Apologists for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez have always claimed to win their argument about his regime by insisting there were no collective farms, no extrajudicial killings, no halts on freedom of expression, no end to freedom of association, no end to a free private sector with property rights. And no censored press. They've lost every one of those arguments. In the rawest display of Chavez's growing political power this year, Chavez has ordered all media censored over a key court case. A photo of the newspapers' reaction is "here":http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/2006/01/24.html#a2708 What's happening is a case of the press just trying to do its job. And the government trying to stop them. About a year ago, a national prosecutor was killed in a car bombing. The government hauled out an unbelievably tainted witness, a Colombian with a history of identity fraud whose last claim, proven fake by the press, was that he was a psychiatrist. In reality, he was more like a target...(Read Full Post)