It's been a long time coming, but now we've reached that point:

Kasparov was forced to the ground and beaten, his assistant Marina Litvinovich said in a telephone interview from outside the police station where he was being held... Russian police have detained opposition leader and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. He and other critics of President Vladimir Putin were arrested as police broke up a rally in Moscow organised by Mr Kasparov's Other Russia coalition. Police moved in when protesters tried to march to the election commission, which had barred Other Russia candidates from next week's election.

And just so you don't feel cheated by the lack of a "holy shit the State Department sucks" angle: it's often forgotten that Secretary Rice is officially trained as a Russia expert and that - of all the places in the world - that's an area where she should have excelled. Instead she's been a miserable failure and is trying to make up for it with Annapolis:

''We've let Putin and Russia elude our grasp,'' said former Undersecretary of State John Bolton, a prominent neoconservative. ''I rate that as one of the biggest disappointments, not because it has an immediate impact in the here and now,'' but because of Russia's anti-Western drift later. Even as she finds herself a target for Democratic opponents of the Iraq War, Rice also is increasingly under fire from hawks such as Bolton, who argue that she's abandoned Bush's purist principles to negotiate with North Korea and pursue diplomacy for diplomacy's sake in Iran. ''Everybody's in the legacy mode now,'' Bolton said.

She's substituting failure in one part of the world by setting up decades of warfare in another part of the world. That warfare will be all the more dangerous because it will be done in a world where Israel has been deprived of its ability to win wars conventionally (giving high tech weaponry to Israel's Arab enemies, depriving Israel of badly needed strategic depth, etc). Fantastic legacy.

References:
* Putin Goes After Chess Master, Opposition Politician Kasparov [MR]
* Garry Kasparov Arrested at Russian Rally! [Gateway Pundit]
* With peace talks, Rice seeks to polish diplomatic legacy [Miami Herald]

Previously:
* We Heart Putin - Big, Really Threatening Russian Airshows Are Back
* Putin Wins Russian Politician Of The Year
* Putin Figures Out Constitutional Way To Continue Ruling Russia With Iron Fist