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Venezuala's top Cardinal says the country's Constitution allows citizens to reject their leftist president, Hugo Chavez. As Chavez continues to push the country back decades, people and institutions grow increasingly impatient.
Cardinal Calls Chavez a 'Dictator'
Venezuela's highest Catholic prelate has called President Hugo Chavez a dictator and urged Venezuelans to refuse to recognize him as the nation's leader.
"I am convinced that what we have here is a dictatorship," Cardinal Rosalio Castillo said in an interview.
The cardinal's comments are likely to further strain relations with Chavez, who has described the church as a "tumor."
Castillo is retired and said he could not speak officially for Venezuela's church. But he is the highest-ranking member of the church hierarchy in Venezuela.
He said the people of his nation should refuse to recognize the left-wing president because he was not ruling democratically, citing an article in Venezuela's constitution stipulating that citizens could reject a leader if he violated democratic principles or human rights.
"Reject this government," the cardinal declared, charging that Chavez "has seized control of all the branches of government." He said Chavez maintained a "varnish of democracy" but had assumed dictatorial powers.
"His goal above all is not to help the poor but to concentrate his power," Cardinal Castillo said, adding that Chavez was trying to install Cuban-style communism in the country.
Chavez, who calls himself the "second Fidel," has outlawed most forms of public protest, rewritten Venezuela's constitution to broaden his powers, purged critics in the military and tried to take over the national federation of trade unions.
He also engineered a law allowing his government to suspend the licenses of radio and TV stations for content "contrary to the security of the nation," and has even set up his own Latin American satellite channel to rival what he calls the U.S. propaganda that can now be seen on satellite TV.
Chavez responded to Castillo's remarks by calling the cardinal an "immoral bandit and coup-mongerer."
News Max.com ~ Carl Limbacher ** Cardinal Calls Chavez a 'Dictator'
Posted by uhyw
at 11:54 PM EDT
spacey
Clinton speaks before Hispanic civil rights conference
Speaking to the nations' largest Hispanic civil rights organization, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., received a standing ovation Monday when she vowed her support for legislation that would allow illegal immigrant high school students to attend college.
Clinton made her remarks on various issues of importance to the country's Latinos at the annual conference of National Council of La Raza, attended by 23,000 people at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
The event started Friday and has included a rally in center Philadelphia in support of the so-called DREAM Act that would benefit illegal students.
On Tuesday, the chairpersons of both the Republican and Democratic national committees are schedule to address the conference, which NCLR officials say is a first for the organization and a sign that both parties have heightened their interest in the growing Latino population and its votes.
crushed out
A dedication blog to my Fox News gal, Kiran Chetry
Kiran Chetry 
cheeky
More great stuff to tweak the left in a fun-hearted way. Unlike the "tolerant, compassionate" liberal's "Kill Bush" gear.
This is almost as sweet as Rush Limbaugh's Club Gitmo T-shirts and gear at the 
d'oh
France faces drought, locusts
On top of a severe drought, France is fighting a plague of hundreds of thousands of locusts.
The locusts are devouring everything from crops to window-box flowers, reported the Observer.
"At the beginning they seem small, insignificant insects but they grow very quickly," said Aveyron region farmer Gerard Laussel. "They eat everything that is green, leaving only stalks, and when they have finished they leave some kind of scent so the cattle do not want to graze on what is left."
The French environment ministry said drought could be felt across most of France, but it mostly impacted from the Atlantic Ocean to Paris.
"There is nothing we can do for the 700 or 800 farmers affected," said Patrice Lemoux, an agriculture official. "The locust has no known predator and the only insecticides which might make a difference are banned."
irritated
smelly
Ed Klein: Hillary Clinton Covered Up for JFK
Just a year out of law school, Hillary Clinton got an expert education in the political art of damage control working for the House Watergate Committee, where her job was to keep President Nixon's lawyers from introducing even worse abuses of power committed by President Kennedy.
So says Edward Klein, author of the runaway best seller, "The Truth About Hillary."
Hillary Diane Rodham was assigned, Klein told Fox News Channel's "The Big Story with John Gibson" on Thursday, "to come up with regulations that the president and his lawyers could not cross-examine any witnesses, thereby stopping Nixon from proving that whatever abuses he did were no worse than JFK's."
House Watergate Committee counsel John Doar - a Kennedy ally - put Hillary in charge of a group of historians who were researching the protocols of impeachment to see whether any previous president had committed worse crimes than Nixon.
"In fact, they found that [past presidents] had," Klein told Gibson. "And Hillary was ordered to suppress that report."
What had JFK done that was worse than Watergate?
"Kennedy had used the assassination of foreign leaders as an instrument of foreign policy," Klein noted - a crime "far worse" than even the most egregious allegations against Nixon.
