A few articles on the news from Venezuela, which has just granted Hugo Chavez the right to basically make his word law (at least in certain sectors). He may now simply "degree" that certain laws are in effect in the fields of "national security", "public safty", "energy policy" and so forth. This seems like a disturbing step toward authoritarianism. Admittedly, there are times when an executive needs to be able to immediately enact policy, but I think they should be few and far between and watched cautiously by a legislature ready to pounce. This sort of wide ranging freedom to "rule by degree", combined with the fact that the legislature was just estatic about giving it to Chavez, seems to bode ill. I pulled the thread title from the Aljazeera article (because they had the catchiest title) but there's a clip from the New York Times that i found disturbing as well.