The vote to give Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez near dictatorial powers was probably not as close as the announced tally - 51-49. Many observers, in fact, believe that it was a landslide against Chavez who manipulated the vote to lessen his embarrassment. Almost all of the pre-election polls had the NO! camp winning by more than 55%. There were late night shenanigans at the CNE - the electoral commission in charge of the vote - where NO! representatives were kept from seeing the final tally and fistfights broke out. And there is late word that the big reason the announcement of the final tally was delayed was because some kind of negotiation took place between the two camps where Chavez desperately tried to reduce the margin of victory to hang on to some vestige of dignity.We may soon know the truth of that last rumor. That's because the real heroes of this victory for democracy were Venezuelan students who poured into the streets for much of the last month to...(Read Full Post)