The international human rights NGO Freedom House makes no attempt to hide the fact that about 80% of the funding comes from the U.S. government (as stated in each of their annual reports), something that causes many foreign governments to recoil in disgust and react with vituperative rants to any critical report the group may produce. Some say that this association with Washington affects their research choices, but does that necessarily mean that what they publish isn’t true? Out there in the irascible blogosphere on Russia, Freedom House is most frequently a protagonist in the double standards narrative of human rights apologists. Having met many senior officers and researchers from Freedom House, I have always held their professionalism and fairness in high regard, and thoroughly believe that they publish very good work and are not as tied to the presidential administration as you might suspect. Yet when I read over the country report on Russia in their latest Nations in Transition 2008 report (written by Robert W. Orttung of the Jefferson Institute), I must admit that I found parts of it spotty with unfair or unbalanced opinion.