The Presidency is a tough job, unless you are as laissez faire as Calvin Coolidge who took a nap every day. I am confident that the President and Vice President are working, albeit away from their offices. Do you imagine that they are in sensory deprivation tanks? And what if they were? It is a fallacy of collectivism that a nation needs a strong leader to steer the ship of state through the treacherous waters of crisis. Laissez faire or imperial presidency: either-or; A or non-A.

Myself, growing up, many of my friends were Ukrainian. I could speak enough of it to get through their parents when I called on the phone. I even watched Yul Brynner in "Taras Bulba." But, really, that is the point: these people have been going back and forth for a thousand years. What is it to you or me?

I agree 100% that this so-called "crisis" validates the historicist thesis that communism was just another czarism in Russia. These events now, parallel Afghanistan, where the USSR's puppet could not hold the country, so they invaded, killed him, and took over for themselves. Getting involved in that fracas put the USA in bed with the Taliban. You see how that worked out.