the whole thing, it’d have to be scissored into a couple dozen bits to get all the good stuff. Here’s the beginning.

The first meeting of the loftily named U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission’s Civil Society Working Group took place in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 27. Russian presidential first deputy Vladislav Surkov is the group’s co-chair—despite a letter of protest signed by 71 GOP members of the U.S. Congress pointing out that Mr. Surkov is “one of the masterminds behind Russia’s authoritarian course.”

The letter urged President Obama (in vain, as it turned out) to boycott the meetings until Mr. Surkov was replaced, perhaps by someone who hasn’t spent his career actively destroying the sort of civil society this working group is intended to promote. The group’s American co-chair, Michael McFaul, National Security Council senior director for Russian affairs and a strong critic of Putinism in the past, said afterward that “maybe there was a time . . . when we could tell other countries what to do all the time.” But failing to try is the only guarantee of failure.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.