Venezuelan coup d'etat

Washington Times ^ | Wednesday, July 3, 2002 | Elizabeth Spiro Clark

[JohnHuang2]

The Bush administration backtracked and explained away its seeming willingness

[JohnHuang2]

Wednesday, July 3, 2002

Quote of the Day by facedown

[Libertarianize the GOP]

.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Very interesting and much needed discussion.

[livius]

Very good points. The "auto golpe" (auto-coup, where you just keep on putting yourself back in office again and again) is something that particularly needs attention. It usually goes hand in hand with the rewriting of the state's Constitution, which Chavez did.

Another important issue is the safety of the judiciary. One of Chavez' first acts was to get rid of all judges he didn't like, in order to eliminate the possibility of any legal review of his activities. This went largely ignored by the rest of the world (and of course, by Bill C).

Letting people who are democratically elected then go ahead and undo democracy, simply because they can claim that they were "democratically elected" the first time, doesn't make any sense.