as for the situation in venezuela, i would expect the us administration to try to put the opposition in power because it's been claiming for years that the elections are rigged, but there's actually no good evidence supporting that claim. election monitors, notably including jimmy carter (who said venezuela's election system was the best in the world), have for years rejected claims of election rigging in venezuela. the state department is likely to face a fight and domestic unrest if it tries to install the opposition. the vice president should take over, and she should call an election.

maduro himself is innocent until proven guilty and the accusations against him are unproven in court. he's entitled to a fair trial and people should allow the court system to operate.

on the one hand, what just happened in venezuela is utterly ridiculous and it's not out of the question that donald trump is the one going to jail, not maduro.

on the other hand, the united states just demonstrated it can do something that it didn't do in iraq, couldn't do in afghanistan and has not done in iran and it's sort of an open question as to why it didn't do this there, when it just demonstrated that it could have. i've been pointing out for years that the israelis constantly embarrass the americans by performing the kind of special forces attacks that the americans seemed incapable of doing. the world should note the display of force. and the americans kind of had to do that, after so many years worth of failure.

the legal issues surrounding this are profound. this isn't an act of war, so what jurisdiction does trump even claim to have? it's the attorney general that's going to have to take the fall. does the united states claim jurisdiction to evade the democratic process by unilaterally writing laws over the entire western hemisphere? i might object to that. there's no legal authority to do what they did, but they're also not on us soil while they're doing it. pam bondi is obviously not going to arrest herself.

there should be charges laid against multiple members of the administration over this, especially if the charges against maduro are quickly dismissed, as i would expect they will be. nobody thinks that venezuela is the source of any serious amount of cocaine. a lot of it comes from columbia, but everybody knows that it goes through mexico.

what happens if maduro is acquitted, or even released on bail?