Doar ordered Hillary to deep-six her report, to "lock it in a safe and never show anybody, including the chairman of the judiciary committee in the House," whom Doar was supposed to be working for.
As with extraneous evidence uncovered by her husband's impeachment probers 24 years later, Hillary's report on the crimes of the Kennedy administration was ordered sealed for 50 years, said Klein - till 2024.
loud
Manhattan lawyer Edward Cox, a son-in-law of former President Richard Nixon, has begun preparations to challenge Clinton, and Republican Party officials also are courting Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro as a possible challenger.
Patti Solis Doyle, executive director of Friends of Hillary, said she expects "very well-funded opposition next year."
Clinton's first campaign for Senate in 2000 smashed fundraising records, as she and her Republican opponent, then-congressman Rick Lazio, together spent about $80 million.
A strong showing in next year's Senate race could give added momentum to Clinton's early front-runner status among possible Democratic candidates in the 2008 presidential race. A bruising contest could slow her down.
Other closely watched Senate races are in Pennsylvania, where incumbent Republican Rick Santorum is facing a challenge from the son of a former governor, state treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., and in Florida, where Rep. Katherine Harris is challenging Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
Santorum raised $3.6 million in three months and reported $5.7 million cash on hand to Casey's $1.6 million cash on hand.
Harris ended June with $406,808 cash on hand to Nelson's $5 million.
"...it's today's Republicans who are ruthless." "We...had better toughen up, or they're going to keep stealing elections -- and surpluses -- from us for a long time." "...they're so afraid of Enron...because it exposes them for the whores they are." "Junior is gonna join Poppy in the Hall of Failed Presidents."
Ex-Clinton Aide Charges Republicans 'Want to Kill Us'
Young liberals this week flocked to the nation's capital to hear, among other things, liberal television pundit and Democrat political strategist Paul Begala accuse Republicans of wanting to kill him and his children to preserve tax cuts for the rich.
Begala was featured at the first-ever Campus Progress National Student Conference, which was designed to provide campus liberals with the tools necessary to fight the conservative movement. The event also drew former President Bill Clinton, for whom Begala once worked as an advisor.
A panel discussion entitled "Winning the War of Ideas" centered on topics discussed in the book "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank and detailed the challenges that Democrats face in persuading voters in the American heartland and elsewhere to embrace their agenda and support their candidates.
Begala's presence on the panel created a stir when he declared that Republicans had "done a p***-poor job of defending" the U.S.
Republicans, he said, "want to kill us.
"I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said.
"They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."
The Clinton administration's national security efforts involved the right blend of "experience" and "strength," Begala said, an assertion with which the 9/11 Commission apparently disagreed.
In its report, the bipartisan commission stated that "each president considered or authorized covert actions, a process that consumed considerable time -- especially in the Clinton administration -- and achieved little success beyond the collection of intelligence."
Begala also included Republican domestic policies in his sweeping criticism. The GOP, he said, "ain't had a new idea since they opposed Social Security, and guess what, they still do. ... They are beginning to figure out that there is no Soviet Union, but they still want Star Wars to stop it," Begala said.
"Okay, they are utterly and completely brain-dead," echoing comments earlier this year by Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who accused Republicans of being "brain dead."
Frank insisted that Republicans are not quite as tough on national security as many Americans think.
"Franklin Roosevelt got us in World War II. They dragged the Republicans kicking and screaming. They didn't want to get in that war. They didn't have any problem with Hitler. I won't go so far as to say they thought Hitler rocked. But there were people in America who did, and they didn't want us to get in that war. Democrats have always been just as tough as Republicans once they're in office," Frank said.
Frank did not mention one of the most vocal opponents of U.S. intervention in World War II: Democrat Joseph P. Kennedy, who was one of Roosevelt's top fundraisers, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain and father of John F. Kennedy, who would later become America's 35th president.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the eldest of the ambassador's sons, wrote his father with his own observations of the global conflict. Hitler's "dislike of the Jews ... was well-founded," the younger Kennedy explained in his letter.
"In every revolution, you have to expect some bloodshed. Hitler is building a spirit in his men that could be envied in this country," wrote Kennedy, Jr., expressing an opinion his father shared.
"I was very pleased and gratified at your observations of the German situation, and I think your conclusions are very sound," the elder Kennedy replied to his son.
Frank defended his point, however, claiming that Republicans didn't see Hitler as a threat to America until Pearl Harbor.
He repeated the Democratic criticism of America's invasion of Iraq. Saddam Hussein "was a horrible (sic), a dictator, a butcher, a tyrant, a mass murderer -- as evil as they come," Frank said, but he added: "I don't think he was a threat to the U.S. at the time."
Former Clinton administration Chief of Staff John Podesta told the students that "you can fight hard for what you believe without breaking the law, without cheating and certainly without checking your morals at the door."