Judging from former White House counsel John Dean's interpretation of U.S. federal criminal statutes, Reverend Pat Robertson and FOX News guest Wayne Simmons could conceivably be brought up on either felony or misdemeanor charges for their calls to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frias.  In an August 26 commentary for the legal website FindLaw, Dean points out that U.S. federal law prohibits threats against foreign officials, or the transmission of such threats via interstate or foreign broadcasts.  

In light of the fact that the White House has yet to condemn Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of Hugo Chávez, it's interesting to go back and look at how the Bush Administration invariably treats Robertson with kid gloves.

In a recent interview with Australia's Green Left Weekly, Dr. Rodrigo Chaves --who served until recently as the coordinator of Venezuela's pro-government Bolivarian Circles and now works as President Hugo Chavez's private secretary-- claims that Venezuela's illiteracy rate has declined from nine percent to one percent in recent years.  According to Chaves, illiteracy was essentially eradicated through a government program called "Mission Robinson," which was designed to teach poor adults and teenagers to read.

According to Chaves, "Mission Robinson II" is already in place and is educating 900,000 adults up to the level of sixth grade. Another program, "Mission Ribas," is designed to give all Venezuelans a high school education.

According to an interesting new economic report by the California-based investment research firm Condor Advisers, the Venezuelan government's restructuring of the country's state-owned oil company --Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA)-- is "dramatically increasing cash flow into Venezuela's economy, laying the foundation for sustained, robust economic growth."

According to an Agence France Presse report from today, Roger Noriega --Bush's awful Ambassador to the OAS (I hear that Noriega doesn't even speak Spanish)-- is putting pressure on the Argentine government to crack down on the country's "piqueteros," the poor and unemployed picketers who have reportedly been blocking roads, occupying McDonald's restaurants and taking over the offices of multinational firms (God forbid!!).

Fortunately, the Argentine government no longer takes its orders from Washington; Argentina's Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa criticized Noriega's recent statements about the demonstrators, saying "In all honesty, the Argentine government is fed up with Mr. Noriega's meddling in Argentina's internal affairs."

More than a year ago, I received a somewhat angry message from an opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez regarding an article that I wrote for Narco News criticizing the political partiality and methodological problems of Venezuela's two most cited pollsters (Can You Believe Venezuela's Pollsters?, January 22, 2003). A number of anti-Chavez critiques of my article, including one by Francisco Toro, were pasted below the message.

For those who are not familiar with Toro, he is a well-known anti-Chavez activist based in Caracas whom the New York Times once hired as a reporter, in violation of the Times' own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. Toro runs an anti-Chavez weblog called the Caracas Chronicles.

At the time that I received this angry message, I was preoccupied with other issues, so, if I recall correctly, I did not read the critique by Toro that followed the message. However, the recent agreement in Venezuela to move ahead with a recall referendum on Chavez's government, as well as the Venezuelan President's recent citations of my article on Radio Nacional de Venezuela, have re-sparked interest in the topic of the pollsters. Thus, I have decided to revisit one of Toro's criticisms in order to show just how vacuous the Venezuelan opposition's defense of their pollsters is. I will address Toro’s other "main" criticisms in future entries.