No surprise, liberals shower praise on Hugo Chavez

And so naturally, his death this week from cancer at age 58 brought a stream of praise and condolences from liberals who no doubt wish some of Chavez's socialist practices would take hold here.

“Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had,” the always entertaining Sean Penn said in a tribute Tuesday. “And poor people around the world lost a champion.”

Penn may want to share that news with Venezuela's poor, who, as The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, are worse off now than when Chavez was first elected in 1998 despite the country being awash in petroleum revenue. “While wealthier Venezuelans could flee, the less fortunate now endure routine food and medicine shortages, thanks to price and capital controls,” the Journal wrote. “Prices are more than 20 times higher than in 1999.”