11/23/2006: The Russkies are back in business of playing for keeps. Former KGB agent and political dissident Alexander Litvinenko has died under very mysterious circumstances. He was apparently poisoned–his hair fell out and his immune system shut down–in what would have seemed like a reaction to chemotherapy. Only he didn’t have cancer!

This comes in the wake of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who–like Litvinenko–was a hard critic of the Russian government, and Putin in particular.

This is a Russian hit job. And it is their way of saying they are back in the business of hardball.

Again, I ask: does the Bush Administration have a clue what is happening before our eyes?