Democracry dies in Venezuela

The NYT reports:

Venezuela took its strongest step yet toward one-man rule under the leftist President Nicolás Maduro as his loyalists on the Supreme Court seized power from the National Assembly in a ruling late Wednesday night.

The ruling effectively dissolved the elected legislature, which is led by Mr. Maduro’s opponents, and allows the court to write laws itself, experts said.

The move caps a year in which the last vestiges of Venezuela’s democracy have been torn down, critics and regional leaders say, leaving what many now describe as not just an authoritarian regime, but an outright dictatorship.

Their socialist policies have failed, the economy is ruined, people are starving, and now they are desperately trying to hold onto power in the tried and tested way of failed socialist regimes.

But it won’t work. It will come to a bloody messy end, as they all do.