Free Republic

Police in Nicaragua have ended the siege of a church where opposition supporters had sought refuge after being attacked by riot police and pro-government militias. Doctors have been allowed to treat the injured inside the church in the city of Masaya. Two people have died. Some 30 people who were inside the church were released after the local Catholic Church intervened. More than 100 people have been killed in Nicaragua in six weeks of violence. … Ortega, the former Sandinista rebel leader, is in his third consecutive term in power. He was re-elected in 2016, after the constitution was changed...

It's good, occasionally, to take a trip down memory lane. It helps to put things into perspective. Hugo Chavez ought never to have been elected president. By rights, he ought to be growing old in a jail cell somewhere. Well, it's been seventeen years, maybe he’d be in a half-way house by now. As an army officer in 1992, he led a military revolt against the legal, constitutional government of Venezuela, and attempted to overthrow the democratically elected president of the time, Carlos Andres Perez. He gambled that once the shooting started, the minister of defense and the rest of...